Need help deciding how to arrange NBA playoff games on dvd?

[Jacob Grenoble]

I am a huge Heat fan and would like to put their playoff games on dvd. Looking at the file sizes for the game's I have a single game will take no more than 600mb in RM format(Real media?) or Divx. SO I was thinking I could put the four games from each of their two completed series on two separate dvd's.

Just to be clear I have 8 games total mostly in .RM format a couple in Divx. Each individual game is divided by half or by quarter. So I need to find a way to join these files into one long video right? And then author a dvd with the four larger video files correct?

If anyone has any suggestions I would really appreciate it?

[jimmalenko]

So you want them playable in a set-top DVD player ? The reason I ask is that if by any chance you have a DivX-capable player, you could save yourself some converting, and just convert the RM files to DivX. If you don't have a DivX-capable player, then you need to convert to DVD-compliant MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 - see What is DVD ? (top left) for the specs.

BTW, filesize generally means nothing - it's all about the bitrate. In very, very general terms, there's a fair chance that in order to replicate the quality of a 600MB DivX you'll need a 2GB MPEG or thereabouts, all other things being equal.

http://members.dodo.net.au/~jimmalenko/AVI2DVD.htm basically steps you through all the areas you need to know about from here on in. I'll elaborate on the guide a bit here though so you understand what's going on ...


You need to work out the total running time of all clips you wish to put onto 1 DVD, then plug this running time into a bitrate calculator - https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm is my choice. This then tells you what bitrate you need to encode at in order to make the specified number of parts fit to one DVD.

Once you have your bitrate, then you can choose a suitable resolution to suit that bitrate - for example, there's no point using Full D1 (720 X 480) if your target bitrate is 1500kbps, as your results will be poor. Conversely, the following is the roughest of rough guides for if you have a resolution in mind but don't know what bitrates to use:

From here we need to make some decisions regarding the frame size we will use. Sometimes the bitrate determines what frame size we should use, other times the source. It is best to choose the nearest resolution to your source, always rounding down where possible. Choose between 352 * 240/288, 352 * 480/576, or 720 * 480/576 (there may be times when you have a resolution smaller than 352 * 240 - that is OK, you'll just have to use 352 * 240).

Given a perfect (DVD quality 720 * 480/576) source, and where ave stands for the Average Bitrate, I use the following:

If ave is < 2000kbps, I'd use 352 * 240/288 ave CBR
If ave is > 2000kbps & < 5000, I'd use 352 * 480/576 2-Pass VBR (min 1000 ave ave max 5000)
If ave is > 5000kbps & < 7500, I'd use 720 * 480/576 2-Pass VBR (min 1000 ave ave max 9000)
If ave is > 7500kbps, I'd use 720 * 480/576 ave CBR

If a resolution is "forced" because of the source, keep this in mind when perusing the above chart (ie. if your nearest resolution is 352 * 240/288, there is no point using a bitrate > 2000kbps).

This is where you need to make a choice - is fitting each finals series to one DVD more important, or will you happily use an extra couple of DVDRs in order to keep the quality as good as it can be ?

Once you have decided all this, then you need to convert to MPEG using your favorite encoder - TMPGEnc Plus is my tool of choice here. Then you need to author - TMPGEnc DVD Author is my tool of choice for this. Then burn, and test it in your player !