VHS to DVD, compressing files

[reenie143]

We have captured all of the videos we need right now in Moviestar. Then, we rendered the movies into DVD Complete so they are ready to burn now. We have a lot of videos to transfer from VHS to DVD so we are looking to get the most time possible on a DVD. We are looking to compress our files from our hard drive. We downloaded DVD Shrink because we were told it would help, but we can't seem to open our files in the program. (when we try to open it says Invalid Filename) Should we use DVD Shrink to compress our files or do we need to use another program? Thanks for your help.

[MOVIEGEEK]

What format are your videos in?If they are .mpg or .avi they won't work with DVDSHRINK,you need to author them first in file mode(IFO,BUP,VOB).

[reenie143]

our format is mpeg. how do we author them in file mode?

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use TMPGEnc DVD Author,Ulead VideoStudio,etc.
Look to the left for guides.

[reenie143]

we have already spent $200 on software. Is there anything free we could use?

[MOVIEGEEK]

I've never tried it but IFOEDIT can.
Guide: www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/120013.php

[reenie143]

Has anyone used IFOEDIT?? I just downloaded it and tried to Author a new DVD but the file wouldn't even open. How do I get it to work? And will just authoring a dvd in this program compress my files on the hard drive to then burn on a dvd?

[FOO]

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/120013.php

You might try MovieFactory2 for 30 days. it's the easiest

MF2 will re-encode if you want. slowly

DVDshrink will quickly squish a DVD file set that is too big.


You should get a plan if you are doing lots of them so the Mpegs come out
the right size to start with

[overloaded_ide]

I agree with Foo about getting the capture size right durring capture, that will save time and work later.

But for now since you have them already on the hard drive.
If they are mpeg2 files and probably mpeg1s, you can use Tmpgenc DVD author to create a DVD, then view it with Power DVD and make sure it is how you want it, then shrink it with DVDshrink. Then view it again with power DVD to be sure you did not lose quality.

Tmpgenc DVD author is fully working for 30days free. It does ALOT.
If your wanting several movies on one DVD R, you could author your movies to DVD files, shrink them, open several DVDs in DVD Author and create one DVD that way.

Also through experimenting I found you can do a DVD9 with the program also
So you could open about 8gigs of movies, make one 8gig DVD, then shrink that to fit one DVD R also.

DVDshrink is free and easy to use, I have both version 2.3 and 3 beta 5 that I use.
Tmpgenc DVD author works great, 30 day demo fully working, then about $70 to to buy it.

[reenie143]

that sounds so complicated....too many steps!.....i am NEW to all of this and need something simple for just compressing my files to get more time on a DVD. Isn't there a program we could use to just compress and then burn it easily? PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME

[housepig]

that sounds so complicated....too many steps!.....i am NEW to all of this and need something simple for just compressing my files to get more time on a DVD. Isn't there a program we could use to just compress and then burn it easily? PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME

please, this is not brain surgery, and no one's life is at stake.

if you want to do it right, yourself, you will have to learn, and yes, some things will have a learning curve. If you don't want to deal with a learning curve, pay someone else to process your files.

the only way to make an encoded file smaller is to reencode it. you will get exponentially better quality if you go back to step one, and reencode your initial avi file, than you will if you reencode the (already encoded)mpeg.

decide how much material you want to put on the disc. go to the Bitrate Calculator in the Tools section and enter that amount of time in - it will give you the average bitrate. reencode your files at that bitrate. it's not that hard.

and if you want quality, it's going to look better as a fresh encode at the right bitrate then it will if you reencode or transcode an encoded file (which is what DVD Shrink & DVD2One do).

or, again, hire someone else who knows what they are doing to do your grunt work for you.

[Gees]

if you want to do it right, yourself, you will have to learn, and yes, some things will have a learning curve. If you don't want to deal with a learning curve, pay someone else to process your files.

I wish more people would say that!

I see a real problem with all this advertising on programs telling people "Put All Your Home Movies on DVD!" People buy one box of software and believe the claim and think the box will do it all.

I've spent a year so far researching, testing, trial & error, learning to do this professionally. And a lot more than $200.00.

I try and encourage anyone to try and do it themselves. It can be fun and rewarding. :c)

But it's becoming really frustrating reading so many posts that ask to be told every step from start to finish the day they come home with the box - or new burner.

I wish the boxes said: "Put All Your Home Movies on DVD! Buy our software, take a few weeks off from work, send the kids to Grandma's. and prepare to do a lot of reading in every spare minute you have outside of eating and sleeping. And you too can have your videos on DVD!"

- rant concluded

:c)

[presto]

DVD shrink needs the vob and ifo files that are on a finished DVD or that are created to be burned to a DVD. It is not intended to work on mpeg files.

I use Tmpenc DVD author to create the files and I ignore the warning it gives that the files are too big for a DVD. When the vob, bup, and ifo files are created on my hard drive I use DVD shrink to compress them so they fit on a single DVD.

You will have to figure out for yourself how to do this with DVD complete. I don't know if it will allow you to create a DVD that is over 4.7 G or not.

[tomk]

Hi,

you may want to visit the following unofficial forums, exspecially the thread "succes story" , also "beckerpm" can help you.
With this help fropm the former dazzle forum I transfered > 50 tapes to dvd with great quality.

HTH
Tom

http:\\beckerpm.dyndns.org
www.b2tek.com/dazzle

[geek rock]

I wish the boxes said: "Put All Your Home Movies on DVD! Buy our software, take a few weeks off from work, send the kids to Grandma's. and prepare to do a lot of reading in every spare minute you have outside of eating and sleeping. And you too can have your videos on DVD!"

shouldn't that be..

"Put All Your Home Movies on DVD! Buy our software, take a few weeks off from work, send the kids to Grandma's, and post a question on the dvdrhelp.com forums every five minutes asking for something that's already answered in the guides, and you too can have your videos on DVD!"

[Gees]

GeekRock- Too True! :cD

What was I thinking!? :cD

[reenie143]

i'm not trying to compain about this.....just trying to get some answers to my problems~~~i heard from someone today that if i compress my files i will only be able to watch them from my computer and not on tv~does anyone know if this is true?

[FOO]

Nothing is true unless you have personally verified it,

[housepig]

i heard from someone today that if i compress my files i will only be able to watch them from my computer and not on tv

is that person aware that every dvd they own is "compressed"?

okay, here's the deal - you have raw video coming in to a capture device. you can capture that uncompressed, which is a gigantic amount of data. or you can capture it compressed in some way, either lossy or lossless.

you compress data with a codec (COder / DECoder). some codecs are made for video capture in high quality (MJPEG, Huffy) and some are optimized for size and speed of download (Divx, Xvid).

If you are putting video on a dvd, you are going to need to encode it with the mpeg-2 codec - so it's compressed.

so the short answer is, your friend is confusing specific compression codecs and strategies with compression in general. and you don't know enough to know that, so I suggest you need to read the "What Is" section, the Glossary, and some of the guides and get some more information.

[reenie143]

thanks for helping!.....so, mpeg 2- codec will compress our files and then they will be ready to burn to dvd?

[lordsmurf]

we have already spent $200 on software.

I hate to be the bearer of bads news... but that is nothing. I have single programs that cost 3x that amount.

[bottle-necked]

Movie Star, DVD Complete.... That wouldn't be a Dazzle Combo would it? GOOOOOOOOOOOOD Luck.
Been there, done that, junked the whole mess a long time ago.

[reenie143]

Dazzle was recommended to us....i have heard good and bad things about Dazzle products.....what's so wrong with Dazzle products?

[FOO]

They don't exist anymore for one thing

Some people claim they never did

[reenie143]

well they are owned by pinnacle products now~but what's wrong with the actual program in the first place? Are they bad products? I haven't had that many problems so far except i am confused about compressing

[housepig]

reenie -

one of the problems with some of those apps is that in doing everything for you, they take away a lot of the control, and hide a lot of the process.

then what happens is people get bored with the standard templates, or the layout, or they want to change something, and the application will not let them. there's no room to grow, because it's not what they are built for - they are built to do everything for you, with a minimum of technical input from you.

so now, you've made a bunch of discs, but you don't really know anything about what you've been doing, because you've been working with a 3-step app that has done it all behind the scenes. then you go to more advanced apps, and you don't even know where to start.

you've been kept in the dark for convienience sake.

THAT's why I don't use Pinnacle or Dazzle stuff - none of it has struck me as being able to grow or adapt as my needs grow and change.

don't be afraid to follow a guide, or read a help file, or especially a glossary - this stuff isn't rocket science. and the rewards can be great, but there's going to be more of an effort needed than "Insert file name and press the big red 'MAKE DISC' button."

And it doesn't have to take long, if you're into it - I've played around a little with video for years, but I never got serious and dove into it until about 8 months ago, and my knowledge and skills - not to mention my end results - have been steadily growing better and better.

[reenie143]

housepig.....i completely understand what you mean and i know that it is not an easy process....it hasn't been so far. But i have some files in the computer, they are edited with chapter points and menus.....i am so close to burning a disc but i would like to get more time on that disc because i have so many of them to burn....that's the only thing i need to know is how to get more space on a disc and i can't seem to get any relevant answer to my question....it's frustrating not being able to proceed with my process...my sister and i are putting all of our vhs tapes to dvd for my parents for christmas and if we don't have even one disc burned, it's going to be disappointing....i just want to burn one dvd and get more than an hour and a half on one disc!!

[bottle-necked]

reenie143, welcome to the forum! Glad you are here and glad I might be able to help ya. I just hope I don't 'hurt ya' in the process. ok

Dazzle? My Dazzle box was broken so I took it back and got another. I though, by reading the box and reading what I had up to that point, that it was what I was looking for. After working in it, or rather - trying to work with it, I was so dissapointed I got out of video for awhile. The product, as a package, just wasn't what I was looking for and for the price I had just paid!!!! Just wasn't worth it. The video it captured wasn't up to the anticipated quality I had wanted.

You have all these projects ready to burn in DVD complete but I suppose you haven't did any of them yet. I strongly suggest you get ya at least (1) DVD-RW(or+RW, whatever drive you have) and practice on it instead of thinking you are going to get desired results from the beginning. The RW disk can be erased and used over about 1000 times, where 'R' disk are a one time shot then throw away when they mess up. DVD Complete has crashed on me during so many burning processes that I just had it to make DVD folders and I would manually burn them myself with my burning software. The menu screens might look pretty good on computer but when you see them on TV they won't look so good. Their music is junk. Their menu's can be changed some by selecting "clear" pictures and frames, but I've had it to crash when doing that too. It's just not a high quality program I could advise anyone to purchase.

MovieStar is just as bad. Once you've used other higher quality editing programs you will agree with me. It's not easy to use nor is it stable. If you were able to actually finish a big editing project without it crashing you were extremely lucky. Believe me. I've lost so much work in that program I deleted it one night in a raging fit. Ulead VideoStudio, although it has it's share of problems also, is by far a better program for that kind of work.

We're all here trying to help ya, and for free at that, but your simple question isn't that easy to answer. There probably isn't many eyes thats reading this right now that hasn't had to resize a video project just to be dissapointed when we realized we lost nearly all our beautiful quality in the process. Capturing/Editing/Authorizing Video is a project/hobby/job that takes some planning and study if one expects to do any kind of quality work at all. If you've captured your video at a rate and framesize that now only 1 1/2 hours will fit on a DVD then you are at the same crossroads I've been at several times (more video than disk). I've tried all the cures---- resize, resample, trim the audio, trim the video, etc. There was no good answer for me then and there is no good answer for you now except ----- start over again at the proper size/bitrate.

If your files were in AVI then you would have some more options, but even then you're going to pick up some noise you may not be able to stand. Quality will degrade somewhat and if it's not real high to begin with it's going to drop off more than not. You can try some resizing and maybe even some audio tricks, but it's not advisable to do it that way. You probably won't be happy with the quality.

There are links to all your questions just to your "left" on this computer screen and one of them is Capture. That's a good place to start reading. I'll bet that after you finish reading a single page you will understand what I've spent the last 10 minutes trying to say.

Best of luck and sorry I took so long to type it. lol

[housepig]

i have some files in the computer, they are edited with chapter points and menus.....i am so close to burning a disc but i would like to get more time on that disc because i have so many of them to burn....that's the only thing i need to know is how to get more space on a disc and i can't seem to get any relevant answer to my question....

you are getting the ONLY relevant answer - more time on a disc = smaller file sizes.

to get smaller sizes, you either need to reencode your files using a lower bitrate, or you need to transcode the disc, once you get it authored.

if you want to reencode, reread my earlier post about the Bitrate Calculator.

if you want to transcode, author your disc, ignoring any messages saying it's oversize. save it to your harddrive as a set of dvd files (.ifo, .vob, etc.) Use DVD Shrink or DVD2One to transcode those files down to a compliant size.

if your authoring software will not let you author an oversize (>4.38Gb) file, or will not let you author a dvd project to the harddrive rather than a blank disc, you are out of luck, and either need to get some better software, or reencode your input files to a proper size. If you have deleted your original files, or captured them as mpeg files instead of avi files, you are going to have to start over and recapture.

and again, a properly-encoded file will look better than a transcoded file. it's like building a door to fit a non-standard doorway, or buying a standard door and cutting it down to fit.

I find it odd that you want this to be awesome and don't want people disappointed, but you don't want to take the time to do it right. Sometimes you go down a path, and you realize that you went the wrong way, and you have to scrap everything and start over. It's not the end of the world, and may end up taking less time than trying to kludge together some crappy-looking "easy" solution.

[reenie143]

thank you so much for taking the time to help us. I think we've come to the conclusion that we need to return this product if possible and find something that will make burning dvd's easier to understand and do. Do you have any suggestions of a program we should get? We are looking for a BASIC program, nothing fancy.....we simply want to transfer our VHS's to DVD....that's all!!....we don't want any high-tech programs to increase quality or anything....we want the quality as it is. We are college students so we are looking for something affordable, reliable, and somewhat easy to use (because we don't have all the time in the world to be working on this) If you have any suggestions for what we are looking for, I would truly appreciate your help. Thanks.