New to burning help please

[drkpendragon]

I have talked to and seen people with burned DVDs that have much more info that I can put on mine, that looks much better. The files run around 200 megs, and come in avi, and they look very good. I was wondering how they put around 4.5 gigs of these files on a DVD and play them on almost any DVD player without losing quality(at least not much)

So basicly they make DVDs with 20+ of these and without losing quality and have a menu with music, at least the people I know that feel like doing so.

Thanks for any help =p

[redwudz]

I'm not sure what your are asking. What files? AVI? DVD's are MPG. You can put about 4.3 Gig on a DVD. As far as how good they look, that depends on the source quality and how you encode it. I think you need to spend some time reading the 'Guides' to the left.

[drkpendragon]

I mean, they take the avi files and I guess encode them to mpeg, but yes the file comes very good looking, and all that, they are very well compressed. I have looked in the guides, and all I can find is the normal way, where I can burn about 5 at a good quality (which happens to be not as good as theres) , thats it.

What I mean, is how are they burning so much and still play them on nomral DVD players.

[redwudz]

OK. Normaly you take an AVI video file, you encode it with, say TMPGEnc encoder to MPG2. Then you 'Author' that with say, TMPGEnc DVD Author to DVD standard, then burn it to DVD. How you get to the DVD standard can be done quite a few ways, besides what I have mentioned. You need a high quality AVI to get a high quality DVD. If you 'copy' a commercial DVD, you already have very good quality, so the encode is not so critical. However, if you start with a capture from TV, the quality is not there. Source quality is important. As I said, you need to spend some time with the guides. If you are looking for a one step, easy way to get excellent quality from any video source, it's just not that easy.
It's hard to get specific about quality when you ask generic questions.

[drkpendragon]

Ok, here is what I think my problem is, when I take the avi and reencode it into a MPG2 it gets realllllly big and really bad looking. BTW I have looked at much on this site, thats where I found the way I have had to use, and also, have been using TMPGEnc and TMPGEnc DVD Author and also others trying to find something that would work better, but nothing helped.

[budz]

Ok, here is what I think my problem is, when I take the avi and reencode it into a MPG2 it gets realllllly big and really bad looking.

what bitrate are you encoding it to? as redwuz said you need a high quality AVI if you want a high quality DVD. i have to agree with redwuz that you're asking generic questions. be more specific in your questions, give more information like what TMPGE settings are you using that is making your MPEG reallllly big and bad looking. hard to help you out without more info from you.

[drkpendragon]

Ok, the avi are good, 20min=200Mbit (around)

When I encode them I use/ed 4000bit rate (avi still looks much better) and 384 audio rate, and the file I tested on was 744.52Mbit after encoding and started at 23:19sec and was 185.854Mbit before encoding (Although when I tested it, it would only let me encode in MPG1, but I have tryed MPG2 before)

P.S. The avi is very good, almost if not DVD goodness when I encode to a MPG is makes it not that bad at 4000, but you can see blocks somtimes.

[drkpendragon]

Bump

[jimmalenko]

For starters, you probably shouldn't use 384kbps for your audio. You will be able to cut down on a lot of space if you use 192 or even 128 depending on what the source material is.

Secondly, I gather you are using Full D1 (720 X 480 or 720 X 576) ? Try using the VCD template for your region (NTSC or PAL), load the unlock template, and bump the video bitrate up to about 1500. The benefit of this is that your bitrate only needs to cover half the screen size and will result in a much better picture. Make sure you have your motion search precision set to at the worst High (slow). When you test your AVIs, test them on a DVD-RW on your standalone DVD player - movies always look worse on the computer. Your TV will be much better at resizing the movie compared to your computer.

[drkpendragon]

Ok, I got it all, other then "load the unlock template" how do you do that, thanks. With what you told me so far its down to 222meg.

[budz]

Ok, I got it all, other then "load the unlock template" how do you do that, thanks. With what you told me so far its down to 222meg.

open up TMPGE on the bottom right you'll see "LOAD" click on it, a box will open up click on "UNLOCK.mcf." then click "SETTING" which is next to the "LOAD" button. when you click on the "SETTING" you can now make changes to the bitrate, audio and so forth. that's how you "UNLOCK TEMPLATE".

[jimmalenko]

It should also be noted that you cannot get the same compression with MPEG as you can with AVI. Therefore there is a fair chance that your MPEGs will take up more room than the AVIs. The important thing to note about your friends' DVDs is the total running time of the movies and their video and audio bitrates. This will provide an excellent indication of how good the quality is.

[drkpendragon]

Well, I got it to 296Mbits, so thats not that bad, and its looks ALMOST the same of the avi.

So far so good, now only one more prob, on TMPGEnc SOME of the things I have, will not encode right at all. Like a 20min thing will encode like 3 times over itseld, and be like 60min and the sound will only be at the end.

I have tryed forcing it to be "20min" by seting a end point, but then I get no sound, and some avi will not even work with it at all. The avi are all encoded the same, so I do not know why this is happening.

[drkpendragon]

On his DVDs its about 20eps, so around 460mins of play, so maybe his qaulity is lower? Ill test this next. My test right now was at 1500 and 224, sound was good, so Ill try lowing that, and maybe the bitrate, though I am scared to do this. Also did MPEG2 if that matters, I THINK this is what I should be using right?

From this, I gather his were about 230Mbit or so...

Also, one thing I never understood, DVDs say "120min"? Thats the 1st thing that confuesd me when I saw his DVD, "over 120min huh ".

[drkpendragon]

Test = MPEG-2 640x480 23.976fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 48000Hz 128kbps

Will report back when done.

[jimmalenko]

Test = MPEG-2 640x480 23.976fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 48000Hz 128kbps

Will report back when done.

Don't bother. 640 X 480 is not compliant and won't play on a strandalone DVD player.

Use MPEG-2 352 X 240, 2-pass VBR Min 700 Ave 1150 Max 1500,
Layer-2 48000Hz 128kbps, and author to a DVD-RW and watch on your TV.

[drkpendragon]

Ok, mine worked well, sound didit go down, at least I could not tell, I am now trying your idea.

Mine was 220Mbit BTW

Also, you can put more of a DVD then 120min or whatever right? Anything I have to do to do this?

[jimmalenko]

Ok, mine worked well, sound didit go down, at least I could not tell, I am now trying your idea.

Mine was 220Mbit BTW

Also, you can put more of a DVD then 120min or whatever right? Anything I have to do to do this?

You can put 7 hours on @ 1150kbps. It is all about the bitrate - time is irrelevent.