Capacity of a CD-R

[vikasa]

I have Verbatim DataLifePlus - CD-R - 700 MB - 80min media.

Usually, if I use vcdimager to make a bin/cue image from, say 10 MPG1 files totalling upto 800MB, I can burn the bin/cue image just fine.

But yesterday I created a bin/cue image from 35 MPEG1 files totalling 760MB and the bin file created was almost 900MB! So cdrdao failed to write it to the disc.

What is the relation between size of the mpegs, number of mpegs and the final bin/cue image that vcdimager generates?

In other words, if I have a 10MB MPG1 file, will my bin/cue image also be close to 10MB?

What is the maximum size AND number of MPG1 files that I can successfully fit on the CD-R? Does this change depending on the bitrate I use to encode the mpg1 file? (yes, my hardware player supports XVCDs so I usually bump up/down the bitrate as appropriate)

Thanks

[Treebeard]

VCD/SVCD are burned in mode2 in which a cd can contain 800mb. when burning data it is mode1 and only holds 700mb.

[babyboo]

That is good to know, however, that didn't answer his question at all. I as well have been wondering if some sort of overhead is involved because I have noticed the exact same effect when adding multiple Mpegs.

[vitualis]

The problem of "bloating" is almost certainly because your MPEG files weren't multiplexed in the way that VCDImager wants them. This leads it to "autopad" the MPEG file (i.e., putting in null data to fit it into the right sectors) and can inflate the size of the file to quite a large degree.

The way to fix this is to make sure that your MPEG files are appropriately multiplexed before using VCDImager (or other programs that use VCDImager like VCDEasy).

You can do this with TMPGEnc.

Go to Files --> MPEG Tools --> Simple Multiplex.

Put in your original MPEG file. Change the setting to "MPEG-1 Video CD" (for VCD compliant MPEG-1 files) or "MPEG-1 Video CD (non-standard)" if you are making an XVCD.

Then, save it to a new file.

This should solve your problem.

Regards.

[vikasa]

The problem of "bloating"...

You can do this with TMPGEnc.

Go to Files --> MPEG Tools --> Simple Multiplex.

Put in your original MPEG file. Change the setting to "MPEG-1 Video CD" (for VCD compliant MPEG-1 files) or "MPEG-1 Video CD (non-standard)" if you are making an XVCD.

Um..I do all my vido encoding stuff on Linux. Do you know what the above steps in TMPGEnc actually do behind the scenes to "unbloat" the files so that I can see if there are equivalent Linux tools to do the same?

Thanks

[vikasa]

The problem of "bloating" is almost certainly because your MPEG files weren't multiplexed in the way that VCDImager wants them. This leads it to "autopad" the MPEG file

Hm. I use 'vcdxbuild' to build my bin/cue image from my XML file.

Shouldnt I get INFO messages from vcdxbuild if it were indeed autopadding the MPEG? I dont think I do...

Thanks

[RabidDog]

I would say that if you have the option in your softwares to create the bin/cue file using mode2/xa (2332?) byte per sector rather than the normal 2048 bytes per sector (mode1) . A 700mb cdr normal can hold 807mb in mode2. Obviously there is a degree of overhead in having many small files as opposed to 1 or 2 large files, however this would not be significant unless you are using some sort of motion menus
Yes the bitrate does affect how much you can fit on a cd.. simple really .. higher bitrate equals bigger filesize for the same length of movie...vcd is normally 1150 cbr, approx 83 minutes per cd.. increase the bitrate to 1463 and you will only get 60 mins per disc.

EOM excepted.

[vitualis]

You can correctly multiplex the MPEG file with bbMPEG as well -- and I believe that there is a Linux version.

With regards to your original post -- I can almost bet that it is indeed due to an autopadding problem. That, or the OS isn't correctly recognising filesizes or there is something else seriously wrong with the MPEG (which will reveal itself with remultiplexing or will be fixed by it).

I've made VCDs with many sequence items as well (i.e., many tracks). The additional overhead is quite small (minimal).

Regards.