Mini DV tape to DVD

[kubrick74]

Hi All,

I recently recorded a 1 hour, 51 minute TV program on my DVR cable box. with no way to get it directly into my hard drive, I put/split it onto 2 mini DV tapes and captured on Final Cut Express 2. After converting it into a quicktime movie, I-DVD would not let me put the show on DVD because the file was too big (around 32 gigabytes).......why is this ? The material is less than 2 hours, so what am i doing wrong ?

thanks all!

[erayboul]

Unless you have a reason to back the TV program up as a data file in the Quicktime format, you will want to convert what you captured in Final Cut Express 2 into the MPEG-2 format and then author a DVD. I use the Windows platform and not the Mac, but it looks like iDVD or DVD Studio Pro can make your MPEG-2 file and then help you author the DVD and then burn it. Use the bitrate calculator on this site (under the Tools section) to determine your average and maximum bitrates for the MPEG-2 file. The maximum bitrate that the calculator will return may be higher than most DVD-R's can handle. Many people on this site recommend a maximum bitrate of 7000 kbps.

[kubrick74]

thanks Eray, that's helpful....

unfortunately I-DVD 3 doesnt let you burn more than 90 minutes of video, (which makes no sense to me since the DVD-R standard is 2 houes) so I have to convert to Mpeg2 via another route. Final Cut Express 2 offers conversion to Quicktime movie, AVI, Mpeg4 and others I dont know recognize.

No Mpeg2 option...am I missing something ? Do I have any other options ?

[Frobozz]

You can purchase iLife 4 or 5. Those versions of iDVD will fit up to 2 hours of video to a DVD. If you are running OS 10.3.9 or 10.4 you can purchase Toast 7 which will do better than iDVD for long videos because it encodes audio as AC-3 which allows a higher MPEG video bit rate than iDVD.

You also could purchase the LaCie FastCoder to encode and author your video DVD or buy a standalone DVD recorder.

[kubrick74]

thanks Frobozz.....

I am running on OSX 10.2 and have Toast Titanium 6. I'd hate to go out and buy anything if I didnt need to.

It sounds like you are saying that Toast can encode to Mpeg2. Is that possible ? Would Toast 6.0 convert my Quicktime file (.mov) into Mpeg 2?

thanks again everyone... I realize some of this stuff is probably very basic, but its not very intuitive.