Newbie question about burning DVD.

[bowana]

i've just bought my first DVD writer and have a few questions for the seasoned pros. It came with Sonic MyDVD version 4.0 which is fairly simple for someone as new to this as me to use. But I can only seem to get about 80 min. of a movie on to one disk. I am trying to put several different clips onto a disk so it will play on my stand alone DVD player, but I would like to put more than that on one. My question is am I going to be able to get more info on a disk by going through all of the steps with TMPGEnc and the DVD author or is it going to be about the same? I dno't mind putting in the time to do the work if I can get more on the disk but if it's still going to be the same I don't see the need, other than the quality of the work. I hope someone will give me a few pointers and ideas. I'd be gratefull. Thanks.

[teegee420]

How much you are able to squeeze on a disc depends on the total length of your clips, and the bitrate you encode with. Do some test clips with TMPGenc using varying bitrates and decide for yourself what the lowest bitrate you are happy with that doesn't take too much away from overall video quality. You might want to get yourself a bitrate calculator too, or just use the one here.

[ZippyP.]

File size, bitrate and resolution go hand in hand and DVD has 3 basic resolution types, VCD, 1/2 DVD and full DVD. For VCD quality up to 7.5 hours can be put on a disk, 1/2 DVD 5 hours and full DVD 2.5 hrs. The times are rough estimates only, your tolerance and encoding methods may vary.

I don't know what sonic mydvd is capable of, but TMPGEnc can produce mpegs at the above resolutions and you can vary the bitrate to fill your DVD.

[lacywest]

Using Sonic MyDvd ... InterVideo WinDVD Creator 2 ... and other similar programs ... are not the best for making DVD file/folder structures.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could over ride their settings but your usually stuck with great bitrates if its one hour ... after one hour ... they want to change the resolution size to a smaller one.

Cure for me is ...

1) Create the mpg-2 DVD compliant file with InterVideo WinDVD Creator 2 [7 kbits bitrate and 740x480 resolution is one of their choices]

2) Take that huge 7 gig mpg-2 DVD compliant video and use TMPGEnc DVD Author ... to make the DVD ... Video_TS ... folder.

3) And then use Nero Recode 2 ... to shrink it to fit on DVD disk.

I'm using Nero Recode 2 ... as I speak.