2 hr home video will not fit on DVD

[pettinej]

I have taken in my home video (from sony high 8 NTSC) to PC (ATI all in wonder card) set to DVD quality (type mpeg2, video 720x480 8mbit per sec, audio 48khz 16bit stereo). The file is about 7gig. When I try to burd to dvd it will not fit. I am not understanding why my 2hr video will not fit on my 120min dvd. I don't want to loose quality but I would like to make it fit on 1 dvd. I think my two options are to reduce it or re-record at a different rate. I am looking for suddestions.

Thanks

[i-on-s]

try using DVD2One or DVDShrink or just lower the bitrate to 6000 as you will see not much diff between 6000 and 8000.

[ckdexterhn1]

Your 2 hour video is 7 GB. A typical DVD is 4.7 GB, and can hold about 4.36 GB of data. You need to encode it at a rate which will give you a final file size of less than 4.36 GB. You may want to read under the HOW TO section to the left for the best ways to accomplish this.

[racer-x]

Well it looks to me like you'll either have to rencode it @ 4.5 mbtps or split it up for 2 DVDs. The quality @ 4.5 mbts really isn't too bad. It all depends on the source quality. But if you wan't the best than there is no choice.

[pettinej]

I have read and tried to get TMPGEnc to read in my mpeg2 video but I keep getting "can not open" or "unsupported". I read through the help files added codec's and made changes to the environmental settings. Nothing works. Is there a better program that I can use to make my 7 gig home movie smaller?

[RayS]

I also bought an All In Wonder Radeon about a year and a half ago. It was the 32 DDR version and came with ULead s/w. I thought the ULead was junk and found that ATI's own Digital VCR did a better job capturing. My experience with VHS capture has been that 'Custom setup' at 352 x 480 @ 3.00 MBit/sec mpeg-2 Medium does a decent job (one of the default Custom settings). Some of the other suggestions you have received using the new adjustable shrink s/w will probably get you even better results. My problems have been with the basic capture - dropping frames at higher resolutions and poor sync on older tapes. Not too happy with the AIW. For the record, I am using an Athlon 1.2G Thunderbird processor with 512M of DDR RAM under Windows 98SE. I use 'End It All' to shut down unecesary processes. It helps some but not enough. Maybe its time for a faster processor, new mobo or a s/w rebuild. Good luck.

[madrockr]

Well, just my two cents. I do this type of coversion all the time for my home movies and all my friends. I have not had any problems since I upgraded my OS to XP Pro. I use Dazzle DVC II, I know some people don't like this card, but I have not had any problems after upgrading my OS. Dazzle allows you to set the bit rate very easily and does a vaery good job. The price has come down since I bought it over 1 year ago. Also I use a pIII 1.5 GHZ cpu.
I hope you find this a little helpful.

[pettinej]

Thanks for the info. I am running xp with a 1.8gig processor 512mb ram. I still would like to know how I can take the video that I have and convert it to a different format so that I can put it on one dvd.

[racer-x]

pettinej



If you can't open an Mpeg-2 in TEMPenc, you can open it in Virtualdub-mod (look in the tools section of this site) then frame serve it to TEMPenc. You can then re-encode it to what ever bitrate you wan't. Use the wizard to help you set the the bitrate for the size media your using.

[pettinej]

Thanks Frame serve works great!

[dun4cheap]

Is the problem the bit rate, or is it because your authoring tool only does pcm audio. Unfortunately most authoring tools don't compress the audio, so I would suspect the large bloat is more likely from the audio. It would be a shame to degrade the video quality to compensate for the uncompressed audio. You may want to find a authoring tool that will convert it to AC3 or something.