How Can I Fit 10 TV Episodes Onto One DVD?

[chaosfan]

I borrowed a DVD from an (ex)friend which contained 10 fifty minute episodes of Angel.

I have recently bought a Philips DVD burner and would like to get the same kind of storage for some TV shows that I am downloading.

But, try as I might, i can only fit two episodes onto a DVD.

I've tried loads of different conversion software and have also tried lowering all the quality settings in my burning software (Easy Media Creator 7).

Can anyone out there please give some advice to how i can replicate the same kind of storage capacity?

Cheers,

[freestyler]

10 Episodes x 50 minutes = 500 minutes

500
--------------
60 minutes

= 8.3 Hours on a disc

spec compliant VCD / 48 khz on a DVD would be the best route for that kind of time.

[ZippyP.]

Your video bitrate will be about 1000 kbps so you better use 1/4 DVD res, which is VCD, which is 352x240/288.

Any good mpeg encoder should let you select that as your output.

[Matt D]

To do this you could use DVD Shrink, but it won't be pretty. I did 6 hours on one disc a few times and it came out OK, much like VHS, but 500 minutes is pushing it by far.
If you encode at 352x480 with 2-pass VBR set to some reasonable numbers, use MP3 audio and compress it all with DVD Shrink, it will work, but watchable depends on how willing you are to overlook some definite flaws in the picture quality.

[ZippyP.]

Personally, now that I think about it Matt D has the right idea. Use 352x480 with a bitrate of 2000, except burn the works to 2 DVD's. It will be far better quality and disks are cheap.

[chaosfan]

Hi again,

Thanks for all the replies.

I'm still pretty new at this.

Can anyone suggest any mpeg encoders which will allow me to convert my video files to the spec i need?

Cheers again.

[solarfox]

TMPGenc should let you do it, though you might have to play with the settings a bit. (I know the Wizard mode lets you set a desired file size for the final output and it'll adjust settings to fit, but...) Use the "2-Pass Variable Bit Rate" mode for best results -- in fact, with 2-pass VBR you might be able to sneak the bit rate up a little and still come out with files small enough to fit.

ULead Media Studio Pro will let you do it, so their consumer-grade Video Studio product might also allow it. (As far as I know, they use the same MPEG encoder for both products.) The results might not be quite as good as TMPGenc since it doesn't have a 2-pass VBR mode, but it does encode a heck of a lot faster.

Still -- I, personally, do not recommend trying to get more than 3 - 4 hours (180 - 240 minutes), at most, onto a single-layer DVD-R -- and that only if your source material is such that you can live with 1/2-D1 (352 x 480) or 1/4-D1 (352 x 240) resolution and 128-160Kbps MP2 audio, because at the low bit rates you'll have to use to fit that much video on a disc the results will be pixelated/macroblocked crap at full-D1 (720 x 480) resolution.

[handyguy]

Panasonic dvd recorders can get 12 hours on a disk now, can't they?

[Wile_E]

Tmpgenc 3.0 - use the XDVD format.
You can get good quality and fit a lot on one disc. But 500 minutes may be pushing the limit.

[skebenin]

Panasonic dvd recorders can get 12 hours on a disk now, can't they?

Probably, but at VCD resolutions. If you're willing to sacrifice quality to get 500 minutes onto a DVDR, that's probably the way to sacrifice quality least (better than a storm of macroblocks).

[solarfox]

Exactly. Just because it can be done, does not necessarily mean you'll enjoy watching or listening to the results afterwards!

Although I'm rather suspicious about this claim of 12 hours, frankly. Using normal VCD bit rates, the maximum capacity of a 4.7Gb DVD-R is just over 8 hours, if I've calculated it out right... now by using VBR instead of CBR encoding, and backing down the audio quality to 160 or 120Kbps, you might stretch that a bit -- but twelve?! That would require a maximum bit rate of about 850Kbps for audio and video combined; even at quarter-D1, I can't imagine the results being at all watchable at that low a bit rate...

[Garibaldi]

Probably your best bet would be to run the vids through TMPGENC with the low resolution template. Set your bitrate to 2000, and video size to 1/2 d1 (352x480), and render. Then author your dvd with something like GUI for DVD Author. Now, you have your VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders. If they are still bigger than a DVD-R, run them through DVD Shrink to shrink them down. I had good results fitting about 275 mins on a dvd this way, but I had my resolution at 720x480 and didn't run it through dvd shrink. Hopefully that will give you the added edge that you need.