My Back to the Future Project....aaagain

[greymalkin]

Alright everyone..i've been working on combining all 3 back to the future movies so they run as a single seamless movie. I have also seperated the 5.1 track, edited the center channel, and re-encoded. It now run at about 5 hours and 20 minutes with no credits..etc.

Now for the problem:

The file (video and DD5.1) is 8.65GB.

I understand that in order to fit it on a dvd9 I need it to be 7.95.

I can reduce the bitrate of the dd5.1 track to 384 from 448 and probably shave a couple hundred MB off, but I'll still be left @ 500mb over.

So heres the question...How could I shave off the 500mb with minimal damage to my video file? My limited knowledge tells me i'm gonna have to re-encode and suffer the consequences. The problem is i've already done that once to get it as small as it is :P. So I had a couple thoughts and wondered if it was possible to:

1) crop it to 704x480 without actually having to re-encode.
2) reduce the amount of colors it uses.

just grasping here.

[edsmith77]

You could author the file in TDA ignoring the oversized warnings (use the 8.5Gb option), then apply DVDShrink to that set files (again with the 8.5Gb option) and then burn on your favorite DL disk.
I do not think you will suffer any quality loss since it is only 500Mb over 8.6 Gb.

[greymalkin]

that was my only concern..I already had to compress it to around 60% the first time around using shrink..and silly me..I thought DVD9 meant you could get 9gb on there :P

I would go back and do the video all over again but i have all my cuts and the audio sync'ed up right and toggling 2 9gb mpeg files to try and match the cuts up precisely is more than I want to deal with right now.

On my 27" it still looks fine and thats all that really matters to me. It's more of a novelty than anything, but keeping it watchable is a concern of mine as well.

I suppose I'll load it back into shrink, set it at 7.95gb using the deep analysis mode and hope for the best.

[Supreme2k]

Did you ever solve the problem of Jennifer being Claudia Wells in one scene, and then Elisabeth Shue a moment later?

[greymalkin]

yes...i switch from bttf1 to 2 right as marty opens the garage door, right before we see Jennifer at the end of BTTF1. This way you've probably already forgotten what she looks like from the beginning of the movie :P.

BTTF1:
Biff: "Marty, here's your keys. You're all waxed up ready for tonight!"
Marty: "keys?"

SWITCH!

BTTF2:
(Screen is black, then garage door opens and we see Marty gazing at his truck)
Jennifer: "How about a ride mister?"


This makes a good place for a splice anyways as we have a split second of black before the garage door opens... I then cut out all the opening credits of bttf 2 since it's just clouds and credits. The transition from 2 to 3 and taking out the opening credits was a little trickier. I cut the scene from 2 to 3 as the delorean hits the cable. There is a bright flash and it switches to doc who is on the floor from his little encounter with the lightning. The scene change is where I go from 2 to 3. Then I cut it so that when marty comes back and doc faints, the next scene is the tv playing static and then "howdy doody" and doc waking up on his couch thinking it was all a dream..the opening credits here cut out marty driving him home and a panning around docs house, but it had to be done to keep the credits from being in the middle of the movie. It also works out really well as doc believes he was dreaming and we know he wasn't regardless as marty is there and explains everything again.

[greymalkin]

at long last I have the movie ready to be burned to DVD9. I waited until I got my XP-90 heatsink to do the re-shrink since i didn't know how long it would take. i used to deep analysis and sharp feature and it only took a couple hours so i'm wondering exactly what it did! I haven't looked at it yet but I will when i get home tonight. now i just need to throw it on a 10gb drive i have sitting around and get someone to let me borrow their dual layer dvd drive for a couple hours. :P

oh yeah..and get a DVD9 disc.

[RottenFoxBreath]

simple this one,dvd2one,join,join,join..pick disc size,wait 15 minutes,burn.
easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[greymalkin]

no no no!

march right back up there and read through the post silly!

I didn't just smush em all together! they had to be spliced and merged back together in 6 locations to get a single seamless film. I watched it tonight and sometimes i can see a wee bit of graininess on fleshtones but I am watching it on my 21" monitor @ 1152 x 864 :P

On my standard 27" TV I will probably

A) not see the difference or

B) see the difference somewhat..but still be satisfied that
1) It still looks way sharper/clearer than the VHS version and
2) It's not all blocky and nasty looking even for all the compression that has taken place.