.dat to mpeg conversion - File Size

[Aidi]

Howdie,

Gleaning on the expertise in these forums, i have a small problem which i hope someone might be able to help me with.

I am currently converting all my VCD's and burning them to DVD.

What i am finding is, that once i have extracted the .dat from the VCD, re-joined the two halves of the movie into one using My Flix and then try to load the movie into My DVD it indicates that the file is almost 3x the size of what it really is.

Where the size of the .mpg (generated by Myflix) is approx 1gb to 1.2gb, when i import the movie to MY DVD, it seems to increase in size to more than the capacity of the 4.7gb allowed for the DVD disc.

I have tried a number of differnt tools (as recommend in various posts in this forum) to do the conversion from .dat to .mpg (VCDEasy, VCDGear, ISOBuster) but I still get the same result.

Can anyone offer any ideas on how i can rectify this problem and get MY DVD to recognize the true size of the movie?

Many thanks
Aidi

[mats.hogberg]

Alter your process and tools. Obviously My DVD It sees the VCD mpeg as not compliant, and reencodes, that's why your files seem to expand. VCD video is DVD compliant, and shouldn't be reencoded, but VCD audio isn't compliant, and it might be this that makes DVD It reencode. Some apps even reencode everything you point them at "just to make sure" - DVD It might be of this kind. Avoid.

I suggest you extract the VCD mpeg as before, but use TMPGEnc DVD Author (30 day free trial available) to author. Just add 1, 2 or as many as you like VCD mpegs to the same title, remove the chapter points TDA inserts at the join(s) and author. It will play as one continous movie, so there's no reason to explicitly join the mpegs before authoring. (But there are reasons not to) To get even more titles (=movies) on one DVD, just add new title, and repeat. A DVD can hold 6-7 VCD worth of video, so 3 movies/DVD will fit easily.

/Mats