DVD Video Length Question

[Chryzmo]

Heyas.

I just got a DVD Writer (Digital Research Technologies DDVDRW4D) and I am a little confused as to how much video you can fit on one DVD. Using the software that came with the drive, it tells me that I can fit a max of 124 mintues of video on the DVD, however on this site there is a chart that is saying with lower quality video I should be able to get 3 - 7 hours.

I am trying to burn episodes of a TV show that I have in .RM format. I converted them to .AVIs with EO Video and then to DVD .MPGs with TMPGEnc, with the TMPGEnc software it too tells me the most time I will be able to put on the DVD would be 2 hours. I know .RM files tend to be fairly bad quality to begin with, and with all the converting I have had to go through I would think that quality would worsten at least a little, therefore allowing me to fit more video on a DVD.

Does anyone know if there is someway I would be able to git more than 2 hours on a single DVD? So far I have tried Pinnacle Studio 8(this came with my drive) and TMPGEnc Author.

Thanks,
Chris

[ZippyP.]

File size and minutes per disk depend solely on the average bitrate used to encode the mpeg(s). A DVD can vary from 1100 Kbps up to 9800 Kbps in rate giving a range of 1-7 hours per disk. DVD also has 3 basic NTSC resolutions: 352x240 (VCD), 352x480 (1/2 D1) and 720x480 (Full D1). PAL resolutions are only slightly different. Lower resolutions can be encoded using lower bitrates and higher res needs higher rates to keep looking good or blockiness results. What resolution you choose depends on your source resolution, how many minutes you want on your disk and also on your personal viewing preferences. Most people use 1/2 D1 resolution for TV and home video capture but some are happy with VCD. You need to do some experimenting to find your own preference and your bitrate limits for each resolution. Like I said it depends on the quality of your source as well.

BTW, the standard DVD templates in TMPGEnc are for full D1.

[Chryzmo]

Thanks a lot!

Would you happen to know what bitrate to use to get 5 hours of 1/2 D1 video on a single DVD?

Thanks,
Chris

[ZippyP.]

Would you happen to know what bitrate to use to get 5 hours of 1/2 D1 video on a single DVD?

A bitrate calculator can help with that sort of thing, they're in the Tools section (over there <-<-). I recommend the DVDRhelp calculator. It told me that your video bitrate would be 1800 kbps and audio 224 kbps. I use TMPGEnc for mpeg encoding and I would use 2-pass VBR if the bitrate was as low as 1800 (minimum 200, maximum 8000). VBR allows the average to be 1800 while giving more bits to high motion scenes and less bits to static scenes. It takes double the time but in this case it would be worth it. Good luck.