TMPGEnc DVD settings

[Bully9]

Hi

At the moment, to convert a load of TV episodes in avi to standard dvd (pal) format i am using the following method:

Open in virtualdub, frame serve to TMPGEnc and choose the PAL DVD template to produce MPEG2 files suitable for use in DVD Author.

But the MPEG2 files are pretty huge, so i have to run the authored dvd through dvdshrink to get, say 3hrs of video onto a 4.7gb disk. (Does this seem a reasonable target for a video with some "action" scenes?)

This system works fine, but i wondered if i might get better and quicker results if i could produce smaller mpeg2 files using the TMPGEnc settings (which would have to produce "standard" mpeg2s suitable for DVD author to produce a standard DVD). What settings would i need to change and how could i tell what size file it would produce?

Also, is it worth using the 2-pass (VBR) method? I presume this is the same principle as the Xvid 2-pass method, but wondered if it was so critical when producing MPEG2s

From my question, it's probably obvious that i'm not too knowledgeable about the technicalities of compression and any (reasonably simple) explanations would be received with interest.

Thanks.

[Baldrick]

If you change to CBR(Constant Bitrate) you can set the video bitrate and you will get the file size you want. You can use a bitrate calculator to calculate the bitrate and file size, www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/bitrate-calculators

If you use lower bitrates(below 3-4MBit/s) it might be worth to use 2-pass encoding. You set the average VBR bitrate to the calculated above.

[Bully9]

Pretty simple. Many thanks for the quick reply Baldrick.

[Bully9]

Baldrick - i've followed what you said. I enter the figure from video calc into the average box, and zero into max and min. But the file produced is quite a bit smaller than anticipated (>10%) and the bitrate (kbps -according to GSpot) is similarly lower than requested. I've checked the audio bitrate is the same as that entered in videocalc. Any ideas? Thanks.