How many films can you fit on a dvd in mpeg2 format?

[jamie191817]

hi ,
I have a Xvid Dvd player that will let me put like 5 films on a dvd , i wondered if you cud do the same only in mpeg2 format , like jus keep piling on 3-5 mpeg films and jus compress them with clone dvd or dvd shrink - can make a image , then compress the image again , and again , untill the image with all the films in will fit onto a dvd

Thanks in advance if anyone else has tried this

[mats.hogberg]

Well, of course you can - but why? A movie compressed to 1/5 its original size (hence bit rate) will look nothing but awful.

/Mats

[Treebeard]

if you tried to put 5 films on 1 dvd in mpeg2 format it would look like garbage.

[ZippyP.]

Using 352x480 resolution and VBR encoding I can get 1 hr. on a CD with decent quality, so you should get 5 hrs. on a DVD.

[Gazorgan]

You can do it, at VHS quality, but what's the point? Well, let me re-think that. I did do it for kids DVD, about 5 hours of films on a DVD in low res. they love it and I don't have to use up so many disks. It did take about 2 days of solid encoding to do it though........

[DJ_Izumi]

I still think that you could fit 2.5hrs worth of D1 Mpeg-2 video on a single DVD-5 disk. You would need to go VBR of course, and make sure the source was of high quality. Heck, 4hrs will get you high end SVCD quality (5-6hrs will get you mid point SVCD). If you're watching the content on an NTSC TV, you shouldn't really notice any artifacts. Of course, I wouldn't recommend this for any form of retail product, hell no. For any retail DVD work (If you can even call amature advertising DVDs for local buisnesses done on a 500mhs eMachine even retail) I do I'd NEVER -ever- go that low, 6mbit would be the bare minimum for any 'professional' aimed product. But I'd be perfectly happy with 2mbit VBR DVDs just for anime fansubs and the like. It'd still look much better then a VHS tape, and that says a lot if you look at what we used to watch before 1997. :P

[gmatov]

Doesn't Shrink compress once, to fit 4.3 max?

And he didn't say how long these xvids are. If they're 15 minutes each, what's the limit? 2 hours, 8 of 'em, 3 hours, 12 of 'em?

[SatStorm]

My record is 4 movies on a DVD-R using 352 x 576 and CQ mode (TMPGenc) and letterboxed 4:3 picture.
The movies was all captured from satellite channels, which I pay to watch them.

- Animal
- Blade 2
- Matrix Reload
- Harry Poter 2

All looked excellent, almost like the DVB transmission (which was 544 x 576)


Using CCE and multipass VBR, you can succeed even better quality, but in much more time. Don't bother with TMPGenc 2 Pass VBR anymore, the last 4 versions (after 2.56) are terrible on this.

[SquirrelDip]

I agree with ZippyP. - at 352x480 5 hours is a good limit. I usually back up 3 movies to a single disk - 5 hours is good, 5.5 is okay but pushing it and at 6 hours the quality is noticably down.

However, I've put close to 7 hours with kids shows - but these are watched on a 5" LCD (usually on road trips). A two-year-old doesn't really care all that much about quality...