Compression...again...

[lockheede]

I have all of the episodes of Futurama and I want to compress and copy them to as few discs as possible but still retain at least broadcast quality. There is 27:36 worth if episodes. Any suggestions for the best way to go about this. My first step will be to rip the episodes with DVD Shrink without any compression, but after that....

Thanks - Rich

PS - Aslo would like a very rudimentary menu....

[julitomg]

I´d compress them to VCD quality (preferably with TMPGEnc), there are several ways to rip your DVD to MPEG 1. Then a program like DVD Author will do just what you want, accept VCD (MPEG 1) files and even do a menu.

[lockheede]

Ok...thanks!

[aedipuss]

if you do vcd, they are only good for about 45 min. of video per cd. it's a constant bitrate of 1150. no need for a menu, as you will only get one episode per disc. lame quality also, about as good as vhs tape. maybe what 36-40 cds total in vcd. if you have the dvds and *have* to back them up i'd just go dvd to dvdr. dvdr's are cheap enough.

[guns1inger]

VCD will give you around 74 - 80 minutes per CD, SVCD will only give you around 45 minutes per CD. However you can author VCD directly to DVD and get around 7.5 hours per DVD.

I cannot reconcile the idea of VCD and still retain at least broadcast quality. If you want reasonable quality, I would not go below half-D1, and would live with 4 hours per disc.

[whitejremiah]

thought about xvid/divx? I'm not entirely sure if your intending to play em back in a standalone or not, but if not, you can slam somewhere around 4 hours of video onto a dvdr......and have it pretty much identical to the input source....probably more if your not worrying about multiple audio tracks, ect....

[guns1inger]

Depending on resolution/bitrate and the quality of the playback device, you should be able to get 12 - 14 hours of broadcast (note : not HD) quality on a single layer DVDR using Xvid/Divx

[jman98]

Cartoons can look surprisingly good on VCD. The real problem is that it can be tricky to author MPEG-1 video on DVD. I tried to do this with Scenarist and while it did accept my video as valid, there was something in the stream that made Scenarist crash and burn. I could never understand from the error message what it was.

TMPGenc's DVD authoring program might accept MPEG-1 video. DVD Lab Pro may too. Some DVD authoring programs won't accept it at all.

[guns1inger]

Any authoring program that obeys the DVD spec will allow VCD mpeg-1 to be authored as long as the audio is upsampled to 48khz. TDA and DVD Lab Pro will both upsample for you. I suspect that DVD Workshop 2 will as well. I don't believe Encore will accept it, but Encore doesn't comply with the full DVD spec.

I don't know if it was a problem with Scenarist (and why you would use something like Scenarist to author mpeg-1 VCD footage is beyond me, what a waste of money) or your source footage, but it is not representative of most people experiences with authoring VCD to DVD.