adding several movies to one disc?

[grind_king]

ok, i'm sort of new to the whole DVD authoring bit. i can deal with re-authoring full DVD backups, but now i want to create a DVD with several hours of movies/episodes. i'll summarize the questions so it looks nice and easy to follow.

1. i have several movies that are currently in avi (Divx) format, which Tmpgenc DVD author does not support. i'm guessing that i have to encode the avi files to mpeg2 so that they can be used with Tmpgenc. what kind of settings do i need during the first encoding process to ensure that i can have several hours of movies on one disc??

2. once i have all my avi files encoded, what kind of settings do i now need to use in Tmpgenc to be able to fit everything to one disc? i was reading about how PCM audio takes up a whole lot of audio space which isn't all that efficient for trying to fit lots of video to one disc.

is there maybe a guide for doing this kind of stuff? like for authoring DVDs to fit lots of video to one disc?? i've had a quick look around but struck out..

thanks a lot

[tonofsteel]

Ummmmm you use Tmpgenc to convert from .avi to mpeg2. Read some guides. You convert your files, then use Tmpgenc DVD Author to put all of those files onto one disc. Use a bitrate calc, (easily found if you read some guides) to calculate the bitrate for say x hours of video. Where x hours is the total for all the episodes. Dont be cheap and try to fit too much to a DVD or your quality is gonna suck and you might as well use VHS........

[Jae187]

if i were u i would encode them to svcd so more can fit. if its a bunch of episodes then mp2 should be fine. good luck

[grind_king]

ok but when if i were to encode to SVCD, do i just set the bitrate so that the several corrsponding mpeg files will fit on a DVDR?

[andyp1]

If you convert with TMPGenc to standard VCD Mpeg1 , you can fit around 7.5 hours on 1 DVD-R (as long as you are hapy with VCD quality).
Then you open your Mpegs in TMPGenc DVD Author and create your menu.
Mpeg 1 video is DVD Compliant but the audio sampling rate of VCD is 44.1K for DVD it needs to be 48k , don't worry as TDA converts the audio to 48k automatically.
Then burn to a DVD-R.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeesy.

You could in theory get 20 hours or more if you created an non standard Mpeg1 but the quality would be pretty poor.

[tigerman8u]

Encode your avi's according to what their present resolution is. If they're 352x240 you won't get a better quality by encoding at a higher resolution. If they're higher you could go with 352x480 (1/2 D1). I use Mainconcept (Tmpgenc Plus works great too but slower) to convert my avi's. You can batch-load all of your avi's to convert at one time. In Tmpgenc Dvd Author click "create new project" and add your first avi. Click "add new track" and add your 2nd avi, continue untill your desired video files are added. Create your output. I test with Windvd before burning.

[grind_king]

thanks for the help guys i'll give it a try.