DVD+RW

[Gillette]

Is it true that you can only get one hour and 33 minutes of DVD video on a DVD+RW disk. Wow, that's not much when considering the cost of such a unit and the disks.

Please tell me. Thanks.

[Kdiddy]

How much of movie can fit in any space all depends on BITRATE, I can fit 1hour 33min (93mins) worth of movie on 1 CD-R/RW if my bitrate was ~1000 kbps & audio at 128 bps. A DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW can only hold 4.3 GB data when authored as a DVD. If wanted to fill up the whole DVD with JUST the movie and that movie was 93 mins...then your bitrate can have an average of no higher than about 6.1 mbps...which is above average bitrate for typical DVD, most DVD movies average about 5 mbps, so given that bitrate, you could fill up the whole DVD+RW with a 114 min movie...so you see it all depends on what bitrate you choose...well I know you next quesion maybe how do the fit longer movies & extra on one side of a DVD, thats becuase they use dual layered DVD media which holds about 8.6 GB of DVD authored material, whereas single layer recordable DVD media and burners is the only thing that is commerically available at the moment.

[cdr12468x]

Quoting from Page 3. of the HP DVD100i DVD+RW drive user manual:
"Q: How much video can I fit on a disc?
A: The amount of video a DVD+RW disc can hold depends on the quality at which you record.
best quality - 60 minutes
better quality - 120 minutes
good quality - 180 minutes."
You should read "quality" here as "bitrate" (higher quality - higher bitrate, like Kdiddy said).
Sorry for not having the corresponding bitrates for best, better, and good quality.

[Gillette]

No, I'm only interested in recording my DV camcorder video movies to DVD, not copying commercial DVDs. I want DVD quality from my home-made movies AND want to write multiple movies on one disk with menus to select from my standalone DVD player (Hitachi 505).

Now, I understand bitrate as it relates to encoding and time/space on disk, maybe. But, I want DVD-quality video and did not know that DVD+RW would only hold/write 1.3 hours of video. VERY DISAPPOINTING or me. I was going to purchase the HP DVD100i, but will not... since this provides little more space/time on the disk than SVCDs that are MUCH cheaper to purchase. My Hitachi 505 DVD plays SVCDs fine/OK/no problem, whatsoever. DVD+RW is out for me unless it is improved in the future.

Response? Recommendations? Comments? Thanks.

[jaw2957]

If you encode with CCE you can fit 4 hours plus on a dvd and you won't have pixelation. 93 minutes on 1 dvd is a waste because at a certain point a higher bit rate doesn't do much, or its marginal benefit is low-none. 93 minutes is an average bit rate of almost 7000kbs, now unless you are making a kung fu movie with your dv cam, then that is a waste. Get the dvd drive, because with a bitrate of 3000kbs you can hold well over 3 hours and its far better than any other format. Check out a site I was just linked to, its called http://www.robshot.com. It shows how to get over 5 hours on a disk without losing quality.

[MegaBit]

Gillette- I think it's worth having the DVD100i for having the capability to go either way. I use it almost 100% for making movies from a DV camera. For some things I still use SVCD but most often DVD. And for DVD I can dial-in the bit rate using an LSX encoder and pick the quality. For my folks, for example, who have a 30" 4:3 TV set I go less quality and more content (multiple events/movies). For my use with HDTV I go max bit rate and 16:9 format and still get about 1:20 in length.

Besides, the price just dropped $100 on those puppies which I now see everywhere for $419 and the media can be found for sub-$10 per disc (re-writable!).

[Kdiddy]

"I want DVD quality from my home-made movies "

I think you highly disillusioned here...unless you are shooting your home movies with studio production equipment you will never have DVD quality video...what you CAN his preserver you camera video as best as possible, you only get out of the encoding process that which you put in. So thus at bets, you can only get the same quality picture as if you had the camera video out plug straight into the TV. not better.

"Now, I understand bitrate as it relates to encoding and time/space on disk, maybe. But, I want DVD-quality video and did not know that DVD+RW would only hold/write 1.3 hours of video. "

Well no you dont realy then, because I just told you that at average standard DVD movies average about max 5 mbps which would allow for ~114 min per DVD media disk. Again, seeing as how you home videos arent going to require even close to that bitrate, you will get significantly more. Im sure your home videos will look just fine between 2.5-3 mbps. You need to be more concern with your capturing device on your computer, what is the max resolution and bitrates it can accept w/o dropping frames??

[Gillette]

Thank you for the information. I am running a P4, 384mb RAM, firewire connection to DV camcorder, 2nd HDD for video, and running WinXP w/NTFS. I have never had a dropped frame and my video and audio are synched perfectly using TMPGEnc. I download from DV camcorder using firewire, edit using Studio 7, encode using TMPGEnc, and burn the MPEG2 to CD-R and CD-RW using NERO. I play the SVCDs on my Hitachi 505 DVD that has an optical digital connection to my Pioneer A/V receiver, then by S-video connection to my super-flat Hitachi 25" TV. My SVCDs look OK, but was wanting something better. I don't really care about the length as long as it is about 40 minutes of my 60 minute tape. Maybe, I have got with SVCDs very close to DVD quality and maybe, it will not be worth purchasing a DVD+RW... because there is little to be gained??? Or?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gillette on 2002-01-12 05:01:11 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gillette on 2002-01-12 05:06:05 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gillette on 2002-01-12 05:12:13 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gillette on 2002-01-12 05:14:59 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gillette on 2002-01-12 05:32:58 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gillette on 2002-01-12 05:33:41 ]</font>

[Kdiddy]

At what bitrate and resolution do you capture with??..your ideal situation for maintaining input quality from your camera would be to encode at the exact same resolution & bitrate that you capture at....so if you can capture at 720x480 at 5 mbps, then do so, and yes you will only be able to get ~114 min worth of audio/video...dropping the ENCODE only bitrate to 4 mbps, will still look very good, but et allow for more time on disk,etc.

[alkieman]

Commercial DVDs go as high as 9.8 mb/s and DO NOT max out at 5MB/s. Turn on the bitrate display of your DVD player and you'll see.


There are a few things you can do to fit more video on a blank disc.

As others have said you can drop the bitrate. If you have a lot of time (and Windows 2000 or XP with an NTFS formatted hard disc) create and edit your movie then output a DV AVI file to your hard disc. Use TMPGEnc to encode to a DVD compliant MPEG2 file. Even at lower bitrates of around 4.5 - 5 MB/s the output should be more than acceptable.

Normally encoding directly to MPEG in realtime at 5MB/s results in poorer quality than going the AVI -> MPEG route but this is dependant on either the MPEG encoder chip or the software and PC you use.

Another thing to try is lowering the resolution. The DVD spec allows for varying bitrates but also varying resolutions of MPEG video. I encode at 352x576 @ 4.5MB/s and can easily fit a 2 hour movie on one blank. I have also encoded at 352x288 at only 3MB/s and the results looked fine. Not a patch on higher bitrates but very good nonetheless.