Method to fit video onto DVD-R?

[Neisse]

I'm still a biit of a noob at this video/audio stuff, but not a noob to computers. Let me tell you what I'm trying to do...

I have a few hundred VHS tapes, as well as 1 hour shows on my DVR that I want to move over to DVD-R. I got the following hardware just for this purpose:

Panasonic DMR-ES40V, VHS/DVD Recorder combo, capable of -R/-RW/+R/-RAM
AOpen DUW1616L DVD writer drive, capable of -R/-RW/-R(DL)/+R/+R(DL)/+RW/CD-R/CD-RW
AOpen VA1000Plus PCI video capture card
-- I also have a good Philips 4 head/HiFi VHS unit that I got just for use with the above capture card.

So far, I've just been using the Panasonic dual deck unit for dubbing VHS to a -RW disc in XP (1 hour - best quality) mode. I then:

Rip the -RW in DVD Decrypter
Edit out commercials in MPEG2VCR
Import the resulting muxed MPEG into DVD-Lab Pro, for menu creation and setting chapter points, which also demuxes then remuxes the source (kinda dumb considering I don't do anything to it in DLP)
Resulting VOB and menus are tested in PowerDVD; if all OK then,
create disc image in ImgTool Classic
Burn disc in DVD Decrypter or ImgTool

Problem is, the resulting discs are only the one show, which is now only about 43 minutes after yanking out the commercials. When burned, about 25% of the disc is wasted.

I'd like to be able to put at least two episodes per disc (more would be even better) but:

Current image quality MUST be maintained - I realise that VHS source isn't great to begin with, but the episodes recorded direct from the DVR source look GREAT, and they mustn't be messed with.

Discs MUST be as compliant as possible with DVD specs, as I have a finicky player in the living room (not the Pana).

MUST continue to use the -R type discs - not the dual layers, as they're tough to obtain around here, and not cheap. I also don't know how my other players will take to them.

I do have DVD Shrink 3.2 that I just downloaded, but I'm not sure about using it yet. If I do, I have some questions I can't seem to find the answers to yet:

I see I can use either the DVD source disc itself, a disc image, or the VOB files (results after ripping). Which is the best route?

I have a few discs already completed, but not burned yet (left in disc images - see above sequence). Would I have to re-author the discs I've already done and make new menus?

How many episodes of about 43 minutes could I expect to put on a disc without the quality going downhill?

If there's anything else I should know about this but didn't ask, please feel free to enlighten me!

Thanks for any help!

[whitejremiah]

this isnt really an easy question to answer, as no matter what the quality will start going downhill, slightly........the question is when does it start becoming noticeable to you? Most people consider around 2 hours of video to be still respectable quality as far as dvd is concerned though..........so i suppose, give 2 hours a try and see if you still like the picture quality....no matter what though, there's gonna be some sort of quality loss

[Neisse]

I know that there's quality loss, and there's NOTICEABLE quality loss. I care about the noticeable - if it's a tiny amount of loss, and I can't notice it, who cares?

OK. I'll play around with DVD Shrink and see what happens...

BTW: My computer system is a new install (less than a week ago) of Win XP. I didn't install WinZip yet, I was just using the included MS unzip feature. When I downloaded DVD Shrink, XP was telling me "missing or corrupted file" when I tried to unzip it. I can't tell you how many times and from how many sites I dl'ed it before I decided to install WinZip and try it, instead! WinZip "10" worked on it just fine. A warning to the less computer-savvy among us...

[ZippyP.]

OK. I'll play around with DVD Shrink and see what happens...

Not my recommended method. In order to get 86 minutes to fit the space of 60 you will be using compression of 70% which will affect the quality too much, IMHO. DVDShrink is not that good at high compression.

It would be better to set your recorder to 2 hour mode which should give good quality. Put 2 tapes on it and with editting you'll get 86 minutes, although you're still not using 25% of your disk. If you want to go a step further you can put another 43 minute tape (recorded in 2 hour mode) on the disk which will give you a total of 129 minutes. 93% compression in DVDShrink will make it fit.

Try it and see which you prefer.

[Neisse]

So, Zippy, you're talking about burning THREE 43 or so minute episodes per DVD-R, at SP (2 hour) on the DVD recorder? Just want to make sure I understand correctly...

93% compression? That seems excessive since you said that 70% is too much and will effect video quality.

[BobK]

93% compression? That seems excessive since you said that 70% is too much and will effect video quality.

93% compression is 23% less than 70%- not 23% more compression. The lower the number, the more compression/loss of quality. The higher the number, the higher the resulting quality.

It's really not 70% or 93% compression- it's compression to 70% or 93% of the original file(s) size.

[ZippyP.]

93% compression? That seems excessive since you said that 70% is too much and will effect video quality.

BobK explained it, 93% would be less compression in DVDShrink. It's the ratio that DVDShrink uses which is a percent of the original size. I sometimes get it confused as well.