Compress two DVDs to one

[Zhixin Han]

Hi all:

I'd like to put two DVDs with frame size of 720x568 and a bitrate of 4000kbps to one DVD. I am using Ulead Visual Studio.

My original idea was to re-encode: rip the VOB files from two DVDs to hard disk, re-authore them in Visual Studio, set the bite rate to 2400kbps, then render and burn.

Then I learned that there are other ripping/compressing tools available. Since I want to keep the quality loss less, I would like to know that if Ulead Visual Studio can do this well with the above steps, or I should consider other tools (like DVD Rebuilder, MainConcept MPEG Encoder, TMPGEnc, etc.) to re-encode or compress or both.

Regards,

Zhixin

[guns1inger]

Do you want the menus, or just the movies ?

If you want the entire contents of both disks, then DVD Remake Pro is about the only easy way to do it.

If you just want the movies and no menu, then DVD Shrink in reauthor mode, output to a disk file with no compression, then DVD Rebuilder with CCE to reencode for a single disk.

What is the total runtime ? If you are getting down to a 2400 average at full PAL D1, you are probably going to get artifacts.

[Zhixin Han]

The individual DVDs are full and the run time for each DVD is 2 hours. Putting 4 hours of movie sampled at 2400kbps seems fine quality-wise. I have done this to another DVD, using video files with a sample rate of 2400kbps.

This time since the sample rate is 4000kbps. So I think I'd have to re-encode it to 2400kbps. I am wondering which re-encoding approach will give a better result. It seems that DVD Remake Pro doesn't do re-encoding, only merging small disks to one.

Thanks for your help.