Splitting DVDs across multiple DVD-Rs

[kamikaze]

Hello!

I recently did my first successful DVD burn, but the entire DVD was less than 4.3 GB. I will no doubt have to learn to do DVDs larger than this, but I have a few questions.
The DVD i burned actually had MULTIPLE big VOB files. So...there were about four 1,023 MB files that made up the movie. I was told to use DisComVobulator to split the files, but couldnt i just put half of the VOB files onto another CD? Would there have to be a specific naming convention?

Im trying to avoid using DVD2One b/c i'm only running a G3 450, so it would take a while, and I will be playing these movies on a 110" HDTV Projector, so quality really counts. So is DisComVobulator still my best bet?

Thanks in advance

-kami

[galactica]

Hello!

I recently did my first successful DVD burn, but the entire DVD was less than 4.3 GB. I will no doubt have to learn to do DVDs larger than this, but I have a few questions.
The DVD i burned actually had MULTIPLE big VOB files. So...there were about four 1,023 MB files that made up the movie. I was told to use DisComVobulator to split the files, but couldnt i just put half of the VOB files onto another CD? Would there have to be a specific naming convention?

Im trying to avoid using DVD2One b/c i'm only running a G3 450, so it would take a while, and I will be playing these movies on a 110" HDTV Projector, so quality really counts. So is DisComVobulator still my best bet?

Thanks in advance

-kami

You could, however the concern is that for the 2nd disk you wont have any .ifo/.bup files. Not a problem, you can make them, but the only way I know how is with a small PC app and Virtual PC.

One thing to note, the movie only files will only be sooo large. Generally an entire DVD is around 7-8 gigs, so you can split this manually, but I dont think it retains the dvd structure of menu's extras.....

The "movie only" .vobs are usually just slightly too large to just pull aside and put onto a dvdr. Thats why the "Movie only" copy portion of DTOX is so nice, you just loose a few hundred megs rather than a few gigs in the conversion to 1dvdr.

Even on a 450 dvd2one isnt SOOO slow, much faster than an encoding anyway. Id say give it a try in movie only mode, you will be suprised how little drop in quality it is compared to if you could just cram the movie only .vob's to a dvdr directly off the backup

[AntnyMD]

The DVD i burned actually had MULTIPLE big VOB files. So...there were about four 1,023 MB files that made up the movie.

Every DVD movie has multiple large .vob files. No one file on a DVD can be larger than 1 gig, so a movie is split over a number of vob files.

I was told to use DisComVobulator to split the files, but couldnt i just put half of the VOB files onto another CD? Would there have to be a specific naming convention?

When Discomvobulator splits discs it takes care of making new .ifo and .bup files for the split discs. It does not retain original menus or chaptering. You maintain the exact DVD quality, but now you have two discs, which is rather anti the point of DVDs in the first place.

Im trying to avoid using DVD2One b/c i'm only running a G3 450, so it would take a while,

I use DVD2One on a G3 450 iMac, and for a fully filled DVD (8 gigs), it takes DVD2One 61 minutes to crunch the entire disc. Movie-only mode makes the crunch in 32 minutes, depending on film length. The other day I did Magnolia, which has a running time of 3 hours and 4 minutes. It took DVD2One 47 minutes to crunch that one.

and I will be playing these movies on a 110" HDTV Projector, so quality really counts. So is DisComVobulator still my best bet?

DVD2One does not reduce quality in the instance where the movie and audio combined are 4.3 gigs or less. It merely copies the material and format it for DVD. The software only begins to reduce quality when the original material is too large for consumer DVD-R so it does its "magic" to get things to fit.

Is Discomvobulator your best bet? I can't say, but my strong preference is for DVD2One. Discomvobulator will maintain exact DVD quality 100% of the time, but the vast majority of the time you'll end up with 2 discs. With DVD2One you'll end up with a single disc every time, but quality will vary. So I recommend you get the DVD2One demo and use it on a very long title. The demo will crunch 30 minutes of the movie at the same rate it would if it were doing the whole film. Burn that content (to a DVD-RW!) and play it back on your giant monitor and judge the quality for yourself.

[galactica]

I agree. Like we said, the loss of quality (if any) for a movie only copy is almost none.

DiscomVobulator will do an exact dvd to 2 dvd-r. but why do that when you can have it on only 1 dvdr with little to no loss in video quality (when in movie only mode)

[kamikaze]

What about long movies? The max a DVD-R can hold is 2 hrs, right? think of LOTR, which is like, 3 hrs. There's got to be a significant difference in such movies, right?
I wonder...does a 2hr MOVIE ONLY file work out to about 4.3 gigs? that would sound right to me...

Also, another real quick question. If i download a DivX file from the net, what's the easiest way to get it onto a DVD-R in MPEG2 format. I'm not overly concerned about quality in this case, because you can only go as good as the source, which is MPEG 4. Movies like the Matrix 2, i'd love to have on DVD-R right now.

And another follow-up question. Movie theatres these days use DVDs as their medium, as opposed to film, right? So are most of the movies on the net ( well, the ones that are still playing in theatres ) real versions of the film, or just some dude who snuck a camcorder in?

Thanks in advance

-kami

[galactica]

What about long movies? The max a DVD-R can hold is 2 hrs, right? think of LOTR, which is like, 3 hrs. There's got to be a significant difference in such movies, right?
I wonder...does a 2hr MOVIE ONLY file work out to about 4.3 gigs? that would sound right to me...

To be honest, all dvds ive backed up the movie only portion is just over 4.4 gigs. (4.5 or 4.8 for example) Plus, thats jus the .vobs you cant just drop a .vob into a dvd video_ts folder and have it play, you need the IFO/BUp files (true small, but they take up space and when you are pushing 4.4 every last sector counts!!!!)

I took pearl harbor (a really freaking long movie) [ITS EVEN ON 2 commercial dvds for the movie, you have to put in disk 2!!!! to finish it] ripped each disk as movie only copy 2.2 gigs, combined them together to form 4.4 gigs and made the ifo/.bups for them. Burn as 1 dvdr, it looks AMAZINGLY GOOD, for being two dvd's onto one!!! I dont have a projector or anything like you, but on my 22" Cinema display its really hard to tell the difference.

Also, another real quick question. If i download a DivX file from the net, what's the easiest way to get it onto a DVD-R in MPEG2 format. I'm not overly concerned about quality in this case, because you can only go as good as the source, which is MPEG 4. Movies like the Matrix 2, i'd love to have on DVD-R right now.

gotta be careful what you talk about here!

And another follow-up question. Movie theatres these days use DVDs as their medium, as opposed to film, right? So are most of the movies on the net ( well, the ones that are still playing in theatres ) real versions of the film, or just some dude who snuck a camcorder in?

Thanks in advance

-kami

again, your walking the fence, be careful the wind doesnt blow too hard.

[kamikaze]

whoops! my bad. I was thinking purely as a backup purpose. I mean, even if I burned the matrix reloaded...i wouldnt watch it until i had bought the retail version when i comes out.

But yeah. That's good to hear. How long is pearl harbour exactly? Minutes wise. Just curious to see how a movie works out in min/size rate.

TIA

-kami

[AntnyMD]

It depends on the content. Pearl Harbor has a lot of action sequences so that, plus length would necessitate it being spread over 2 commercial DVDs. The only DVD I own that came spread over multiple DVDs (the actual film, not extras) was the 1960s version of Cleopatra (the one with Elizabeth Taylor).

As I said before, Magnolia has a running time a hair over 3 hours, and it all fit on a consumer DVD-R. This film has an amazing amount of dimly lit sequences, so there wasnt a whole lot DVD2One had to do to cram it onto the blank DVD.

At this point, anecdotal evidence won't do much more good. You'd actually have to see the differences for yourself. I think Discomvobulator has a demo version as well.

[galactica]

Pearl Harbor is 183 min (3hours and 3 min!)
if you like, i can host a small portoin of the mpeg video only part so you can see what the quality is like when i cram 3 hours of video onto a single dvdr

This was done by taking each disk, ripping them to MOVIE ONLY set at 2222 megs per disk.

then i combined the .vobs and make new VTS.ifo/.bup and VIDEO_TS.ifo/.bups for the .vob sequence.

let me know.

[solo66]

galactica wrote

I took pearl harbor (a really freaking long movie) (ITS EVEN ON 2 commercial dvds for the movie, you have to put in disk 2!!!! to finish it) ripped each disk as movie only copy 2.2 gigs, combined them together to form 4.4 gigs and made the ifo/.bups for them.

I am curious how you combined the two movie files together. What program works best for doing this. Reason I ask is I'm trying to back up my X-Files season disks, putting 2 episodes on a DVDR, but DVD2OneX and I believe IfoEdit will not do this, as DVD2One only lets you select one movie file or whole disc and IfoEdit only splits the dvd into 2, how can I combine them. Thanks

[galactica]

well it only works with movie only mode.
I just take each dvd and use dvd2one to make a 2.2 gig movie only copy.
thus i have 2 folders that represent both dvd's whose total size is 4.4 gigs.

delete all the .ifo and .bup files, rename the part 2 folder to continue with the name of the .vob's from the first folder (see above posting for details)

then use IFO edit and it makes new ifo's for the total list of .vobs

for seasons, i would say you would have to make a movie only copy of each season, and set the size to however many seasons you want on one dvd.

2 seasons - do each season at 2.2 gigs and do just like i did
3 seasons - do each season at 1.46 gigs

and so on

[HobbieMan]

Do the chapters still work correctly? I don't mind if the chapter breaks are not the same as the original, but can you move back and forth using chapter up and down without problems?

[galactica]

chapter marks are retained, thats the beauty of it!

the chapter marks from disk 1 will be there, and disk 2's chapter marks will start right when disk1's end

so if disk 1 is ch 1-20 disk 2 will be say 21-31

you have to use IFO edit to make the new .IFO and .BUP otherwise you wont beable to play disk 2's part. IFO EDIT makes it think its think its just one dvd (even though its 2 dvds downsized to fit onto one disk.)


i did this with Pearl harbor (since hte movie is actually on 2 dvd disks.) i wanted them on 1 and thats what I did.