Two DVD movies on a single DVD-5 disc

[birrbert]

Dear Forum!

I have a little problem with a documentary that the NGO made where I work and I think that chances to fix it the way I think are low, but I said I'll give it a try anyway. So there's this documentary in two languages (English and Hungarian), but they are on two separate DVDs, because, although the topic is common, the content is not exactly the same. There are a few minutes in the movie that are different.

What I would like to do is have both movies on a single DVD-5 disc and make the menu in a way that the viewer can select which one to play (English or Hungarian). The problem is that both are 3.9 GB (7.8 GB in total), so I would like to know if there's a way to reduce the size without much quality loss and make them fit on a 4.5 GB disc?

I know that the proper way would be to have the video be exactly the same and have two audio tracks and the viewer basically will choose only the audio track. Unfortunately in this case this is not and option so I would like to find an alternative way. I know that we could have the movie in two languages separated on two discs but I think that would be waste. Having them on a single disc would be correct.

Thank you!

[Baldrick]

You can try shrink with dvd shrink or dvd rebuilder and see how it looks like.

DVD SHrink can also join the in reauthoring mode, no menus. If you want menus try instead dvdremake pro.

[marioval]

Have you considered buying dual layer blank dvd's?

[jman98]

You are going to need to compress the video over 40% to achieve your goal of putting it on one disc. It's up to you to decide if that gives you "much quality loss" or not. Follow Baldrick's suggestions.

[AlanHK]

What I would like to do is have both movies on a single DVD-5 disc and make the menu in a way that the viewer can select which one to play (English or Hungarian). The problem is that both are 3.9 GB (7.8 GB in total), so I would like to know if there's a way to reduce the size without much quality loss and make them fit on a 4.5 GB disc?

How many minutes long are these?
If each below 60 mins, then use the tools Baldrick recommended and compress to fit on a 4.7 GB disc.
There will be a small quality loss, but probably not noticeable.

What kind of audio?
Perhaps the audio is PCM (uncompressed), if so then compress the audio to AC3 128 kbps and you probably don't need to compress the video at all.

[smrpix]

If the differences are in chunks, as opposed to a shot here and there, you could consider reauthoring the DVD with the different versions being called by playlists.

[Cornucopia]

There is also the more complicated but elegant & professional way, which is to reauthor using "multi-story seamless branching" which is meant to fix EXACTLY the kind of problem you are having.

Now, the apps that can handle seamless branching are few: Sonic Scenarist, (older versions) Apple DVDStudio Pro, (defunct) Spruce DVDMaestro, and (possibly) DVDLab Pro. Maybe one or two others...

There is not really a simple 'how to' on it because it's something you'll have to learn via the manual(s) & experience.

Scott

[birrbert]

Dear All!

Thank you for all you suggestions. I haven't had a free afternoon yet to play around, but this weekend I'll give it a go with Baldrick's suggestion and get back to you with the results.

@marioval, dual layer discs are not an option, they cost too much.

@AlanHK, the English version is 1 hour 3 minutes and 10 seconds long, the Hungarian 1 hour 3 minutes and 12 seconds.

Video and audio file information of the four large .vob files (the audio is compressed):

Video
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Duration                                 : 17mn 1s
Bit rate                                 : 8 000 Kbps
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 25.000 fps
Standard                                 : PAL
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.772
Stream size                              : 972 MiB (95%)

Audio
ID                                       : 192 (0xC0)
Format                                   : MPEG Audio
Format version                           : Version 1
Format profile                           : Layer 2
Duration                                 : 17mn 1s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 256 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 31.2 MiB (3%)

@Cornucopia, thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll start learning how to reauthor.

[sanlyn]

@marioval, dual layer discs are not an option, they cost too much.

? ? ?
Verbatim's best AZO DVD+R Dual Layer are $1.73 to $0.90 USD, depending on spindle size from 10 to 50. That's too much for optimum PQ? You can't have everything, especially if you're willing to do little to get it.

[birrbert]

There's no point arguing, because the company that will multiply the movie for us, print the cover and label them gave a quote in which the total price is triple with dual layer discs than with single layer discs.

We'll see how it goes with fitting on one disc. Obviously, if the quality drops too much then we won't do it. We'll wait a little more for the producer to make the video exactly the same in English and Hungarian and then just the audio track will be selected in the menu making the whole thing fit properly on one disc.

[jman98]

There's no point arguing, because the company that will multiply the movie for us, print the cover and label them gave a quote in which the total price is triple with dual layer discs than with single layer discs.

And we were supposed to know this, despite at no point you mentioning paying someone to duplicate this disc for you, because...????

[sanlyn]

Shucks. Well, then let the pro's handle it first. A real pro like lordsmurf and others can tell you, however, that many "pros" are no more pro than you are. But let's hope it goes well.

[birrbert]

Dudes! Why get angry about it? I told you guys about the relevant part of my problem. Anyway, what did you expect? That we will copy the DVD at home on our laptops DVD-RW? I appreciate your help, but come on, be serious!

[sanlyn]

You'd be amazed how many people do that very thing.

Didn't you ask for "alternatives?" Read your post. Why ask if someone has already set up the work for you? Wait for their results.

[Cornucopia]

Dudes! Why get angry about it? I told you guys about the relevant part of my problem. Anyway, what did you expect? That we will copy the DVD at home on our laptops DVD-RW? I appreciate your help, but come on, be serious!

YES! We very much expect that exact kind of thing from noobs! When helping/troubleshooting, you have to start out at Square One (no preconceptions as to users' working knowledge base) every time.

That's why, time and again, we ask for people to THOROUGHLY explain their predicament up front. But I don't really see anybody "getting angry".

BTW, if you are paying them 3x for DL vs. SL, why not instead see if you can pay them to fix your program deduplication trouble? If they can't (don't have the knowledge/skills or toolsets, or time) or it's not cost effective, then post that response and you'll get more info here. That's usually how it goes...

Scott

[birrbert]

The company that does the copying is ONLY COPYING and LABELING. It's my organization's or the producer's job to provide them the master DVD. They won't do our job (we have to fit two movies on one disc, they will make 500 copies, simple as that). Explaining the copy process to you up front wouldn't have helped me at all. I don't think that Baldrick or any other user would have given different suggestions if they knew that multiplying is done by somebody else.

Is it really that hard to understand? Hint: don't answer that, it's just a rhetorical... I'm through with this conversation...

PS: check the title of the topic too... do you see DVD-9 mentioned anywhere? my question wasn't about putting movie(s) on a larger capacity disk!

[Cornucopia]

No, it's not "that hard to understand" - ONCE YOU TELL US UP FRONT.
(Although, most larger/better dub houses have in-house authoring departments who will GLADLY do "some of your job" for you, for a price).

Seems like YOU are the one getting worked up.

Scott

[sanlyn]

Next.

[lacywest]

You could try ... taking both of your videos and build a DVD9 and then use DVD Rebuilder to re-encode it with several passes and see how it turns out.

A couple is ... 2
a few is ... 3 to 5
several is ... 5 to 7

for me ... I do the max ... I do 9 Passes ... with the Cinema Craft Encoder SP v2.70.02.12

[birrbert]

lacywest, just out of curiosity: how much time does it take for you re-encode a DVD9 using the method you described here? I mean DVD Rebuilder with the Cinema Craft Encoder SP v2.70.02.12 and several passes. I would also be interested about the configuration of your computer on which you did this type of re-encoding.

The best computer I can work on is my Gateway MT6840 laptop with Intel Core2Duo T2450 (2 Ghz) processor, 2 GB of memory and 160 GB 5400 rpm Western Digital hard disk.

I would like to know how patient do I have to be.

[sanlyn]

The best computer I can work on is my Gateway MT6840 laptop with Intel Core2Duo T2450 (2 Ghz) processor, 2 GB of memory and 160 GB 5400 rpm Western Digital hard disk.

I would like to know how patient do I have to be.

A lot of patience. And an external hard drive.

[birrbert]

Thanks. Luckily storage is not a problem. I have a USB external drive with 1 TB of space.

[birrbert]

Just a quick update folks: today I managed to build the DVD-9 from both DVD-5s using DVD Fab. I must admit that it was a bit of a challenge because the tutorials and howtos I found are outdated and DVD Fab changed since they have been written. Also, because of these outdated things, I wasn't sure what kind of format does DVD Rebuilder accept as input. But in the end I managed to create a 7.9 GB ISO file with both movies in it and my movie softwares are playing it back correctly (the two movies appear in the player as two titles).

Tonight I will hopefully manage to configure DVD Rebuilder and the Cinema Craft Encoder to work with it, though - again - tutorials are outdated in this case too compared to the changes that happened in the softwares. I'm talking about those that are listed here (maybe there are newer ones somewhere else): https://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-Rebuilder#guides

[jman98]

Hmm.... for a guy who was "through with this conversation" you are kind of wordy... And you were really pissy and defensive about us telling you that failed to tell us everything we needed to know. Seriously - if you are such a genius that you are capable of deciding what is and isn't important to tell us, why are you asking for help?

At the huge risk of wasting my time given your attitude to date, I will be kinder than you deserve and point out that most people around here just use HCenc with DVD-RB. It is possible to update DVD-RB to use more recent versions of HCenc. Do a web search on the subject. We don't use CCE because of cost, but perhaps you have found a way to work around that issue. But HCenc is not inferior in any way to CCE and being free is just a bonus.

Finally, nobody here gets paid for anything we do, so you have a point about the docs, but if you'd like to help out and update them instead of bitching about it, that would really be welcome.

[birrbert]

jman98, thanks for taking the time to analyze my post and writing down you opinion. This thread would be boring without it.

Here's my reply:
- I was through with the conversation related to double layer DVDs and the "me not telling you things up front" issue, not the main problem itself. I promised to return with results and that's what I did. I don't see any problem in that.
- I don't consider myself a genius and I did state - answering to marioval's question - that dual layers are not an option, after which I gave the reason too that the price of multiplying is much higher. Please explain to me how would it helped you or me if I told you in my very first post that we're paying somebody to multiply the disc for us? If you answer that, fine, but if not then one final time: the people who multiply for us have no interest in how the master DVD is being made; they can't help us in that regard and that's fine as far as I'm concerned!
- I understand that this forum is free and works on a volunteer basis. I wasn't "bitching" about that and I haven't used a single bad word that would make you think that I'm "bitching". I only meant to highlight something that is outdated so that somebody who has free time would pick it up and update. Who knows, if I get through this with satisfying results I might even do a guide myself.

Please, let's stop debating this silly issue (or do it in private if you really must) and keep this topic clean.

edit: I don't have the Cinema Craft Encoder yet since I just got through the "building the DVD-9" phase and as of now I haven't checked how much it costs; I saw its price tag just now... unlike DVD Fab, the CCE trial has too many limitations, so thanks for the tip about HC Encoder, I think I'll start with that.

[sanlyn]

Oh, well....all the other poohpooh aside, It's admirable that you figured it out yourself. Good luck.

[lordsmurf]

Oh, well....all the other poohpooh aside

... But I like Pooh.

[sanlyn]

[birrbert]

Success! I think I learned important things yesterday.

more details to come after I return from my holiday