Burning TV Episodes On DVD

[Idlewild]

Hi guys
I never had a dvd writer before (sad i kn) and now that I have a macbook, I wanted to know how to use it to burn dvds.

I have some avi files which my mum wants to see on her dvd player and I wanted to know how many episodes can I squeeze in on a single 4GB Disc? Of course I want them to be in DVD format (if thats the correct term) but dont want to spend a lot of money on blank discs.

Also the normal process would be dropping the mpeg4 or avi files to Toast and then it doing the rest right? Is thr anyways I can control the quality so I can get more episodes on a single disc?

[terryj]

In Good Quality, you can squeeze:
four 1/2 shows onto one disc (2hrs)
two 1 hour shows ( 2 hrs)

In average ( VHS quality) you can squeeze:
six 1/2 hour episodes onto one disc ( 3 hours)
three 1 hour long episodes onto one disc ( 3 hrs)

this is a defualt norm with Toast.
You can push it by adding more epsiodes/and
adjusting the Quality slider, but your results will
depend on how great the source material was, how long
each episode is, and how many you are trying to squeeze in.
but yeah, you basically got it.

Ive recently done six epsidoes of 22min long Anime that
was in avi format to a DVD in Toast, leaving the Quality slider
at Best. They all fit and aside from areas of deep black,
the quality was very good.
( Deep black usually gets compressed the most
and tends to look awful when cramming episodes onto a disc.)

Live Action scenes, episodes of High Drama, heck Jerry Springer even,

I wouldn't put more than 3 epsidoes on a disc if I wanted to keep them for
posterity, no more than four if I wanted to just watch once and then throw
away.

[tomlee59]

It depends a lot on what quality you find acceptable. The lower your standards, the more you can squeeze on a single disc. I have low standards.

You can routinely put over 6 hours of TV-quality video on a single DVD. These will not be DVD-resolution, 5.1 surround-sound movies. Instead, they'll be VCD-quality episodes (commonly referred to as roughly VHS quality; opinions differ, but I'll leave the debate to others) with ordinary stereo. Specs for VCD-on-DVD are 352x240 frames @1150kb/s (for NTSC; slightly different numbers for PAL), and audio at 48kHz sampling rate, 224kb/s bitrate.

My record is over 12 hours of cheesy Chinese soaps on a single one-layer DVD, by reducing the video and audio bitrates by about 2x. My wife found them perfectly watchable on a long flight.

[terryj]

But that was roughly at iPod size?
You didn't certainly watch these on a 12inch Laptop?
If you were going to watch them on a laptop at full screen...
Why not just leave them as .avis or .movs?
You could have kept the qaulity up without all the hassle...
not to mention the eyestrain....


12 hours even at 320 x 240 had to be R O U G H to watch...
@ Idlewild...just take into efffect what your TARGET medium
is going to be... if your mom is watching these on a 32inch tv,
try not to get her mad at you because you were being cheap on
buying discs...
and tried to squeeze the sun, moon and stars onto the disc.

[Idlewild]

Lol thnks guys yeah my mum will watch on a 32inch tv and dont wanna give her a crappy copy! As it is she thinks im a bit miserly
Since the epis are of Lost, i better squeeze in around 3, to 4 episodes.

I'll post back if I have some problems using Toast since Im new to all this buring stuff!

Thnks for all ur awesome replies
tanya

[tomlee59]

Well, as I said, I have low standards.

Seriously, though, there are still lots of folks worldwide (well, ok, mainly in Asia) who watch VCDs quite happily, and on regular people-sized TVs (NOT just iPods). It sounds as if you don't have direct experience with this format, and are just guessing that it has to be unbelievably crappy. I have watched VCD versions of Galaxy Quest, Star Wars, The Terminator...on a 15" laptop on the road, and on my 42" plasma TV at home. Not great, but also not unwatchably bad. And I get a kick out of being able to watch these movies on old laptops that only have CDROM drives.

A well-authored VCD looks better to me than VHS ever did (the SNR is better, for one thing). And although no one would mistake VHS for HD, millions have enjoyed it for years with general satisfaction. And so it is with VCDs.

[Idlewild]

Yeah I dont mind VCD Quality, they are not bad at all! Its quite popular here in India so its not like she will start nitpicking (Im hoping she doesnt). Its just that I can squeez in more data on a dvd disc than a vcd one!

Hey btw can I burn vcd format on a 4GB DVD Disc? I mean can I select the vcd option or svcd on Toast and then burn them happily on a dvd as a dvd video disc? This way both me and mum wud be happy as my standards are not pretty much high too

My goal is to let play them on her dvd recorder which is old and doesnt support divx
thanks
tanya

[tomlee59]

Hi Tanya.

I figured that you would know about VCDs, which is why I stuck with the thread despite terryj's comments. It's at least worth an experiment. If you or your mother don't like the result, you can always try something more sophisticated, so it's not as if it's an irrevocable decision.

There are several possible methods for creating VCDs-on-DVD:

1) The easiest way depends on your mother's standalone dvd player supporting what's called MPEG1/2 ISO files. If it does, then all you have to do is treat the DVD blank as an ordinary data disc. Using a tool like ffmpegX, say, encode your videos, if they're not already, as VCD-format MPEG1 files (you can even use VCD-standard audio of 44.1kHz, 224kb/s; no need to author; just convert into mpeg and stop), then Toast all of them onto your DVD as you would any plain old data files (not as DVD or VCD video). The drawback of this method is that not all DVD players support ISO. The appeal of this method is that it's simple. You can quickly and easily put 5 VCDs onto a single DVD this way (even more, though at the risk of even poorer compatibility with players, and at the cost of degraded quality).

2) If her DVD player doesn't support ISO discs (or you don't know), then the safest thing is to author a true multichapter DVD. That said, my experience has been that DVD players in Asia tend to support almost every format on the planet, unlike those commonly available in the US (and curiously, the less expensive players tend to be the more capable). If you go this route, the audio must be sampled at 48kHz, not 44.1kHz, otherwise you'll likely run into compatibility problems. Once you have all of your MPEG1 files ready, use whatever DVD authoring tool you have to put them all together as if you were making any other kind of ordinary multichapter DVD. I don't know what software you have available (probably the iLife suite), but if you need further directions, post back with what you have, and someone will give you more details.

[terryj]

Well, as I said, I have low standards.

Seriously, though, there are still lots of folks worldwide (well, ok, mainly in Asia) who watch VCDs quite happily, and on regular people-sized TVs (NOT just iPods). It sounds as if you don't have direct experience with this format, and are just guessing that it has to be unbelievably crappy. I have watched VCD versions of Galaxy Quest, Star Wars, The Terminator...on a 15" laptop on the road, and on my 42" plasma TV at home. Not great, but also not unwatchably bad. And I get a kick out of being able to watch these movies on old laptops that only have CDROM drives.

A well-authored VCD looks better to me than VHS ever did (the SNR is better, for one thing). And although no one would mistake VHS for HD, millions have enjoyed it for years with general satisfaction. And so it is with VCDs.

I'll take into the fact that your new here...otherwise you would know my early days
here as a VCD supporter, and how I use to expunge on the differences between
building VCDs with Toast Titanium 5 and using VCD Builder as the app of choice,
how Sizzle was going to be the next big thing,
and regulating Toast just for burning, as VCD 2.0 could not be accomplished
with it at the time.

Rule of thumb:
IF you run into an old guy with more than
2000 postings here, chance are they KNOW VCD/SVCD, and KVCD,
as when I started here, that was all this site was about.
When one of the ways to get here was to type in the URL:
www.vcdhelp.com


But that's history and is neither here nor there.

In the advent of higher standards now today, in the age of HD, highdef this and that
and how most tv viewing ( except for the Youtube crowd, whose quality
standards hark back to those who watched VCDs) is all judged on whether or
not it will look great on sets produced tomorrow, five years from now, and ten
years from now, VCD, while offering a cheaper solution at a significant
trade-off in quality, just won't hold up in the eyes of the majority of viewers.

So:
If you want to produce these episodes cheaply to disc, and understand
the trade-off in quality, go for it. Just realize that in doing so, your
limitations:
*You can't upscale VCD quality MPEG-1 to SD/HD standards
* Any player that they make that will do upscaling, on a VCD crammed
with 10 to 12 episodes will still look like @$$.
@$$ is @$$, once it has been compressed into @$$, there's no spit shining
a turd to make it look beter.
* Going forward in 10 years, VCD will not look great on a TV of THAT (2017) period.
on a current analog 25inch, it is passable, I'll even go so far as to give tom
a "noob nod" and agree that it's watchable. *shrugs*
And yes, another "noob nod", and say its great for older players,
and since I have never been out of the country, it may be the standard
in other areas ( third "noob nod").

Personally, I have over 200 VCDs in a wallet on my shelf of various things.
Do I kid myself and say there great compared to what's available now?
nope. Do I find myself authoring anything in VCD standard instead of DVD,
even as I have the ability to do both? nope.

Why?

Because I realized that at some point, I want stuff to I make now going forward
to look good in 10, 20 years, without re-authoring, re-capturing, etc.
The best effort I can put out now, going forward still looking good on the tvs of tomorrow.

If that's all you got, or that's what your current player will play, go for it.
but what about in five years, or 10 years when you got the money, got a new
set, and aren't so cheap? will VCD still look good to you then?
Or would you wish you could rewind the clock and have done them as DVD?

[tomlee59]

Terryj,

You seem to have taken offense. None intended. It's just that comments like

"But that was roughly at iPod size?
You didn't certainly watch these on a 12inch Laptop?

are suggestive of someone who hadn't watched VCDs on a TV. So, a natural inference is that you were unfamiliar with the format, despite your vast number of posts. Quantity of posts is not always well correlated with knowledge, I'm afraid, so I give little weight to those kinds of stats. I just address the comments at hand.

I was quite consistent throughout: VCDs are not HD, not DVD quality. I simply offered Tanya what she was asking for, and that was information about ways to achieve her goal of adjusting quality to put more TV episodes on a DVD. You gave her excellent options. Noting that she was from India and likely familiar with VCDs, I gave her additional ones (especially given the wording of her original post), and left the choice to her. I don't quite see what's wrong with that, but you seem upset that I offered her options of lower quality than your personal aesthetics deem acceptable. Note that I suggested that she simply try an experiment and judge for herself whether she wanted to proceed with that route, or a higher-quality one. Again, I see no reason why you should get so emotional about her being offered data, free choice, and an experimental protocol. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[Idlewild]

Hi guys!
Thnks for the tonnes of info and the somewhat passionate answers! I have taken everyone's point into consideration and will post back and let you know how it went! Was a little pressed for time but will soon burn my first dvd (Drumrolls pls)!

BTW I think I 'll try 3 episodes onto one disc as I got 10 blank dvds for 3 dollars which is cheap even in India! So if I try to cut corners now, my mum's just gonna disown me

[terryj]

Terryj,

You seem to have taken offense. None intended. It's just that comments like

"But that was roughly at iPod size?
You didn't certainly watch these on a 12inch Laptop?

are suggestive of someone who hadn't watched VCDs on a TV. So, a natural inference is that you were unfamiliar with the format, despite your vast number of posts.

My questions were certainly geared towards your viewing experience of
watching 12 chinese soaps, which I assume are an hour long each,
compressed onto/ or encoded at VCD quality. I then further asked if these
were viewed ( on an airplane) on a 12inch ( or greater) laptop,
as from my own knowledge and history of VCD making, these certainly
couldn't be watchable at that given size ( 800 x 600, give or take).

my second question directed to you was, if your intent was to watch
12 episodes in say, a single setting on a laptop, why not just
burn the avis to data disc, and then watch them in a higher
quality, without all the trouble of recompression?

I took no offense to what your personal encoding choice/choice of medium
was, my only offense came after this :

It sounds as if you don't have direct experience with this format, and are just guessing that it has to be unbelievably crappy.

I would never make an assumption in a public forum, were every post is a matter
of record and easily searchable, as to what someone knows or doesn't .
Perhaps you don't put much "weight on it", but you could have the common courtesy
to STFF before offending someone by making a general assumption.

If I offended you by calling you a "noob" hey I apologize, but I did do a cursory
search of your "history" before I did post my response.
*shrugs*

I don't quite see what's wrong with that, but you seem upset that I offered her options of lower quality than your personal aesthetics deem acceptable.

again, no were did I get upset over your comments,
to her, making a VCD.
STFF if you want to see me "get upset".

My position, is the same as it will always be:
Think forward, not just live in the moment.

I have been a long champion of VCDs,
it was the original reason I came here...

I'm now a champion of :
1. getting things done in a timely manner
2. getting things done in a manner which prevents future headache
( such as transcoding/upscaling re-using that piece/epsiode of video
to a watchable/playable format 5-10-20 yrs from now)
3. getting things done that are efficent for you.

Again, as I stated if VCDS are what she's capable of handling,
(going along wiht my #1 and #3)
she should go for it.

As for you, my only questions was to :
1. the 12 episodes on one VCD watched at 800 x 600 and how great that
quality would be at that size?
2. And why if you wanted them to be 12 to a disc, and were watching
them at 800 x 600, as your target viewing size, why not just
burn them onto data disc and play them as avis, saving yourself
on the quality hit and avoid compressing to mpg-1 altogether?

Perhaps my comments were a little too short for you,
this is why I have gone back and "expanded" them.

But upset me?
no harm no foul.


-----edited 1 time by terryj---------

[terryj]

Hi guys!
Thnks for the tonnes of info and the somewhat passionate answers! I have taken everyone's point into consideration and will post back and let you know how it went! Was a little pressed for time but will soon burn my first dvd (Drumrolls pls)!

BTW I think I 'll try 3 episodes onto one disc as I got 10 blank dvds for 3 dollars which is cheap even in India! So if I try to cut corners now, my mum's just gonna disown me

glad to have helped!
post back if you need help further!

[tomlee59]

As I mentioned, I can only react to what I see before me. The quote I offered, plus your error of 320x240 (which is not a VCD standard resolution), coupled with spelling/grammar errors ("your" is a possessive pronoun; "you're" is the correct contraction for "you are"), all tend to convey a certain inexpertise. So it was natural to infer that the post was coming from an inexperienced source.

From the repeated pains you've taken to establish your bona fides as an expert, you've clearly taken offense at this inference. Again, none intended.

[terryj]

sorry to the OP but I'm asking a Mod to lock this thread,
as we are WAAAY off track at this point and someone can't let go....



if you gotta bring up grammar on a PUBLIC forum......