VHS to DVD conversion - Am I expecting too much?

[jagabo]

DV is normally higher quality MPEG. Use it if you plan on performing a lot of filtering.

[RonM]

I am trying the Dazzle DVC-107 USB video capture device, with software Pinnacle Studio HD. First I captured a 2 hour VHS tape using the DV setting. The size of the avi file it created was 25 gig. Then I captured the same tape using the MPEG setting at the default bitrate of 6mbit. The mpg file it created was 5 gig. Now I am trying the MPEG setting at the highest bitrate it allows ... 10mbit. At the MPEG setting it uses the mpeg2 codec.

[jagabo]

10 Mb/s should turn out twice as big as 5 Mb/s if there's no audio. The relationship between file size and bitrate is basically:

file size = bitrate * running time

The bitrate is the sum of the audio and video bitrates (and any other streams). And there's a little overhead for the container.

25 GB is about right for 2 hours of DV (always ~13 GB/hr).

[RonM]

It turned out the file size was the same (5 gig) for each of the 2-hour recordings, one at 6 Mb/S and the other at 10 Mb/S. It doesn't make sense. Can you tell me what the file size should be?

[jagabo]

file size = bitrate * running time

file size = 5 Mb/s * 7200 seconds
file size = 36,000 Mb (now divide by 8 to get Bytes instead of bits)
file size = 4,500 MB

That calculation doesn't include the audio and container overhead. At 10 Mb/s the file should be twice as large. If the encoder delivered the same size for both 5 and 10 Mb/s requests it didn't deliver the requested bitrate. This can happen if the video doesn't have much detail or if there were some other restrictions in the encoder settings.

[RonM]

Why would quality be reduced if you burn two hours of video onto a DVD instead of one hour of video?

[jagabo]

Because two hour of video has be squished into the same size as one hour of video (assuming your filling the disc with each). More compression (lower bitrate) leads to lower quality.

[RonM]

I don't know how to tell a burner to spread out my one hour video across a 2 hour disc, instead of squashing it into the first half of the disc and leaving the second half blank.

[jagabo]

You don't want to spread 1 hour of video over two discs. The maximum bitrate you can use on a DVD is about 10,000 kbps. At that bitrate a 4.3 GB disc hold about 1 hour of video. At half that rete, 5,000 kbps, you can put 2 hours on the same disc. But the quality won't be as good.

[RonM]

I created my movie project on Pinnacle Studio HD v.14. I am working with DV AVI files. When I tell it make the movie to a file to play back on computer or TV, it creates an AVI file that plays fine on my computer. However, when I tell it to make the movie to a Disc, it immediately crashes my computer and causes it to reboot. Any idea what might cause this?

[RonM]

A disc only holds 4.3 GB? Each one hour movie I create is 12.5 GB of data (DV AVI format). How do I handle that? Do I need to compress it to some other format first, or should the burner handle that in the process of burning?

[manono]

If you want to keep it as DV-AVI (and unable to be played on any standalone DVD player), you'll have to split it into 2 (for DVD-9) or 3 (For DVD+/R) pieces before burning. No, a burner only burns and doesn't reencode or convert.

If you want to put it on a single DVD +/-R that holds 4.37GB as a regular DVD (IFOs, BUPs, VOBs), it has to be converted/reencoded before then being burned to disc.

[RonM]

I captured the data from my VHS tapes in DV AVI format because the quality was so good, and editing in that format was really nice ... every frame sharp and clear to do the precise cuts. Now I just want to burn normal DVDs. What format should I convert these DV AVI files to for the best video quality on the DVDs?

[manono]

You don't have any choice in the matter. If you want 'normal DVDs', you convert them to MPEG-2 DVD video.

[RonM]

One interesting point: After I had Pinnacle Studio create a movie as an avi file on my computer (from my DV avi files as a source), I was able to burn that avi file to a normal DVD using Windows DVD Maker. I could play that disc on my regular dvd player. But that was a small test movie about 10 minutes long and the avi file was 2.6 GB

[RonM]

I gave Windows DVD Maker a 12.5 GB AVI file (58 minutes of video) to burn to DVD. Instead of complaining about the size of the file, it informed me that I only gave it 58 minutes out of a possible 150 minutes for the DVD. The DVD it created looks fine.
It must be converting the AVI to MPEG-2 under the covers. My question is, since I only burned one hour of content, would it have spread the data evenly over the disc, or would it have squished it into the first hour space on the disc and left the rest of the disc blank?

[jagabo]

Windows DVD Maker uses a bitrate around 4000 kbps. That allows up to 150 minutes on a single layer DVD. So whatever you burn to the DVD gets converted to 4000 kbps MPEG 2. If you only supply 58 minutes the disc will end up about 39 percent full. Hence the warning. I don't see any way of specifying a different bitrate. But I don't know the program well.

[RonM]

I open a case with Avid Customer Support about my system crashing every time I click on the button to make a movie to disc. If I can get this problem fixed, perhaps I can burn at a higher bitrate higher than 4000 using Pinnacle Studio. Or there must be another program out there that will burn at better quality than Windows DVD Maker.

[RonM]

What is the difference between DV AVI and raw uncompressed AVI?

[jagabo]

DV AVI is has video that is compressed with the DV codec. Uncompressed AVI has uncompressed frames. DV compresses to about 1/5 the size of uncompressed YUY2, or 1/8 the size of uncompressed RGB. DV use a slightly lossy compression technique that runs about 25 Mb/s. Every frame is a keyframe (a self contained image) making it very easy to edit. As opposed to higher compression codecs like MPEG 2 where most frames only encode the differences between frames.

[RonM]

When I captured in DV AVI and in MPEG, the MPEG file was 1/5 the size of the DV AVI file. So I guess MPEG compresses to 1/25 the size of uncompressed YUY2.

[manono]

With MPEG-2 the bitrates can vary. If your (crap) Windows DVD Maker uses a 4000 bitrate, a different MPEG-2 encoder encoding at an 8000 bitrate will produce an MPEG-2 file twice the size of the Windows one.

[RonM]

I need to find software that will burn a DVD at 10000 kbps, and will let me define the chapters where I want them. Windows DVD Maker will not burn at 10000, and defines the chapters where IT wants them. Pinnacle Studio versions 12 and 14 crash the system when you try to burn a disc, both on Vista and on Windows 7.

[manono]

I need to find software that will burn a DVD at 10000 kbps, and will let me define the chapters where I want them.

A quick check of the 'What Is DVD' link in the upper left of every page would show you that what you want isn't possible. The max video bitrate allowed is 9800kbps and once you figure in the audio bitrate and subs, if any, and muxing overhead, it often has to be less since the max overall bitrate can only be 10080kbps.

And almost any decent DVD Authoring program will allow you to set chapter points where ever you like (as long as they fall on an I-Frame).

[RonM]

I just want to burn at near the highest kbps possible, which puts only 1 hour on a DVD. So anything near 9800 kbps would be great. The only way have found to define scenes where you want them in Windows DVD Maker is to import a separate project file for each scene. Even then, it will only show 18 scenes in the DVD menu. On the DVD it creates, when you click on the button to advance to the next scene, it advances to somewhere in the middle of the first scene and you have to advance about 5 times to get to the start of the 2nd scene. I would like it to advance to the starting point of each sequential scene with each click, not to several positions in the middle of the scenes. I guess this is a moot point, since if it only burns at 4000 kbps, not 9800, I won't be using it to burn DVDs. I need to find another product.

[manono]

Try Avs2DVD.

It can either space them out by a specific amount (which apparently you don't want), or you can feed it a chapters file with them set at specific points, but I don't know what format that chapters list is supposed to be in. The developer of the program is often here, so maybe he'll show up and help.

[RonM]

I will give Avs2DVD a try. The DVDs I am creating are music videos from 50 VHS tapes created in the '70s - '90s. With Pinnacle Studio I am able to capture each VHS tape to DV AVI files (25 GB each), define clips for each music video but setting the start and end points, and create a project for a DVD by pulling individual clips from several of the 25 GB files. When I have included enough clips for an hour of video I tell Pinnacle Studio to create a movie to an AVI file. This AVI file could sent to any DVD burning software, but the start locations of each music video (15 to 20 per DVD) would need to be redefined so that each chapter on the DVD would be a music video, and all the music videos would show up on the menu screen. If Pinnacle Studio could burn a DVD without crashing the system I would only need to define the start of each music video once.

[lordsmurf]

How did this thread go from VHS>DVD topic to using crap software?
WMM, Pinnacle software, whiz-bang all-in-one programs? What the....

NO!
Bad!
Bad, bad, bad!

It's gone from expecting too much to bare minimum expectations. Yuck!

[RonM]

You are correct. Sorry.

[_MrC_]

Try Avs2DVD.

It can either space them out by a specific amount (which apparently you don't want), or you can feed it a chapters file with them set at specific points, but I don't know what format that chapters list is supposed to be in. The developer of the program is often here, so maybe he'll show up and help.

Probably OT, but an answer was called

AVStoDVD accepts IfoEdit Celltimes format, a simple ANSI text file with frames list. Or you can add manually chapters flag in 'Preview Clip' mode.



Bye