its been a while

[coeng73]

I've just gotten back into video editing after a year-long hiatus. I have no idea what advances have been made in DVD authoring so I would like to see if anyone can give me any advice.

My previous method of DVD creation (most recently my honeymoon video) was to capture from camcorder, edit in Premiere, output rendered project as AVI, convert to MPEG-2 with TMPGEnc, and author with TMPG DVD Author.

Since then I have purchased a DL burner (NEC) and am interested in using DL disks (for the first time) for a project that I recently completed. The project contains footage of my son's first year. I ended up building the project in tiny pieces whenever time permitted, rendering (relatively) small AVIs as I went along. Last night I concatenated all AVIs into one project in Premiere and realized that the length of the entire video would be 2 hr and 20 min. So what I decided to do was create two smaller videos. A 1 hour 15 min segment and another 1 hour segment. So now I have these two AVI files. One is 17 GB and the other is (actually rendering as I write this but I presume it will be near) 14 GB.

What would you do at this point? I don't know much about preparing video for DL burning. Should I bother with DL? Will I get better quality because I require less compression? Should I just make two single layer DVDs, one for each of the two clips?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[redwudz]

Well, personally, I would rather use a DL disc to get the whole video to one disc, mostly for convenience. The problem with DL is that fewer players can display them properly than the single layer discs.

So I guess it would depend on what you plan to do with the finished product. If you wanted to send multiple copies to relatives; Two conventional discs may be best for compatibility. If you have control of the playing and have no problems with DL, then go with that. Realize that it will be digital video. You can take the DL disc and fairly easily convert it to multiple discs with no loss to the quality if needed.

[coeng73]

OK. Sounds good.

What (if anything) do I have to do differently when preparing to make a DL disc? What is the max size or video length?

Is there a special option in Nero for DL? My version is capable, just never did it before.

How would you prep the two files (17GB and 14GB) for one DL disc?

Should I just re-create a composite project in Premiere and make one big file?

Is TMPGEnc still the way to go? What settings?

I was using Taiyo Yudens for Single Layer. Do they make a DL? If not, who makes the most reliable DL disc?