MyDVD inflating file sizes - help!

[ProfessorTomoe]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can keep MyDVD from inflating the file sizes of my MPEG2 files? Please bear with me - I've done all of the RTFM I can think to do and have searched the forums with no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

Here's the situation. I've been using TMPGEnc to convert some AVIs into MPEG2 format in order to burn them to DVD-R. I've been following the steps in the Convert section of this website to do the conversion, and the files seem to be coming out okay.

I'm using MyDVD 3.1 to author the discs. When I add an MPEG2 file to MyDVD, it always seems to take up a lot more DVD space than the actual original file size. A 450MB MPEG2 file will usually bring the "space used" indicator up to 700-800MB.

For a while, I thought that MyDVD was doing something strange with the audio, so I tried demuxing the audio to an .MPA file and adding the audio and video separately. This didn't solve the problem. I'm now starting to think that MyDVD might be converting the audio to something else (like PCM uncompressed) which would take up a bit more space, but I can't verify this. Regardless of what I do, though, MyDVD always seems to find something it needs to transcode, and the resulting apparent wasted space is driving me crazy.

Is there some way to control the combination of MyDVD, TMPGEnc, and the finished files to prevent a 450MB MPEG2 file from taking up so much space? What formats do I need to convert to in order to prevent MyDVD from doing any transcoding and resizing when it builds the disc? Is there some way to accurately predict how much disc space an MPEG2 file is going to use before it gets authored and written?

Thanks!

[Anonymous65]

It is most likley converting your 44.1Khz mpeg-1/layer2 audio to uncompressed PCI audio, which takes up a lot of space!
Either use another authoring program, and/or convert the audio to 48Khz audio (mpeg-1/layer2).

[Scooby111]

What MyDVD does is like adding two copies of the mpeg file. It uses one for video source, and uses the other for chapters/titles. If you download a copy of Ulead DVD Workshop on the Edit page there are two boxes to drop video files into, one for video and the other for titles. This will double the size. Same thing happens automatically with MyDVD, and I don't think you can stop it. At least in DVD Workshop you only need to use one. I tried for awhile to get MyDVD to work but no dice. Download lead DVD Workshop... It's a great program.... (Also make sure you get the patch)......


Good luck....

[Savant]

Actually skittllelsen is right. What MyDVD (and cheap versions of DVDit) do is output the audio as uncompressed PCM WAV files. So the audio is taking up a HUGE amount of space.

If you want to be sure of how much space is being used, put your MPEG through TMPGenc and use the DEMUX option (under MPEG tools) and split the file into audio and video. Once you can see how much space the video takes, grab the audio file and run it though a program like WinAmp and convert it to 48.1K PCM WAV file and see how big it gets. Add those two files together and you'll have your total size. *which I bet will be close to what you're getting)

If you want small sizes you need DVDit PE whoich costs about $500 and uses Dobly AC3 encoding for very small audio sizes. Otherwise, get used to the big audio files in DVDit.

Regards,

Savant