Re-authoring multiple dvd to single dvd

[dochase]

OK here's the deal. I have 3 tracks that consist of captured video from 3 of my son's recreation football games. The original avi was captured from a friends vhs recording of the games through a pass-thru in my Canon DV Camcorder. They were then encoded at 8000 bitrate using TMPGenc Plus 2.5 and I authored 2 games to one dvd and 1 to another dvd using TMPGenc DVD Author 1.6 because they were too big to fit on one dvd alone (this was prior to learning about the bitrate calculator). I want to combine them to one dvd because they were games from one tournament we played in.

I have done this already by adding each title from the existing 2 dvd's into TMPGenc DVD Author 1.6 to create one DVD title on my hard drive which results in a total size of greater than 5 GB, then using DVD Shink to encode from the HD to one DVD.

My question: Does this produce the best final video quality, or is there an alternative way to re-encode the existing 3 games on the DVDs in TMPGenc Plus 2.5 to an acceptable bitrate that will allow for all 3 to fit on 1 DVD - which means the shrinking of the video using DVD Shrink is no longer needed? (I no longer have the avi files nor the original VHS tape recordings of the games. I deleted the avi's after encoding to Mpeg 2 and gave my friend back the tapes.)

I know this is a confusing scenario, but tried to explain the best I could.

Thanks

[freebird73717]

Since you have already deleted the originals then you're going to have to be happy with what you have. In the future just use the bitrate calculator and have it be correct the first time. Since your dvd was only shrunk from 5 gb you probably won't get much if any noticible quality drop.

[jimmalenko]

You took the first quality hit when the DV was originally converted to VHS. Then you encoded @ 8000kbps (and I'm assuming full-D1 ?), which IMO is overkill for VHS source, but anyway. Then you've transcoded this. I think that you've already gone through so many conversions that re-encoding as opposed to transcoding isn't gonna make much of difference.

Ideally, in the future, get your hands on the DV source if possible

[dochase]

Just to clarify...

The original source WAS VHS, I converted from that tape to DV AVI using the pass-thru on my digital camcorder.

Thanks

[jimmalenko]

The original source WAS VHS, I converted from that tape to DV AVI using the pass-thru on my digital camcorder.

I know. I assumed your friend captured the original footage with THEIR camera, then put it onto VHS. Is this not correct ?

[dochase]

No, the original was shot with a VHS-C camcorder, which I converted to digital...

[jimmalenko]

No, the original was shot with a VHS-C camcorder, which I converted to digital...

OK.

So are you going to re-encode or are you happy with the transcode ?

[dochase]

It sounds like it won't make much of a difference. Also, I'm not sure how to take from dvd and make back into mpeg with a lower bitrate. But, curious if you can do that with what I have.

Thanks

[thinhtkd]

You can use TMPGEnc DVD Author to convert the DVD VOB files to mpg then rencode to lower bitrate. here is what I did

1. Create new project
2. Add DVD video
3. Open the DVD VIDEO_TS file
4. Select the DVD title you want to capture
5. Make sure check the Copy clip video to hard drive
6. After captured the video clip to hard drive you can cancel the process and repeat step 1-6 for other video clips you want to capture
7. Reencode to low bit rate using your best encoder. To optimize your qualily use bit rate calculator for your starting point.

That's it. Having fun!