Size issue...fitting two avi's on one DVD

[nettroller]

Using RC7 - I put one avi in assets (696mb) and the ruler goes up into the red, indicating the avi won't fit? Then, I add the other asset, another avi - this time 697 mb and the I'm way into the red now - well over 9gig...I hit 'autofit' and will burn anyway to see what happens....but I'm a little stumped at this - can these two avi files really take up that much room after converting to dvd?
I've notice since RC5 this problem - any avi I add seems to go off the scale...what am I missing?
Thanks

[ChrissyBoy]

What was the size of the resultant VIDEO_TS folder after auto fit?

[nettroller]

4.33 GB (4,658,393,088 bytes)
That was the size of the folder...the quality was pretty bad..so I've redone and put each avi on its own DVD.
The SVCD2DVD is so easy to use...so not a big loss...I'm just always amazed that such a small download fills up a whole DVD...

[averyisiah]

Actually what I do is author the AVI to DVD folder then I use Clonedvd to make it fit on a 4.7gb dvd, the quality always looks the same when I decode it with clonedvd.
I have fitted 3 dvd screeners on 1 dvd and the quality was all svcd.

[Predat0r]

The reason the bar goes way up into the red is because the default encoding bitrate is set to 6000kb/s. Your avi was probably somewhere between 700-900kb/s. Autofit will change the bitrate accordingly so the output files will be the correct size to fit on a dvd.

[ChrissyBoy]

The size and the bitrate of your avi files have nothing to do with anything when it comes to encoding them for DVD. The only factor is the duration of the video. It doesn't matter if your avi is 700MB or 15GB or if it has a high or low bitrate, if it is 90 mins long it will occupy the same space on a DVD when encoded to mpeg.

The more duration of avi's you want on a DVD the lower the encoded bitrate will be and so the quality will be lower. Anything over 2 hours and you will start having to encode at bitrates which are not ideal.

So the rule of thumb is to have one avi movie per DVD or in general approx 2 hours of avi material. You can increase this but at the cost of quality.

[ChrissyBoy]

As for AutoFit:

As Predat0r says: 6000kb/s is the default encoding bitrate. The gauge shows you what size your avi material will encode to at this bitrate. Clicking "AutoFit" will recal the encoding bitrate to ensure that resultant material will fit on a DVD. Sometimes this will be more than 6000 and somethimes less - depending on the total duration of your source assets.

[nettroller]

Thanks for the responses - it hadn't occurred to me to check out the duration of the avi, but that makes a great deal of sense and I will use that in future when deciding what goes where...
Thanks again - you've cleared that up for me.