Why is my file 20 gigs? Pinnacle Studio 9

[kinger18]

I am a complete newbie and bought pinnacle studio 9 to download home videos. I have a 90 minute video that I captured and it was 20 gigs. I tried it three ways as a full quality DVD, high quality MPEG, and medium quality MPEG and all three ended up with 20 Gigs.

I tried talking to Pinnacle customer service and they were not helpful at all.

I would think that my file size should be a lot smaller. Am I wrong? Can someone please help me out?

Thanks!!!
John

[thecoalman]

I tried it three ways as a full quality DVD, high quality MPEG, and medium quality MPEG and all three ended up with 20 Gigs.

I'm guessing here but I'm assuming that those are not the capture settings but the settings for final output. 20 gigs for 90 minutes would put you right in the neighborhood for what the file size would be for video captured from DV-Cam in it's native format DV-AVI. Studio will convert this file, most likely you'll need to use the high quality preset to fit it on disc. This preset can be changed at any time right up until you convert/burn the video which if I remember correctly is the last step.

In other words what you have done if it's footage from a DV-Cam is transfer the video to your computer just as if you copied a file on your computer from one folder to another. To confirm this you can probably right click on the thumbnail in pinnacle and select properties. If it's listed as DV-AVI that's what you did which is fine. I'm not familiar with Pinnacle so it may or may not provide that information. Direct MPEG capture requires quite a bit of computing power and if you new you might want to avoid it for the present.

[edDV]

John,
Are you listening?

[donpedro]

kinger18: How do you know final size ? It does not make much sense....

[edDV]

DV is 13.5GB for 60min
for 90min 13.5 x 1.5 = 20.25GB

Obviously kinger18 didn't sucessfully change modes to DVD Mpeg2 capture.

Most computers can't capture realtime to MPeg2 using Pinnacle's encoder. Maybe Pinnacle captures DV and then converts.

I recently got a Studio9 upgrade to play with. I'll report back when I gain some familiarity with v9.

BTW, best results will result editing the 20.25GB DV file and then encoding the resulting timeline to MPeg2.

[kinger18]

thanks for the help guys, pinnacle support recommended reinstalling the software which took a while which is why I have not responded. I downloaded a small 15 minute video and it looks like the problem is that is was not converting to MPEG2. I really appreciate it!

John

[wwjd]

Kinger18,

I would follow coalman's advice and leave the DV as DV and NOT try to re-encode it to mpeg2 on the fly using your computers CPU. You will probably get a lot of dropped frames and not be very happy with the video.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a 20GB video file. What you should do now that it is on your HDD is just simply bring it into Pinnacle and cut/trim, add transitions or what ever floats your boat and then author it. It is during the authoring process that Pinnacle will convert the file to mpeg2 and put it into a format that can be written to DVD. Authoring is still very CPU intensive but you will not drop frames. To get all of the video on one DVD you may need to choose a lower quality for the DVD option.

Editing DV avi is easier and less problematic than mpeg2, so do not let the 20GB thing scare you.