2-3 movies from satellite to dvd-r

[nick101181]

I was wondering what's the best method of fitting 2 -3 movies from satellite to dvd-r? I know I could use mpeg1 at 1836kbps but for some reason my apex shutters and doesn't play any mpeg1 good if it's above 1800 kbps. I'm looking to fit almost 3 films whether they are 2 hours or 1.5 hours or even 2.5 hours onto one dvd-r. My system is really outdated I have a 833 mghtz celeron and 256 mb of ram. I tried capturing with powervcr II but it sucked the quality was ok but the sync was way off even when I was capturing at a low resoultion that I know my pc can handle. I can record to mpeg2 720x480 at 4mbps but the quality is a little lower. any ideas?

[Capmaster]

Why is it necessary to get 2 or 3 on one DVD as opposed to one per DVD? Your picture quality is really going to suffer if you try to squeeze 5 or 6 hours onto one disc. You're going to have macro blocks in action scenes and the picture will stutter.

[nick101181]

Well to save dvd-r's is one reason. Besides if I can good some decent quality and fit maybe 4 hours or 4.5 hours on a dvd then it's ok with me. minimal pixelation is ok cause the dtv stream has tiny pixelation on my tv already anyway so if I can almost match the source or go a little under it's fine with me.

[makntraks]

I was wondering what's the best method of fitting 2 -3 movies from satellite to dvd-r? I know I could use mpeg1 at 1836kbps but for some reason my apex shutters and doesn't play any mpeg1 good if it's above 1800 kbps. I'm looking to fit almost 3 films whether they are 2 hours or 1.5 hours or even 2.5 hours onto one dvd-r. My system is really outdated I have a 833 mghtz celeron and 256 mb of ram. I tried capturing with powervcr II but it sucked the quality was ok but the sync was way off even when I was capturing at a low resoultion that I know my pc can handle. I can record to mpeg2 720x480 at 4mbps but the quality is a little lower. any ideas?

See this Topic
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=215741
Depending on what your capping off your satellite it might just be illegal.. but then again if you read the topic threads it might not be.. Better safe than sorry (carded)..

makntraks

[nick101181]

I have a new idea if this works. Ok I have one film I recorded as a svcd in cbr. it's 2 hours and 18 mins so it's 2.4 gig. I'm patching the header to see how it's gonna look on dvd-r. If it looks good thne I will make 2 more svcds but of movies that are not as long. Thne I will use the vobs i make and re-shrink them down to fit 2-3 films to a dvd-r thne if everything goes right then I will make a guide and tell you guys my results.

[nick101181]

Ok I ran into a few problems. I could use some help with this. One of my main problems is not knowing that much about field order. some programs capture mpeg field order a or field order b or de-interlaced(progressive). When I played back the patched svcd on a dvd-rw it jittered and jumped alot every two seconds. This leads me to believe it's a field order problem. also when I patched it for 720x480 the whole movie plays with this big rectangle on the side of the screen. Do you think If i patched the header to 352 instead of 720 it would stretch across the screen? Also it's a bit pixelated when I play it back during any motion i'm not exactly sure why because I thought a CBR of 2500kbps would be pretty solid. Also which filed order should i record my video in? progressive, field b or field a ? this would be a big help maybe it wouls stop the jumping/jitterying every two seconds.

[W_Eagle]

I constantly burn 2 movies captured from satellite into 1 DVD-R, sometimes 3 -- altogether up to about 5 hours.
I capture 350x576, which is 1/2D1 and a legal DVD resolution.
I calculate the necessary bitrate with Bitrate Calculator and encode with TMPGEnc 2 pass VBR. For about 5 hours it takes around 1,800Kb, which gives me good results on most cases (I don't burn more than 4.3GB per DVD-R).
Another option is to encode with TMPGEnc in CBR at min. bitrate of 2,000Kb and than author with TMPGEnc DVD Author and than shrink the file to the desired size with DVD Shrink.
BTW, the audio I encode to AC3 at 192Kb/s. If it is classical music, at 224Kb/s.

[nick101181]

OK thanks for your reply. So do you have any idea which field order I should capture my mpeg2 in? the source is ntsc from satellite. I like the settings you used but that sounds like you are caping to avi then encoding to mpeg2. I'm wanting the best results for capping directly to mpeg2. My system is soooo slow to encode anything I have a 833 mghtz celeron processor(but reads 797 in xp for some reason) and only 256 mb of ram. I know I should get a wintv pvr-250 but I'm hesitant cause I know my pc needs some major upgrades as well. Plus it sucks taping something and having to be on that channel cause I don't own a diretivo. With directivo I could just pull the streams off the harddrive and patch the headers. so yeah any idea on the field order?

[W_Eagle]

Sorry, pal -- have no idea about field order. The computer used for capturing is busy now -- anyhow, it depends upon your capturing card -- you will have to experiment.
Yes, I capture to avi and encode to mpeg2.

[f_oneone]

a celery processor is hella slow to be capturing/converting/editing anything with...you might wanna read up a bit at lordsmurfs on basics (field order- and interlace Vs deinterlace)

[disturbed1]

So do you have any idea

Top field first, or what the default is in you capture program, should work. Author that to a DVD RW, and watch it. If it's wrong just use ReStream to change the field order, and remember what it changed it too.

You system is plenty fast enough for a 250PVR. If you have the cash, get it. You can always upgrade the other stuff later.

An upgrade now, you would need a new mother board, new CPU, and most likely new memory, and still have the same capture card, so you'd pretty much be in the same boat.

With directivo I could just pull the streams off the harddrive and patch the headers.

Not that easy. You have to pull the HD out, and hack it. The USB ports are not enabled on the Direct TiVo units like a normal TiVo. There also isn't an ethernet port, nor a place to add one. But, once you hack the HD, you can just remove the HD, connect it to a Linux PC (I use a Knoppix Live CD) and pull the programs off to a FAT32 partation on your HD. But I don't even bother with that anymore, I just capture it, it's easier for me. The girlfriend freaks anytime I open the case up

[pyrohydra]

Not that easy. You have to pull the HD out, and hack it. The USB ports are not enabled on the Direct TiVo units like a normal TiVo. There also isn't an ethernet port, nor a place to add one. But, once you hack the HD, you can just remove the HD, connect it to a Linux PC (I use a Knoppix Live CD) and pull the programs off to a FAT32 partation on your HD. But I don't even bother with that anymore, I just capture it, it's easier for me. The girlfriend freaks anytime I open the case up

The series 1 directivos have a slot where one can add an ethernet card (a special custom-made card). The series 2 directivo (the one with two tuners) has no such slot, but as you mentioned earlier, they have two USB ports, which can be enabled easily if the unit is hacked, and one can plug in a USB -> ethernet adapter. My USB 2.0 adapter, although not as fast as full 100 mbit ethernet, is plenty fast enough for me to stream content from the tivo to my PC (my max xfer rate is about 2 MB/sec).