reducing sound quality to fit more video on a dvd-r

[boss]

Looking at tmpgenc, it says you can get about 2.5 hours of dvd quality video on a dvd-r if the sound is mp2. What i was wondering was, if i had a film 2 and a half hours long ripped from a dvd om my hard drive how would i downgrade the sound without having to reencode the video? does anyone know a program which will seperate the video and audio from vob files and allow it to be combined again.
And what is the lowest sound quality accepted by dvd players and if i could encode the audio to this standard, how much dvd quality video would i get on a dvd-r without reencoding?
or better yet, is there a gude on how to do all this on the internet?

[boss]

come on! someone must be able to help me!

[Baldrick]

please wait at least 1-2 days before bumping your post.

if you are ripping dvd vobs read the derrows or doom9s guides how to fit more on one dvd www.vcdhelp.com/dvdripping.htm#dvd but note that most dvds are already has compressed audio, ac3 or dts and reencoding that you wont fit that more on one dvd, then it is better to reencode the video.

but if you have a video with uncompressed wav/pcm audio you can fit much more by compressing it to mpeg audio or ac3. demultilplex the audio with tmpenc www.vcdhelp.com/faq.htm#demultiplex and encode the audio to mpeg with tmpgenc.

[VidGuy]

The best way to get more video on your DVD-R is to use 352 x 480 video. I can put about 5-6 hours with 6-channel AC3 or 7-8 hours with 2-channel AC3 (or MP2) using this format.

Of course, you can't do anamorphic videos this way, but 352 x 480 letterbox is good enough for most comedies and dramas - looks way better than VHS or S-VHS, and even looks better than most SVCD.

I use CCE and one-pass Q:25 and a typical video is 800K-1M (full screen video comes out to more like 1.4M). I suspect TMPGEnc CQ:75-80 would be similar.

[dtsking]

Vidguy,,, that sounds really interesting what you`ve done there.... how did you go about keeping the 5.1 sound??? are these from vobs,, or did you demux the vob and then jus re-encode the Video stream???

Any help would be great... thanks
DTSKing