mpeg2 file size, and no audio!

[tecstar]

I have just used VS8 to render an mpeg2 file to burn to dvd.
I have 2 questions:
The footage is 38 minutes long, and the mpeg2 file is 2.5 GB.
Is this normal? That means on a single DVD i will get about 75 minutes of film. Surely this cant be right?

secondly, when i play the file in VS8 or PowerDVD 5 i get audio, but if i play it in Windows Media player or Nero Media player i get no audio. Does anyone know why this is?
TIA.

[Baldrick]

www.videohelp.com/dvd

Can't you change the video bitrate in vs8? Check the manual.

[tecstar]

you can set up custom settings.
This file was encoded with a PAL DVD template:

24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 8000 kbps)
LPCM Audio, 48 KHz, Stereo

[sacajaweeda]

Use AC3 or MP2 audio instead of PCM (uncompressed) and use an encoder that gives you more control over the video bitrate (min, avg, max settings)

[tecstar]

thanks.
i tried different settings with a lower bit rate which gave me a 1.6GB file, but as its home video it started to adversly affect the picture quality:
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Frame-based
(MPEG-2), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 6000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 44.1 KHz, Joint stereo

I will try using a higher video bitrate and mpeg2 compressed audio.
Hopefully that will give me the balance i need between file size and quality.
I'll post back with my results for anyone else interested in using VS8.

[sacajaweeda]

You'll wanna jack that sample rate up to 48k on the audio if you're going to put it on DVD. 44.1k won't cut it.