3 Hrs on a DVD-5, what bitrate??

[jsnkc]

This is a question for any experts out there, or someone who has actually done this successfully. We have a bunch of 3 hour S-VHS tapes that a client wants to put on DVD's, What bitrates should be used to get 3 hours of video on to a DVD-5 (DVD-R). We are usuing a Sonic Fusion system that is currently in for repair so I can't figure it out myself at the moment.
There will be no menus, and only one audio stream with no subtitles or closed captioning, just a basic pop and play DVD with chapter points.

[TheWolf]

Hi jsnkc.

First of all I think you already have all films as MPEG-Files somwhere on a harddisc.

Now you can do what you decide to do by using the following "trick", which "fakes" your files for any authoring-Prog that you must use for preparing films and menues for DVD's.
The trick is quite simple and called DVD Patcher!
Do the following:
1. Use DVD Patcher to change the rersolution of the entire film (MPEG2) to 720x576(PAL) or 720x480(NTSC)
2. Author your film(s), use menues and so on. The result is one empty AUDIO_TS-folder and one VIDEO_TS-Folder with all your film-files (.vob) and other info-files. THESE folders MUST be burned on DVD.
3. Again use DVD Patcher to re-patch the .vob-files of the film(s) back to the original resolution.
4. Burn them on DVD and watch them on TV without any re-encoding and without largen up the films.

If you create ONE single stream from all those VHS-films, you can do the same as described above but then you don't need to build up a menu.

I did this several times and it works great. My last project brought up 4 hours (3 separate films) incl. a menue on one DVD.

[SaSi]

This is a basic bitrate calculator excercise.

3 hours of audio at 128kbps = 3 x 3600 x 128kbps / 8bps) = 172.800KB

Since the DVD is approximatelly 4.456.000 Kb you have 4.283.000 for video.

Doing the reverse arithmetic the bitrate is:

BPS = 4.283.000 x 8 / 3600 / 3 = 3.172kbps approximatelly. You can use 3.100kbps just to be safe. If audio is to be encoded at a higher bitrate you need to recalculate.

Simpler and more general approach for flat video DVDs is:

Total DVD size = 4.456.000 kb -> 10.400 kbps for total bitrate (video + audio) to fit 1 hour. Divide this by the number of hours (e.g. 2.5 for 2 hours 30 minutes) and you find the total bitrate for the the program stream. Subtract from that the audio bitrate (e.g. 128, 224, 384, etc) and you are left with the video bitrate.

You may notice that I am using a DVD disk size that is slightly smaller than the real one. This is because the DVD filesystem itself has some overhead and the programs stream itself has some additional elements. I have found the above number (4.456.000kb) to be a good approximation of the working size.

It's easy once you've done this once or twice.

[Mike6453]

You can also use the bitrate calculator under the tools section of this site.

Mike

[G-man]

If your source is coming from VHS, then I recommend encoding to 352x480 with an average bitrate around 2700. This should get you over 3 hours.
I use TMPGEnc to encode and typcially get 215 minutes by using 2700 VBR and setting audio (MPEG not PCM) to 128K.

[andydd]

Or if ya wanna be lazy..Heres what I do..just author DVD with a high bit rate and run the resulting finsihed product through DVD2one or DVD95copy to bring it down to 4.4 gig !

[jsnkc]

Thanks guys, I did use the bitrate calculator, and I figured it would be around 3kbps , I just wanted to make sure by asking others who might have done this before. Now I can tell my client that it can be done, and make lots of money