A Few Questions Regarding DVD Project

[MurderMachineX]

Hey there. I just signed up so that I could ask you guys some questions regarding a project I'm working on. No one I see in day-to-day life seems to really know, and neither does anyone on sites I visit regularly. So I figured I'd ask people on a site devoted to this sort of thing. Thanks for your time in advance : )

I'm working on a project turning an online series into a set of DVDs. Not mass produced or anything, just the one set. Now I edit videos all the time for Youtube and whatnot, but I've never really put much effort into burning DVDs. (I've done it before, just pop it in drag the files, etc.) But for this project I need to work smarter. It is a lot of data, so I need to make sure to compress it if possible and get the best disc.

So what type of discs should I use? My foremost concern is playability. These discs need to be playable on most if not all players. (So that means no blu ray discs, right?) My secondary concern however is capacity. I need the largest disc I can get that can still play in most devices.

What should I do with the data itself? Currently I have all of the data as a series of mp4 videos. Is there a tutorial or some program or something I should do with them? I know I could just burn files, but I'd like it to be like real DVDs, with a main menu, play, and scenes, and whatnot.

What would be best for shaving off extra data? I'd also like to fit as much data on the disc as possible, so I might need to know some compression possibilities. I'd also appreciate some tips on the format. They're currently mp4, but if changing the extension or codec would be more advantageous, I can do that. (I usually use H264 by default.)

I'm kind of lost here, so I'd appreciate all the help any of you who are familiar with this sort of thing. There's a lot of info on this site, but it is a lot to go through. : /

[Cornucopia]

In a nutshell,

Use high-quality DVD-R or DVD+R media (Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim - but not the DataLife series, or MAMa - if you can still get that).

Re-encode your MP4/H.264 files to DVD-Video-compliant MPEG2 files (see "What is DVD?" menulink above). Audio should be converted (from whatever - mp3, aac, etc) to AC3 or LPCM (like WAV) audio. You CANNOT use your original MP4/H.264 material as-is.

Author your MPEG2 video + AC3/LPCM audio assets in a DVD-Video authoring app, where you will add the menu/subtitles/navigation, etc. and output a file/folder structure of *.VOB + *.IFO + *.BUP files in a VIDEO_TS folder. This outputting is what's known as compiling your title.

Load that VIDEO_TS folder into ImgBurn. It will recognize that it is a DVD-Video structure and want to burn a DVD-Video-compliant disc.

Again:
1. EDIT
2. ENCODE
3. AUTHOR
4. COMPILE
5. BURN
6. PLAY & ENJOY

Apps and/or app links to do each of these things abound at this site.

Read up! It might take a while to learn the ins and outs, but your end product will be the better for it.

The prime formula is: Filesize = Bitrate * RunningTime. You'll know what your running time is after edting. Your filesize needs to be small enough to fit on a single side of a SingleLayer or DoubleLayer disc (your choice, $). Use a bitrate calc to help you there. Understand that you can improve quality for the same filesize by using VBR (variable bitrate) encoding vs. CBR (constant bitrate) encoding. Also know that quality is proportional to bitrate (but more complex than that). A good rule of thumb might be Max=9.8Mbps, Great=>7Mbps, Good=4-7Mbps, Fair=2-4Mbps, Poor=<2Mbps.

Scott

[MurderMachineX]

Thank you very much! I'll certainly have to read up to understand a few parts of what you've said, but at least now I have a rough guide on what exactly to read up on. I'd have a more elaborate response but I've got to look up some of that stuff before I can think of any follow-up questions. So I'm good for now. Thanks again!