Burning VCD to DVD? Suggestions needed

[Zippo]

Okay, maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, so if someone has a better idea I'm all ears. But all this crap I've learned in the last few months has left me more confused than when I started.

Here's what I'm trying to do: Put a 3 hour football game sans commercials onto a single disc. The quality is not important, as this is an old game that was recorded onto VHS.

I've captured the footage, edited out the commercials with VirtualDub and framserved to TMPeg so I can have it in MPG format. I'd *strongly prefer* to have menus and chapters on the disc, but this is completely new to me and I still have much learning to do. I can't seem to find any info on breaking this file into chapters. A buddy told me I could & should burn a VCD-compliant DVD. I've looked at this guide: http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm but it has only confused me more.

Can someone point me in the right direction? I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious but please bear with me. Thanks in advance for any help.

[bugster]

You need to author it as a DVD-video, but using your VCD compliant mpeg1 instead of an mpeg2

Go here
http://www.vcdhelp.com/author.htm
and find
"How to author and burn MPEG2 to a compliant DVD with menus and chapters"

Hopefully one of these guides will discuss the authoring tools you have at your disposal. The only difference is that you will be using mpeg-1 video (VCD compliant) but with the audio resampled to 48Khz as described in http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm which you have alreday seen.

Hope this helps

[Zippo]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm experimenting with some of the authoring tools right now.

Regarding the http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm guide and resampling the audio. This is what the guide says:

Launch TMPGEnc and select File->Mpeg Tools->Simple Demultiplex and open the .dat video file from the VCD folder MPEGAV as Input and select where to save the output and hit Run. Now you got the video and audio in separates files.

I don't have any .dat files, just the mpg. ??? I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not grasping some fundamental information.

[Akai Rounin]

First Down and Ten...

OK, you want to put three hours of video on a single disc, right? This can be done with a VCD burned to a regular CD-R. Now, you have said that the quality is not too big a deal, as the original source was videotape. Even so, I would suggest that you consider using two CD-Rs anyway.

To be more precise, in order to fit three hours of video on a single CD-R with MPEG-1 video, you will have to create an XVCD, using non-standard bit rates. One quick question though... Which football game is this? Usually, a professional football game would take up less than 90 minutes of video without commercials... If you removed pauses for injury, timeouts, interviews and other features the result should be barely more than an hour in length (barring overtime, of course).

[NOTE: The guide you mentioned was for situations where you already have a completely authored VCD and want to author it to DVD-R for archiving and playback. Before that can be done you must convert the existing DAT movie file (found on the VCD) into separate MPEG video and audio streams. Then the audio has to be changed to 48000 cycles per second for compatibility with DVD standalone players. Afterward the resulting audio and video are recombined in a DVD authoring program. None of this should be necessary for your project, unless you intend to author to DVD.]

I suggest you check out newgen's The newbies guide to fitting a movie on one CD using TMPGEnc for your needs. You may also find favor with Sefy's excellent DVD ripping tutorials. You can use either TMPGEnc or VCDHelp Bitrate Calculator to determine the appropriate audio and video bitrates for your project.

I think something like these Settings for encoding your three hours of video to MPEG-1 in TMPGEnc might work:

Video
- 352x240 pixels
- ~500 kilobits per second Constant Bit Rate Video
- High quality (slow)

Advanced
- Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio 2)
[NOTE: Used if video is cropped using Clip Frame. Source Range, Clip Frame & other Filters as needed per project]

GOP Stream
- Output bitstream for edit (Closed GOP) checked

Quantize Matrix
- CG/Animation

Audio
- 112 kilobits per second
- Error Correction checked

System
- MPEG-1 Video-CD (non-standard)

This should yield an MPEG-1 file of 785-794 MB that you can burn to VCD using VCDEasy. I hope this helps!

Toyoniya Hiyaku, Noromuoy!

Akai Rounin, The Cyber Sage

[Zippo]

Thanks for all the info! I will read these guides and see what I can find out.

Using 2 CD-Rs is not going to be an option, due to circumstances beyond my control. I'm doing this for some other people and they insist on it being a single disc. If I have to use DVD, so be it--although since my burner is DVD+RW only this route will be much more expensive.

To answer your question, the football game is the 1998 NFC Championship game. With all commercials and halftime cut out, I'm left with 2h48m of footage. This was an overtime game.

So if turns out that I do need to author to DVD, I'd have to burn it first as a regular VCD, then strip the audio file and demultiplex it? This is where I get confused. If that is truly a necessary step, how would I burn it in the first place?

I'm going to check out the XVCD guide right now. Thanks again for your help.

[Akai Rounin]

VCD Primer...

Here's the deal... Say you have an AVI file named 1998NFCChampGame.AVI and you (use TMPGEnc to) convert it to (VCD compliant) MPEG-1 as a file named 1998NFCChampGame.MPG. Then you (use VCDEasy to) burn that MPG file as the single video on a Video CD (VCD). Guess what? The file is automatically renamed to AVSEQ01.DAT and is placed in an MPEGAV folder on the VCD. Now the file AVSEQ01.DAT still contains MPEG-1 video, it just has a different name and a slightly different file structure that has a VCD format header. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BURN TO VCD BEFORE AUTHORING MPEG-1 VIDEO TO DVD MEDIA.

It's just that if you know your final MPEG-1 output will be placed on DVD media, then you MUST ensure that its audio stream is encoded to 48000 Hz, rather than the VCD standard of 44100 Hz. Once more, the guide you mentioned in your original post is for a different purpose that what you need to do. First you should decide what type of disc you will author your video to... If you will be using CD-R, then the standard issue 44100 Hz audio of a VCD compliant MPEG-1 stream will be just fine. If you will be using DVD-R, then you must encode the MPEG-1 stream at 48000 Hz instead. This is part of the initial process of creating the MPEG-1 video from an AVI source using TMPGEnc. You can choose 32000, 441000 or 48000 from the drop down menu at Setting | Audio | Audio stream setting | Sampling frequency within TMPGEnc before encoding your video.

If your burner is DVD+RW capable, then you can burn to CD-R (as XVCD) as well as a single disc. Just use settings similar to what I have noted earlier to create an MPEG-1 video that would fit on a single CD-R. If that quality is not acceptable for your needs and you must use DVD+RW instead, then adjust the settings. Try 1600 kilobits per second for video, 224 kilobits per second for audio and make sure the sampling frequency is 48000 before creating MPEG-1 for use on DVD+RW. I hope this helps!

Unta Glebin Gloutin Globin,

Akai Rounin, The Cyber Sage