storage space of DV files on DVD-R???

[3hitsaday]

okay, this is my first post. I found this forum and i think it's great. I've recently submerged myself into this huge project:

taking 20+hrs of DV video from my Canon Elura70 and over 4000 pictures from a 4-month x-country roadtrip and putting them together on a DVD.

i bought a TDK DVD writer and some blank DVD-rs. I'm using Pinnacle Studio 9 which came free w/ the Canon Camcorder and its working great. My only problem is DVD-rs say they can hold 4.7GB of data or 2hrs of video.

well roughly 3 minutes of video is coming out to about 750MB on my hard drive when i capture!! i have the space on my hard drive but does this mean i will only be able to fit rougly 10-20 minutes of video on a DVD ? The pictures and mp3s will take up space too, what about those?

I havent found a way to check how big the movie is SO FAR, using Pinnacle STudio 9 but hopefully there's a way.

Any thoughts?

-Mike
mooremr6779@yahoo.com

[DaveS]

Mike - sounds like a great project...first thing you'll want to do (among others) is try to scope out what you want the final project to be..is it all 20 hours just laid out on the DVD(s)..how many of the 4,000 pics do you want in the slide show, are you going to intermix the slides and the video or have a video and then separate slide shows. How much editing on your video will you do and how long do you think the final product will be. You can fit 2 hours video min on a DVD, and depending on how you do it, compression, resolution, etc. much more, but you may not want to go over 3-4 hours before the quality starts to drop ...(if quality isn't as important as putting all the video on a DVD, well there are options there too) --- what will this be viewed on? Regular TV, big screens, etc. Pictures don't take up that much space on a DVD but you'll want to know..so, one suggestion is begin with the end in mind..what do you want to end up with? Then, you'll find plenty of help on how to get there..!!

[jimmalenko]

well roughly 3 minutes of video is coming out to about 750MB on my hard drive when i capture!! i have the space on my hard drive but does this mean i will only be able to fit rougly 10-20 minutes of video on a DVD ? The pictures and mp3s will take up space too, what about those?

DV is normally about 13GB per hour because it is only minimally compressed, so your figures sound about right for the transfer from your camera. It's nothing to worry about and is totally normal. What happens is that Pinnacle studio 9 will apply MPEG-2 compression when rendering, which pulls the size down considerably.

As DaveS says, as a starting point we'll say that DVDs can fit 2 hours. If we digress, you can adjust many things to expand this. You can even use software such as DVDShrink or DVD2One to shrink your final output if required also. However, with increasing time comes decreasing quality. Only you can truly decide whether this decrease is noticable or not.

My advice to you is to continue on as you are for now. Once you have worked out exactly what you want to put on the final product, post back and we'll take it from there.

[3hitsaday]

thanks guys. damn you're quick and REALLY helpful w/ the replies.

Well i've actually sunken my teeth into the whole thing already. I've managed to edit about 40 minutes worth using DV, digital stills and mp3 files and it has worked out great. Pinnacle Studio is great w/ cropping and splitting video, my only tedious challenge is placing text overtop and then placing each transition (since i like a nice dissolve or at least something non-extravagant in there).

one thing i've noticed is that my video looks great on the small preview screen and when i click full screen view sometimes the camera movements look more jerky than they should be or rasterizing (is that the word?) occurs.

still no progress on figuring out how big my file project is. I feel like i should just try to burn a test run w/ what i have now to figure out this whole DVD-r burning process i know NOTHING about. but i don't want to waste a blank.....yet.

My plan in the end is to have this whole trip in volumes. So i dont need to cram alot onto one disc and sacrifice quality. I want to have it in DVD volumes, like 1 disc for the rockies, 1 for the pacific coast, 1 for Canada, etc.

So you think this is all possible?

Anyone have good experience w/ Pinnacle STudio 9?

thanks again,
- Mike

[jimmalenko]

I can't say I've used Pinnacle Studio 9. I do know that if version 7 is anything to go by, there is far better software out there. I guess though that if you got it for free and you like it and it does what you want it to do then you may as well stick with it. I daresay they must have improved it a lot since then too.

[DaveS]

Mike - a few suggestions:

- take advantage of the pinnacle board / forum..you may come up w/ quirks / questions that other S9 users have had

- save your project very frequently..s8 was very unstable for me and I think s9 may have similar - if you're on XP, it may handle the app better than earlier os

- get some re-writable dvds - don't waste write once discs early in the project..you can re-use the re-writables so if you encode & burn your project you will only take some time but not use more media

- try one pass through the end-to-end process early on -- if you get stuck, don't spin your wheels--post for help and then keep editing while you get issues resolved (if you can focus on both at once)..going once through the process will give you an idea of all the steps and may give you ideas on how to structure your project

- don't worry about what you saw on the pc display - your PC probably couldn't keep up w/ either creating the preview real time or displaying it...try a test burn on a rewritable and see how that looks

- mind the title safe and action safe areas -- turn on the preview for these while you are editing b/c you will lose some of your picture to overscan, or the margins of each side that aren't actually shown when you watch your video

good luck & have fun!