Can I put 180 minutes into a regular dvd?

[jesse40902]

i know its not reccomeneded, but is it possible to put two movies ( 1 and 1/2 hour each) and not lose too much quality? If i do 2 line pass, would that help much?

I think the files types are xvid.....Thanks guys. Also 1 pass or 2 pass ?

[yoda313]

Should be able to. Try halfd1 spec (352x480) and something in the 2000-3000 bitrate.

[lordsmurf]

Sure.

352x480 with bitrate of about 3400k (combined a/v) average VBR. Max at 3800k, min at 0k.

Should look fine.

[jesse40902]

yea i got a question about that also, wuts the big difference between 353x480 and the other one i alway use 780x400.....

[jesse40902]

which one is more suitable for a 42 inch widescreen tv?

[jesse40902]

by the way, one pass is fine also right?

[yoda313]

Actually you mean 720x480 (thats full d1 dvd spec).

352x480 isn't really much different though it does cut the resolution down a bit.

Try a short clip at the halfd1 resolution on a dvdrw and see if the quality is acceptable to you personally. Then you can decide if you want full d1 (720x480) or halfd1 (352x480).

But you still need to use a bit rate in the low to mid 3000's as suggested by lordsmurf.


Edit - i never do more than 1 pass - I'm too lazy (besides 1 pass if fine enough for me on avi stuff)

[jesse40902]

is xvid = avi stuff?
Also if there's not much difference, then I'll just go with 352x480...okay thanks....

[yoda313]

xvid is a codec for the avi structure. You play a .avi file that is encoded in xvid.

Generally I can't tell but then again I only have a standard def tv so I'm not quite as picky as some.

[handyguy]

I would think the blocks would start to show up a bit on a 42" tv. What's the point of doing divx on a tv that large?

[FulciLives]

I just got a 51" 16x9 Rear Projection HDTV and I watched a DVD I made some time ago that was a LaserDisc source but the DVD was encoded at 352x480 so as to keep the bitrate "high" and avoid MPEG artifacts.

I have to say that it looked really good on my TV and this was letting the TV "upsample" to 1080i and do it's on-the-fly 3:2 pulldown "trick".

Now I did use a very "high" bitrate for 352x480 (I think it was around 4500kbps) meaning I had no MPEG artifacts so my point is this ... that 352x480 was still plenty of resolution to look good even on such a large TV.

I might one day re-do this LD at 720x480 and split it over 2 discs for optimal bitrate but I am happy with the way it looks now.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

*** EDIT ***
Using the bitrate calculator on this very webiste: CLICK HERE

Using 3 hours of video with an audio bitrate of 256kbps gave a video bitrate of 3000kbps (to be safe) or 3100kbps (if you want to push it but I like to leave "room" for DVD authoring overhead).

[greymalkin]

did you do this on a DL disc? That might be your other option...encode at highest quality under 8gb and then burn to DL. I put 5:17 on a DL from a DVD source..I had to shrink the poop out of it but even on a 55" HDTV it looked alright. Probably because the source was super high quality to begin with. I had the mpeg file sitting on my computer all edited and ready to go until I had a DL burner and could afford some DL media .

[Dasun]

I did so, but quality depends on source. The source was two school plays shot off a tripod, the running time was exactly 3 hours, the bitrate was 3Meg, the resolution was 720*576, the encoder was cinemacraft with 4 or 5 passes and some tweaking and DVD Lab was used for the authoring.

The result on a 68CM Sony Wega set was no visible artifacting, except when the curtin was drawn where some macro-blocking was evident.

This disk was duplicated and distributed on TDK-R disks to something like 300+ familys and the only complaint I had was from four families with old DVD players complaining it did not work! DVD player compatability is therefore very good!

Incidently, I did my own private set of disks as one school play per disk with a 6.5Meg bit rate as I did not trust such a long video with such a low bit rate to look good on big TV's - but apparently it does.