Fit football/baseball game on 1 DVD

[wg0649]

I think this is a very newbie question, but is there a way to take a 4 hour game and put it on 1 DVD?
I've got the MPEG file from my TiVO and it's about 9Gig now.

thanks
-Will

[Roll Tide]

My advice is to save each game on two discs. I gave up on compressing games to one disc, because the resulting quality is so poor. (this is even at an avg. 2.5 hours per game w/o commercials.) There's too much fast motion for lower bitrates.

Just my $.02.

To answer your question, it can be done - you just need to transcode your 9GB file to around 4GB so it will fit one disc. Others can probably chime in on the best way to do this.

[jimmalenko]

If it must go onto 1 SL disc, I'd re-encode.

If 1 DL disc is your target, authoring and then DVDShrink or DVD2One should do a pretty reasonable job of it IMO (assuming that the file is currently slightly too big for 1 DL disc). Other wise just author and burn.

Otherwise, split to 2 SL discs.

[lordsmurf]

Split.

[jdizzy40]

I too agree split. You will be pleased with the result. DVD discs are not that expensive these days.

[wg0649]

Thanks all...I appreciate the feedback.

2 discs it is!

[Poppa_Meth]

If its at full resolution then try re-encoding to half d1. If its already at that then yes split. I've easily gotten decent quality on a single layer with almost 4 hours at 1/2 D1.

[lordsmurf]

Sporting events (especially wrestling) is something I can never get to look good at low compression. Just does not work.

[Poppa_Meth]

I've never worked with sporting events (not a sports fan) so I can't comment on that. Most of my work is with anime.

[steve2713]

I agree, split them if you want them to look decent. I've also found Sports to be a very tough test for MPG to handle with my recorder. Even at my 2 hour setting on my Pioneer recorder, it struggles at times with avoiding artifacts, where more forgiving content would look very good at a 3 hour setting.

[wg0649]

Thanks for all the tips.
What is recomended for the best/easiest tool to split?

[jimmalenko]

you should be able to set cut points in your authoring software.

[vhelp]

My 2 cents worth is like this.

Best suggestion is to: Re-encode and Split each game per disk.

QUESTION:
* What is your source - (ie, Analog Cable; Digital Cable; Satellite)

Reason:
If digital (ie dig. cable and Satelite = digital) you alrady have MPEG
blocks/artifacts. That will decrease your chances of a clean and blockless
encode because you can't take out blocks (forget softeners) - still blocks.
Plus, your source is Interlace, every frame. That makes things even more
worse to work with.
.
.. Assuming 720 x 480 resolution is your source MPEG from your unit..
.. Encode to MPEG-2 with this resolution, and highest bitrate your encoder will
.. allow for a 60 minute disk. Because your source is A) Interlaced every frame,
.. and B) sports/fast moving, etc. for maximum quality (less blocks) it would be
.. wiser to encode using CBR instead of VBR, unless you absolutely need to fit
.. your source on one disk. Encoding with VBR is not a good advantage point
.. here because of the level of motion, and also because VBR is mainly for
.. fitting on a disk, as best it can in reproducing best quality. But, VBR
.. does not mean BEST QUALITY. It more means, fit per disk, but consider the
.. quality level last. That's how I see VBR. And, for Sports and/or Interlace
.. only sources, its not a good idea to use VBR (ie, multi-pass) for such sources.
.. You are better off letting CBR devote the maximum amount of bitrate your assign
.. (ie, 8000 or higher) to every frame. And if you have digital cable/satelite
.. sources, you can bet it's riddled with mpeg blocks/dct/artficats etc, and you
.. can only do better with CBR under these special circumstances.

-vhelp 3094

[vhelp]

@ wg0649

Thanks for all the tips. What is recomended for the best/easiest
tool to split?

I would suggest MPEG2Cut v1.15 cause it's pretty fast, and is
similar to dvd2avi in every aspect (almost) as it's a re-edited version
of dvd2avi for just this type of project.
.
It will cut your MPEG-2 / VOB's into MPG's of any size.
.
From these cut/split MPEG's, you can either open them in vdubMOD or
dvd2avi and do your thing from their. Sorry, I don't know your regular
methods of MPEG'ing around, etc.

-vhelp 3095