8 Episode of drama in 1 DVD disc

[hobbes31]

Any of you people ever saw those video dvds that stores 8 episodes of Hong Kong drama in one 4.7Gb DVD+R disc ?

Approximate playback time is 350 minutes. And they're all MPEG2 equivalent quality.

Does anyone know how to do that ? I can only achieve 7 episodes in 1 disc using Nero Vision.

[mats.hogberg]

They are most likely VCD resolution (352x240/288 NTSC/PAL) low bitrate mpeg2 or mpeg1 (1600 kbps) with low bitrate (128 kbps) audio.
With good source material, using a good encoder, multipass VBR, knowledge how to use it, & cetera it may actually look acceptable. Not somthing achived by merely drag/drop into NVE and pressing the Burn button.

/Mats

[kyemeng]

I have seen some of those but the quality is terrible akin to VCD. Do it only if your source quality is quite bad. Nowadays, the price of a DVD is low and IMHO, not worth straining your eyes for.

[hobbes31]

do u have any recommended software to use and wat encoding specs to put in to convert the chapters so that I can squeeze 8 chapters into one discs ?

my source is rm file and the quality is DVD quality.

[hobbes31]

I have seen some of those but the quality is terrible akin to VCD. Do it only if your source quality is quite bad. Nowadays, the price of a DVD is low and IMHO, not worth straining your eyes for.

erm kyemeng.... u'll be very surprised. The quality is as good as watching DVD discs. Actually the discs are HK drama. I'm sure the source is DVD format as well. 1 DVD discs has 8 chapters of the show.

Damn good. that's why i'm asking here to see if any of u knows how it's done.

[mats.hogberg]

There's no magic involved. Given a really good source (which I unfortunately doubt RealMedia would qualify as, since it's already very likely heavily compressed), a good encoder (see various encoder comparisions to determine which has the highest quality output) and the know-how how to configure it, it's doable, but there is a limit on what can be done with a video bitrate of 1600 kbps within the Video DVD specs.

/Mats

[guns1inger]

If you have one of these discs, open one of the VOBs in g-spot and you will be able to see what the average video bitrate is, what the video and audio format is, and what the audio bitrate is. From there you can encode your own videos to match (assuming your running time is the same as theirs). It will certainly set you on the right path. I suspect that they also use DVD9, not DVD5, which will make a big difference.

[genki500]

8 episodes ? Are they 45 minutes each episode? 6 hours in one DVD, quality is certainly higher than VCD.

[jman98]

Without us having access to the discs, it's impossible to know what was done. And one thing many of us have learned is that one guy's idea of "excellent quality" may be another guy's idea of "unacceptibly bad quality".

If you carefully encode from a good source, you can get excellent quality out of lower bit rates. I have seen some 2000 Kbps footage that looked almost as good as a DVD (but it was low motion footage, which helped) and I've seen some footage in the 1600s that didn't look like DVD quality, but it was good enough for a lot of people.

Other authoring programs than Nero don't enforce limits on the number of episodes and you could even put 10 or more if you wanted to as long as they would fit on the DVD.

[hobbes31]

8 episodes ? Are they 45 minutes each episode? 6 hours in one DVD, quality is certainly higher than VCD.

hi genki500, yes, u're right. it's about 45 minutes each episode, about 5.5 hours in one DVD. It's actually those HK drama serials.

I've checked the discs using gspot as mentioned, but i found that they're using 29.97fps, 704x576 frame size and more than 10Mbit bit rate. Awesome ?

is there any way for me to upload the disc iso file (about 5Gb) for you guys to have a look?

i'm now trying to use DVD shrink to see if it helps.

[guns1inger]

Being generous and allowing 5.5gb (based on your ISO size), you have a bitrate or around 2k, which is still very low for full frame D1. I suspect that the headers have been patched with erroneous or misleading data for some reason. Most likely to allow authoring from SVCD source without re-encoding.

[jman98]

hi genki500, yes, u're right. it's about 45 minutes each episode, about 5.5 hours in one DVD. It's actually those HK drama serials.

I've checked the discs using gspot as mentioned, but i found that they're using 29.97fps, 704x576 frame size and more than 10Mbit bit rate. Awesome ?

is there any way for me to upload the disc iso file (about 5Gb) for you guys to have a look?

i'm now trying to use DVD shrink to see if it helps.

Awesome? The word I would use is "impossible". The problem with GSpot is that it is reporting what the stream header says the bit rate is. The actual bit rate is much much less. You can fit 50 minutes of 10000 Kbps video on a single layer DVD disc. That's it. Stream headers can be changed. Use the Teco Bit Rate Viewer (http://www.tecoltd.com) to look at your VOB files and see what it reports as your peak and average bit rates. The Teco product will report both the real bit rates of the video stream and the value the stream header reports, which may be wrong. In your case, I promise you that it is. Again, your idea of "great" video may not be ours. I knew a guy who used to record VCD and he used to talk about how great his encodes were and how they were "almost DVD quality". I saw some of his encodes and they were no better than any other VCDs and in fact had lots of macroblocks during motion scenes, but he thought they were great. 5.5 hours of video on a single layer DVD will have an average bit rate of about 1600 Kbps. If these were encoded with CCE, Procoder, or something like that, yeah, maybe it did turn out pretty good.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use Nero Showtime,PowerDVD,etc to see what the properties are.

[hobbes31]

ok lemme check it out tonight.

as for the quality, it may not be good in terms of specifications, but when the discs was played using DVD player on a normal television, the quality is much better than VCD.


currently, putting in 7 episodes in a single layer discs is no problem.
i'll still try out different tools / encoding to squeeze in 8 episodes.

[guns1inger]

You would be better off just getting a Divx certified player. I put the whole of Season 6 of Sopranos on a single disc. That is 12 x 50 minute episodes, and the quality is far better than 8 episodes compressed into DVD format.

[hobbes31]

actually my intention is not to save money or space or whatever.

i was actually quite happy with 7 episodes in 1 discs until i saw those 8 episodes discs...

it's juz for the fun and challenge of finding out how they did it.

[ultramarine]

1) If source is rmvb. Then use SUPERv19 to convert to standard vob file. Set Resoution to 704x480, aspect 4:3, video bitrate 4000. Set sound to mp2 bitrate 256 (or use ac3). I find that if you convert to 352x480/240 the picture shakes/stutters at some point - using mencoder directly also give this problem.

2) If source is vob or avi. Then use Tmpgenc 3 xpress. Set resolution to 352x480 with mpeg2 vbr 1500, sound bitrate = 128, motion search = highest with correction. Most important, set output to PROGRESSIVE scan. Then hit encode and wait for 8 hours. This should fit 320 minutes (8 episodes) into 1 4.7gb dvd.

Given that its chinese dramas, sound is less important. Its just talking heads i assume. Its not like star wars.

If you reduce video bitrate to 1200, you should be able to fit 10 episodes to 1 dvd. Quality is like vcd. But if the originals are vcd type quality then i don't think it matters.

Have fun.

[v-sharp]

I bought a similar dvd with 9 movies in one disc (Best Korean Movie Collection Volume3 9-in-1) for $3 from a sidewalk vendor three months ago.

I checked the disc with DVDShrink (reauthor) and got this info;

=====================
Name Duration Size

Menus
Title Menus 11:00.00 0.04 MB
VTS 1 00:02.22 75 MB

Main Movie
Title 1 01:42.50 450 MB
Title 2 01:46.29 453 MB
Title 3 01:39.03 439 MB
Title 4 01:28.29 389 MB
Title 5 01:50.25 473 MB
Title 6 01:41.08 438 MB
Title 7 01:28.18 394 MB
Title 8 02:01.39 511 MB
Title 9 01:24.43 368 MB
=====================

The collection is a mix of Korean and Chinese movies;

Title 1 A Chinese Tall Story
Title 2 Shinobi
Title 3 Fearless
Title 4 Skyline Cruisers
Title 5 Mr. Socrates
Title 6 The Promise
Title 7 My Kungfu Sweetheart
Title 8 The Unforgiven
Title 9 Geochilmaru

Quality of each movie is similar to a vhs movie.