Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 not making maximum use of DVD space

[GSP_87]

Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 with Patch 1, Patch 2, and the Hot Fix installed, won't let me come very close to the max 4.38GB DVD disc capacity. I can only put like 110 minutes on a DVD, and when I put close to 120 minutes on, Ulead gives a message saying not enough space and asks if you want Ulead to try to fit to disk where it takes one of the video clips and re-encodes it with bad quality resolution. There are also times when trying to make the DVD straight to DVD, it'll say not enough space, but when making a DVD ISO first, it proceeds as if there is enough space. Any solutions?

[guns1inger]

What is the source video ?
What encoder settings are you using ?

How much video (in minutes) you can fit on a DVD comes down to bitrate used. The lower the bitrate, the longer the running time. Of course, the compromise is quality, however of the source is good, 120 minutes can be put on a disc quite easily.

I don't use Movie Factory, so I don't know how much freedom you have to configure the encoder. Some simple tools give you vague quality settings, like high, medium or low, and little else. Others let you set bitrates and other more detailed settings.

If Movie Factory doesn't let you configure the encoder to get the quality you want, it is time you moved on to something that does, or just accept MF's limitations.

[GSP_87]

Video source is WinTV2000 caps. On a diff computer that has Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3SE, I can fill up to 4.38GB on a DVD, but MF 6 is different.

The encoder settings are probably the exact same as the computer that has MF3SE because it's the same WinTV2000 program and same preset DVD LP quality settings.

When MF 6 asks if you want it to fit to disc, it doesn't give you any choices re: which video clip to re-encode nor what settings to use to re-encode and the picture quality of the re-encoded video is noticeably crappier.

I liked MF3SE because you could trim/edit a video clip and fetch it to re-use even though it doesn't really call itself a video clip editor software. I bought MF 6 because I liked MF3SE that came w/WinTV and it's a lot easier to use than this other DVD authoring software where you had to tell it absolutely everything from scratch.

Also with WinTV caps, a raw untrimmed video clip will be recognized by both MF3SE and MF 6 as being bigger than it really is in terms of minutes.

[DB83]

There is another factor to take into account as far as any dvd authoring program is concerned - menus.

DVDMovieFactory can create some quite complex ones with all sorts of transitions and motion buttons. These are encoded at the maximum datarate of your project NOT at the datarate of your source video.

To put that into context, to get close to 2 hours on a disk your source must be approx 4000 kbps for video. If your project defaults to 'High Quality' then the menus could be encoded up to 8000 kbps. So you need to change that setting as well.

So to get the maximum amount of video on to a disk you need also to keep the menus quite simple.

[guns1inger]

Sounds like MF6 is basically rubbish.

That said, WinTV cap means nothing. What codec are the caps ?

If they are mpeg-2, are they already DVD compliant ?

If so, there should be no re-encoding. If MovieFactory can't do it without re-encoding then you need to use something that does, or again, accept that the quality will be compromised.

[GSP_87]

This is what I did a few times to come very close to making use of the maximum 4.38GB DVD-R space:

Told Ulead the DVD project was 8.5GB instead of 4.7GB, then outputted the DVD project to DVD ISO, then burned that ISO to DVD-R after checking to see if the ISO was less than 4.38GB. This is for when I know the project time duration is less than 120min, but Ulead acts as if there's no way it'll fit in a 4.7GB project disc and asks for permission to dumb down the video quality of a video clip in order to make it fit.

[Bjs]

Output to disc folder then target output using dvdshrink to bring it into the 4.3gig range ... its always had the dvd media bug