Trying to compress 15 GB to single layer DVD with one pass

[dafoe]

I know it sounds crazy but I'm happy with the quality.

I am trying to fit five to six 43 min episodes on one disc. They were originally recorded in XP on my set top so they are around 3gb each

Here is what I'm doing:

1) Transfer all 5 discs to hard drive
2) Use TMPGEnc DVD Author to author a DVD that ends up being aprx 14-16gb
3) Use DVD Remake to blank out title and end credits- to save space
4) Use DVD Shrink to compres with Deep Analysis

Step four is where the problem comes in. I have to compress the damn thing 3 times to get it down to 4.37GB It wont let me adjust the settings beyond a certain level.

Is there any program that will allow me to compress the disc in one pass- so that I can just set it up before I go to bed or work and let it compress?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[guns1inger]

DVD Rebuilder can do it unattended with multiple passes. I don't understand the need to do it in a single pass. Single pass VBR cannot accurately predict final size, whereas 2 or more passes can.

[xzarkad]

If you are going to use dvdrebuilder anyway, then you might consider to use the half D1 option from rebuilder......

[lantern]

I think that when dafoe refers to a single pass he means that DVDShrink does not output the final size for the video small enough to fit on a DVD5 and it needs to be run through Shrink two or three times to get to that it is the correct size. Using DVD-RB I have not had that problem. DVD-RB comes with ReJig (a transcoder like Shrink) and HC Encoder a full encoder. Encoding will take more time, but the quality will be better.

[TJohns]

I'd add an extra step

1.5) TMPEGEnc Express to encode all files to MPEG2 at lower bitrate (maybe 1/2 D1 for extra quality). I often do 4 x 43min epsiodes per disk (at D1) for TV compilations

And change a step

2) use TMPEGEnc DVD Author to create a 4.38GB DVD & burn

Then remove steps 3 onwards!

[dafoe]

Thanks for all the replies. I wanted to try all the methods before re-posting.

I downloaded CCE trial version and DVD rebuilder- just kept getting an error message.
So I gave up on that one.

I'm not sure about TMGEnc Express. I have TMPGEnc 2.5 My version treated the Vob file like they were 15 seconds long.

So I'm right back to DVD Shrink unless I can find a better solution.

Again, thanks for all the replies guys.

[FulciLives]

You can use TMPGEnc Plus 2.5x but you need to do it "correctly" ...

First of all ... rip the DVD from the DVD recorder using DVD Decrypter and use FILE MODE. That should work A-OK.

Now open the VOB files into DGIndex and save a D2V project file. This will also demux the audio which might be PCM WAV since you used XP mode but it might also be AC-3 audio.

You then open the D2V file directly into TMPGEnc Plus 2.5x and don't worry about the audio. If the audio is AC-3 you will use that with no change on the final DVD. If the audio was PCM WAV then you want to convert that to AC-3 using a tool like ffmpeggui and I would use 256kbps AC-3 audio. Therefore you do not use TMPGEnc Plus 2.5x for the audio.

For the video you want to use Half D1 resolution which is 352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL. You want to use 2 pass VBR and for the AVERAGE bitrate you want 3000kbps and for the MIN I would set it at 1000kbps and for the MAX I would set it at 5000kbps.

That should give you pretty damn good results but in the end it will also only fit about 3 hours (maybe a couple minutes over) of video and audio.

If you drop the video bitrate much below 3000kbps then you will begin to get poor quality unless you drop the video resolution down even further but then you really take a big hit in the level of resolution that to most people is just not acceptable.

So for a single layer DVD disc you are looking at about 3 hours of A/V using Half D1 resolution ... that is if you still want good quality.

I would like to add that most stand alone DVD recorders will use Half D1 resolution when you use the 3 hour recording mode ... in that case you can just record your programs like that to begin with but a few stand alone DVD recorders still use Full D1 at the 3 hour mode which is bad and some don't even have a 3 hour mode!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman