TMPGEnc DVD Author + .ac3 questions

[rohfan]

Hi

First off id like to say thanks to baldrick for his guide on how to get subtitles on your home made DVD's and thanks to jimmalenko for a piece of advice he gave in a topic related to virtualdubmod.

A couple of days ago i was messing around with TMPGEnc DVD author and discovered that it accepts certain mpegs and rejects others (there was a recent topic on this). When i use to make DVD's via TMPGEnc i would encode everything into DVD format (.m2v) regarless of what format it was and my only constraint on how much footage i could put on a DVD was the size that TMPGEnc would make the files. Now if i want to make a DVD with loads of mpegs that are accepted by TMPGEnc DVD author my constraint is time which leads me too my first question:

1. How much time/footage can i fit onto a standard 4.7 GB DVD-R?

After reading threw the forums and a couple of guides it seems that its best not to let TMPGEnc handle the audio of a file when encoding to DVD format so i downloaded and installed virtualdubmod to extract the audio.
After loading in a divx file and checking out the audio streams i discovered that it was an .ac3 and after clicking demux it extracted the audio. question 2:

2. Do i have to do anything to the .ac3 file that i got by demuxing before i can use it via TMPGEnc DVD Author?

3. Does my DVD player have to support .ac3 or is this not an issue?
My DVD model is Thompson DTH 210E, it has dolby digital symbol on the front.

and last but not least Q4 (similar to Q2)

4. For the files that dont have .ac3 audio, after saving the audio as .wav and converting to .ac3 via ffmpeggui is the converted .ac3 ok to plug straight into TMPGEnc DVD Author?

thanks in advance to all that reply

[daamon]

Hi rohfan,

Answers (as best I can):

1. Don't think of your footage in terms of time - think of it in terms of file size. A DVD disc (obviously) has a finite amount of space - translating into about 4.35Gb available for your footage, menus, audio, subtitles etc.

In simple terms, only the running time (in seconds) and the bitrate you encode at determines the final file size.

So, footage of 30 mins encoded at 4Mbps will be half the filesize of footage that's either 60 mins or encoded at 8Mbps (ignoring audio).

To determine the filesize, based on bitrate for audio and video and running time check out the Videohelp Bitrate Calculator. This takes into account disc overheads etc. Look at "Advanced Mode" - it'll reveal some more useful insights.

2. No. Just encode the video only and you will / should get a video.m2v file. Use this along with the audio.ac3 as inputs for TDA.

3. All DVD players support AC3 - it's a global audio standard for DVD.

4. Yes - but it's been reported that a very few Pioneer models (possibly one or two other brands) don't like the AC3 that ffmpeg produces. That said, you're highly likely to be OK.

Hope that helps...

[rohfan]

Awesome!

Thanks a lot daamon

[daamon]

No problem.

Was the answer to Q1 OK? Did it make sense alright?

[rohfan]

it certaintly did matey

thanks again