File size issue - Help

[parkay2]

Hi all, I was jumping up and down last night. I have a 20 year old VHS tape that is on it's last legs and managed to burn a DVD using the basic version of SONIC MyDVD. The quality was very acceptable. No jitters - no choppy transitions on scene changes, etc... The over all quality was as good as the original VHS. I captured the video straight to DVD-NTSC using the lowest bitrate setting of 4000. I captured the tape into my computer directly into DVD-NTSC format. I selected the lowest bitrate that I could to keep the file size as small as possible, but Sonic MyDVD wastes plenty of disk space for the audio. To get off track for a moment, I've tried the VHS tape to DVD disk method using a capture to MPEG-2, encoding to video_TS/audio_TS, creating a DVD Image on hard drive, then burning to disk. It worked, but the quality was bad. MY new computer is about as top of the line as you can get these days and capturing directly to DVD-NTSC format goes smoothly.

Back on topic... When I capture directly to DVD-NTSC format, I end up with an anything.mpg file. Easy as pie, keeps my wife happy to since I'm not sitting at the computer staring at the screen. Anyhow, the basic version of MyDVD using my best calculation can transcode about 1 hour of video that is captured to DVD-NTSC at a bitrate of 4000. According to Sonic the Deluxe version of Sonic MyDVD handles the audio better allowing 50% more disc space for the video, which would mean about 90 minutes of video. A few questions for the group:

1. Is there a better program to transcode and burn a DVD using a *.Mpg DVD-NTSC file? I would like to find one that can handle 2 hrs of video.

2. Is there a way of doing some magic to take the *.mpg file and reduce the size of it, while preserving quality?

Again, thanks in advance!!!

[redwudz]

Congradulations! You have done better than many for a first time DVD maker. I would recommend you study the guides to the left. Not that familiar with MYDVD. I would download a trial copy of TMPGEnc Plus encoder and work with it a little. It has a lot of options and is fairly easy to use. I also use TMPGEnc Author. There are quite a few ways to do what you want.

[Gazorgan]

As I recall, your software has PCM audio on the brain. Look through the tool sections for Authoring applications that support AC3/5.1 audio (TMPG Author is one, with free 30 day trial).