converting from DV .avi to mpeg-2 -- not fitting 80 min on 1

[Majtolycus]

Hello

I recently purchased a Pioneer A03 and upgraded my computer in anticipation of delving into the world of DVD authoring. My system stats are as follows: P4 1.5Ghz, 512M RAM, 60gig HD split into two 30G partitions, one for the OS, one for the data. I'm using Adobe Premiere 6.0, TMPEGenc and VideoPack 5.0 and running Windows ME (yes, I know about the damn evil 4G limit, arg). I've read through months of posts on these forums to make sure this question hasn't been asked yet (well, at least in the confused, complicated manner I'm asking it )

The problem I'm having is that after I acquire video from my Canon DV camcorder (as microsoft DV... I forget which type, but TMPEGenc will open and encode it just fine) and encode it in TMPEGenc, it seems like the mpeg-2 files coming out are too big. What I mean is, I've heard that you can fit from 80 min to 120 min on one DVD (4.3G) and was hoping to at least fit 80 min at very good quality. I encoded the files with the exact settings described in the How To section of this site. Due to the 4G limit I split my files into chunk of about 18mins each. After I encode to mpeg-2, the file size goes down to 1.12G. But looking at the math, I'll barely be getting 70 min to one DVD.

I guess my question is this... what settings could I have screwed up on (if I did), and if I didn't make a dumb mistake, what settings could I look into downgrading to sacrifice the smallest bit of picture quality for those all-important 10 more minutes (I'm trying to fit act 1 of my kid brother's school play on one DVD, and it's about 80.5 min).

Also, one more question while I'm at it... Can someone clarify to this lunk head how exactly I'm supposed to beat the 4G file limit when I want to burn a probably 4.3G (or whatever the max size is) DVD? I would assume that the video stream has to be all one mpeg-2 file... am I wrong? I read some stuff about sequencing, but all it did was confuse me further.

Any suggestions or words of wisdom would be extremely appreciated.
Many thanks.

--=Majtolycus

[JHebert]

You can try changing the bitrate setting in TMPGEnc when you encode your AVI to MPEG2. After you load the DVD template in TMPGEnc load the Unlock template in the Extras folder to enable you to change the bitrate. Then select Settings button and then select the Video tab. There you can change the bitrate to a lower value so you can fit more minutes for a given file size. Use a bitrate calculator to determine the bitrate to use.
DVD authoring programs don't make one big MPEG2 file instead they break it down into VOB files which are about 1GB each on the DVD.
You can find lots of more detailed guides on the net to help get started in DVD encoding and authoring.

[vlk3]

back to school and learn math. If your movie is too big, simply use lower bitrate. It is not too hard to divide media size by minutes and seconds and find the correct bitrate.

4500120x60)= cca. 5000 kb/s. Select 2 pass VBR, use 5000 kb/s average bitrate, 7000 kb/s maximal. Encode pieces smaller 4 GB.

Then start up any DVD authoring tools like Minerva Impression or Sonic DVD It and authorize your DVD.

Look at any normal DVD - there are 1 GB VOBS. And you have the same files on your own DVD