using Mainconcept Mpeg Encoder to shring dvd size?

[laserbeak]

hello i have Mainconcept Mpeg Encoder and i want to use it to encode a dvd can i or do i even shrink it in this app? after i encode it in here should i just use dvd shrink??

[erayboul]

You didn't indicate what format the source material is in, but it's probably irrelevant. You should always strive for one run (you can do two-pass encoding though where the first pass is only an analysis) through an encoder. Each time you run through a lossy compression such as MPEG-2 you lose information and detail. By determining what your target and maximum bitrates are from the very beginning you should be able to fit your video on the disk with a little room to spare. You can use the Videohelp Bitrate Calculator (listed under the Tools link to the left) to determine the target bitrate.

[laserbeak]

thanks i clicked on properties in windows media player and it didnt tell me what the audio bitrate was. what else can i use to find out?

so that i can type it into the bitrate calculator.

it is a 1 hour 40 minutes and 1 second xvid avi file.

[laserbeak]

968 kbs

[laserbeak]

does this look right to you?

[erayboul]

You found the bitrate calculator but the bitrate that you need to enter on that tool is the bitrate of the audio that you will produce with the Mainconcept encoder. That bitrate may or may not be the same as the audio bitrate of your source file. A tool, called Gspot, by the way, should tell you about your AVI. I'm not that familiar with the DivX and XviD formats.

A NTSC DVD is supposed to have a LPCM (with a bitrate of 1536 kbps) or AC-3 (Dolby Digital with a typical bitrate of 192 kbps for 2.0 audio) audio track as a minimum. Many people on this site will say that MP2 audio is OKas the only audio track, too. I suppose bitrates similar to the AC-3 bitrate would work. Officially, MP2 audio is not supported for NTSC DVDs. For PAL it is OK. Of course, DVDs can have a DTS soundtrack too as long as they have one of the minimums metioned above.

Of course, once you encode your audio and video (either as separate elementary streams or together as one program stream) you need a tool to author the DVD. I use either Adobe Encore DVD or DVD-lab PRO.

[laserbeak]

wow doing it the way you mentioned has seemed to drop hours on production time.
will i will have to use dvd shrink after this tho right?
after that shrink will make an iso for me to burn in nero express right?

[erayboul]

You won't be using DVD Shrink in order to shrink the video any further. Hopefully if you plugged the right numbers into the bitrate calculator then the video will fit with a little room to spare. You will need something to author the DVD after Mainconcept MPEG Encoder is done. The DVD authoring step is necessary to create any menus that you want, but more importantly the authoring program has to multiplex the video and audio together into one stream and then the authoring program has to create the DVD file structure, i.e. the VOB, IFO, and BUP files and the corresponding folders. I don't think that DVD Shrink can create a DVD from scratch. I tried to use the re-author feature but DVD Shrink couldn't find my m2v (video) and ac3 (audio) files. Nero Express looks like it will be able to author a DVD, but it appears (from my few minutes of messing around with it) that you will need to feed it a program stream from the MPEG Encoder, i.e. one MPEG-2 file that contains video and audio already mulitplexed. The file should have the extension mpg.

[laserbeak]

just got the trial of adobe and i think it's great
burned my video in less than 20 minues!!
i think i burnt it on an old and dirty dvd tho. cause it wont play right at some scenes and skips around alot!!

[erayboul]

One other thing that I have learned from this forum is that you should never encode a DVD video any higher than 7 Mbps maximum bitrate (total of video, audio, subtitles). No matter how clean our DVD-R's are they are going to have more errors than a factory stamped disc. I suppose the theory behind using the lower bitrate (maximum for a DVD is 9.8 Mbps total) is that it gives the error correcting routines more time to react. I also use the DVD Media link on the left side of this page to get a rough idea of the highest quality recordable DVDs. Some Memorex discs that I have used have problems in the later parts of the video when the laser is reeading from the outer edges of the disc and the recording layer (organic dye) has a chance to more uneven.

[laserbeak]

ggood advice i learned alot from this topic thanks!!