2 hour VHS to DVD (newbie questions)

[demcgo]

First post...

I currently have Win XP Pro (service pack 1). I have got the stand alone computer not connected to internet. I have the following programs, Pinnacle 8 deluxe, AVC-2210 (with cature 2.0 USB) 321 studios X-maker and X copy express (before the change of ripper). I can not figure out for the life of me,

how to get the size of compression down to a usable DVD size (4.7G, know it is lower than that). Any suggestions.

I see that the authoring part is taken care of and the getting to the hard drive is taken care of... it is the compression that is kicking my butt. I have tried just about every mode. Maybe something I am missing or another program (like TMPGENC) that I need. If you can help I would greatly aprreciate it. I may just drop all these programs and go with the ones that I have repeatedly seen in the different forums but really think that I already have the hardware and software to accomplish my tasks.. I hope, any ways. I am currently trying to record VHS movies to DVD. Camera and video are no problem for me as the studio 8 does a fantastic job. I really appreciate you reading my garbage here.. Thank you in advance...

[teegee420]

Sounds like you have things taken care of as far as capturing and editing. I'm not familiar with Pinncale so are you exporting your video as AVI? If so you are only 3 steps away from finishing your DVD. All you need to do is use an encoder to create a DVD compliant mpeg, such as TMPGEnc. You need to choose a bitrate that will allow your entire movie to fit. Tak the total running time of your movie and plug it into a bitrate calculator such as the DVDRhelp Bitrate Calculator. Once your mpeg is created you only need to author the DVD with something like TMPGEnc DVD Author, again, I don't know if Pinnacle is capable of authoring. Once your VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders are created all you have to do is burn with Nero or your preferred DVD recording software. By the way, TMPGEnc DVD Author can burn for you too.

[teegee420]

I forgot to mention that when you re-encode your avi to DVD mpeg, you may want to choose a resolution of 352x480 as opposed to 720x480. The bitrate required to fit a 2 hour movie will be better used on the lower frame size. Besides, 352x480 is near the actual resolution of your VHS. And welcome to the forum!

[DaveS]

demcgo -

hang on .. before diving in to tmpgenc, etc. your Studio 8 has everything you need...if you can get it do to the following w/o crashing, hanging-up, it will be eaiser than going to an additional set of s/w:

- capture your video and create your project in Studio 8

- In Studio 8, when you click the '3 make movie' tab, this is where you set up the parameters for, encode and burn your disk.

- click the 'Disc' vertical tab on the left to tell S8 that you want to make a disk (DVD, since you mention 4.7 gig (actually it's 4.35 gig = 4.7 gigabytes).

- Click the 'settings' button and the tab that should be visible in the window that appears should be the 'make a disk' tab.

- In that tab, you can select 'automatic' quality which will set the bitrate to fit your project onto the DVD ... select MPEG Audio checkbox (check it off) to make more space for your video (it will be more compressed than the LPCM audio)

- Up to a two hour video w/ some menus should fit / look fine...I can't see your profile right now ...if you have a burner that supports RW media, burn that first as a draft to check your project before buring the R media...

good luck!!