Little over the limit

[Turk]

I've been having some good luck converting some AVI's
to MPEG, to burn as VCD's using Nero. But this one has
me bewildered. I've downloaded the movie as two files,
630MB and 675MB for CD1and CD2 respectively.

I've always used VirtualDUB to remove the audio from
the .avi to combat sync problems. In this particular case
the .wav file is 874MB.

Then I use TMPGEnc to encode to .mpg. In this case I've
done the same, but each time I come up with a .mpg file
that when converted to VCD is to large to fit on a CD.
I've tried the encoding twice, the last time with the Motion
SP set at Normal, but it's still to large. I'd hate to degrade
the quality any further.

What else can I do?

[bugster]

If you are encoding using the standard VCD templates, then what you can fit on a CD is determined by the length of the movie. VCD is contant bitrate and you can fit 74mins of movie on a 74min CD, 80 mins on a 80 min CD. If your movie is too big for one cd there are several possibilities you can try:-

1) split the movie across two (or more CD's)
2) lower the bitrate when encoding, but this is non-complaint and your DVD player MAY have problems, also quality will suffer.
3) Lower the audio bitrate only, again non compliant and audio quality will suffer.

Note, the size of the avi is little guide to the size of the resulting mpeg. Most downloaded avi's use one of the divx codecs. These are very lossy encoders and the size of the file depends on many factors, not least of which is the complexity of the scenes or amount of movement.

Hope this helps

[Turk]

.... VCD is contant bitrate and you can fit 74mins of movie on a 74min CD, 80 mins on a 80 min CD....

Hope this helps

Thanks Bugster for your reply

This is where my problem lies. Each of the two files
are 1 hour 24minutes each, which amounts to 84min.
This is the problem.

In that case, would it be possible to put the two files
together, and recut them into three parts? If this is
possible, what program would I use? And is there a
tutorial about that would help me accomplish this?

Thanks again for your comments

[bugster]

Ok, what I suggest is this, use virtualdub to stitch the two Avi's together into one big one. I cant remember the exact procedure for this right now coz I am at work, but I am sure one of the giudes on this site tells you how. Encode this large avi into a single large mpeg1 file. Do video only at this stage. Extract the audio from the large avi with vdub (as you would normally) and mux with the large mpeg. The use TmpGenc MPEG tools (or someother tool if you prefer) to then cut this into three suitably sized files that you can burn to CD.

Hope this helps.

[fantomlord]

another thing you could do(depending on compatibility of your DVD player) is to stitch the 2 avis into one file, and encode to MPEG, and do the audio separately, but at a lower bitrate, and you might be able to save enough space to squeeze the movie onto 2 CD's. or, you could also encode the 1 big avi file as a VBR xVCD if your player can handle that. considering your files are only 4 minutes too long to fit as standard VCD, you shouldn't lose much quality with this approach vs. standard VCD.
hope that helps.

[Turk]

....and encode to MPEG, and do the audio separately, but at a lower bitrate, and you might be able to save enough space to squeeze the movie onto 2 CD's....hope that helps.

Wouldn't this work if I encode the two files separately,
but the audio at a lower bitrate? Think I'll try this first,
and if it doesn't work, then stitch the two files together
and split it into three CD's.

Thanks guys fro your suggestions. I'll keep you both in
the loop.