6 hours on a DVD?

[gwoiler]

I have tried making a DVD at 352x240 at about 1150 with mpeg audio and the quality is OK for what the content is but on my Sanyo DVD player, the video will momentarily speed up and then the picture is about 4 seconds ahead of the audio. If I fast forward and then hit play, it is synced correctly and then the video will speed up but the audio stays the same. Its as if the buffer is loading up with the video or something. I have tried different encoding methods with TMPG and it does the same thing. I tried making a VCD and it played fine from a CD. Should I encode all my video to mpg1 and make the VCD on a DVD? Not sure if my software will let me do this or not. I just want to put 6 hours of lectures on a DVD. Someone in this forum had some presets for TMPGenc Plus that I tried but I get the video/audio sync problem. Is 6 hours of mpg2 on a DVD doable?

Thanks in advance...

Glenn Woiler

[FulciLives]

TMPEnc Plus has a DVD template for both NTSC and PAL called LOW RESOLUTION and this template will make a compliant DVD using a resolution of 352x240 via MPEG-2 with your choice of LPCM WAV audio or MP2 audio.

If you use 256kbps MP2 audio and a video bitrate of about 1400kbps then you can get 6 hours on a single DVD.

Not sure how great the image will be at 1400kbps but you might want to try encoding a sample and see how it looks.

If you cut it down to 4 hours per DVD then you can up your video bitrate to about 2200kbps which should be high enough at that resolution for a decent image.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

*** EDIT ***
I just did a test using the DVD NTSC LOW RESOLUTION template in TMPGEnc Plus with a video bitrate of 1400kbps and I have to admit that playing it back on a 13" TV ... it didn't look half bad at all.

Of course the source was a very high quality DVD like quality Xvid file SO in short the better the quality of the video you are converting the lower the bitrate you can use AND still get acceptable quality. Low quality video often needs a higher bitrate to look "good".

Anyways what I got using that template and bitrate was definately better in quality than MPEG-1 VCD quality.

[tonsofpcs]

The average consumer 19-21" TV set only has about 300 - 400 lines, so it makes sense that it didn't look bad on the 13"

[gwoiler]

I will try the low rez template and see what happens. So, I am guessing your audio sstayed with the video? That was the trouble I was having. Yeah, at about 1200 kbps, the video looked good on a 13" TV. It is only talking heads, so it was very acceptable.

Glenn Woiler

[FulciLives]

The average consumer 19-21" TV set only has about 300 - 400 lines, so it makes sense that it didn't look bad on the 13"

Well I only have a 13" TV near the computer ...

The one thing I hate about using half height resolutions (240 instead of 480 for NTSC as in this example) is that you are basically throwing out an entire field of your frame and this results in a very "jaggy" look to the picture.

Passable on a 13" or 14" but get much bigger than that (even a 20") and it becomes VERY noticeable.

But since the material is not that important in terms of image quality then yeah I think 352x240 is passble quality resolution wise and I must say that even at 1400kbps the video looked good in terms of no real noticeable compression artifacts that I could tell on my short sample clip.

But then again I was working from a very clean source so ...

Anyways I wish gwoiler luck with this project.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[FulciLives]

I will try the low rez template and see what happens. So, I am guessing your audio sstayed with the video? That was the trouble I was having. Yeah, at about 1200 kbps, the video looked good on a 13" TV. It is only talking heads, so it was very acceptable.

Glenn Woiler

If the capture was in sync to begin with then it should stay in sync when you convert it to MPEG-2 for DVD.

As for the stutter ... could be your DVD player doesn't like MPEG-1 on DVD which is something that is supposedly part of the DVD spec BUT I have heard of some DVD players that do not like MPEG-1 on DVD hence my suggestion to use the template I mentioned which uses VCD resolution but does it with MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1

Also by using the template you are using the WIZARD mode of TMPGEnc so there is less chance of doing something wrong i.e., out of DVD spec.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dphirschler]

Make sure your audio is 48kHz, otherwise, you will get problems like that.


Darryl

[gwoiler]

I tried this DVD on a friend's player and it played just fine. So... this new Sanyo player has a glitch. I wonder how many players out there will play a half rez mpg2 DVD correctly? I hate testing my DVD's on everyone's players I know! Thanks for the help. You know, the vcd version of it I made with mpg1 looked pretty good also. I just can't figure out how to force an authoring program to make one on a DVD, or over 700mb.

Glenn Woiler

[FulciLives]

I tried this DVD on a friend's player and it played just fine. So... this new Sanyo player has a glitch. I wonder how many players out there will play a half rez mpg2 DVD correctly? I hate testing my DVD's on everyone's players I know! Thanks for the help. You know, the vcd version of it I made with mpg1 looked pretty good also. I just can't figure out how to force an authoring program to make one on a DVD, or over 700mb.

Glenn Woiler

I was trying to point out that the problem your Sanyo DVD player may have is not so much with 352x240 resolution but with MPEG-1 on a DVD disc. Like I said I've heard of this before.

If you use TMPGEnc and employ the NTSC DVD LOW RESOLUTION template then you get 352x240 but with MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1 and most importantly you will end up with a compliant DVD video since you are using a pre-built DVD template.

I'd say do that with LPCM WAV audio (which you can convert later to AC-3) and see how your Sanyo DVD player handles it.

Like I said a CBR of 1400kbps with 256kbps 2.0 AC-3 will give you 6 hours on a DVD (and with enough room for overhead from your DVD Authoring software).

So give it a try

- John "FulciLives" Coleman