MPEG2 encoding/compression?

[Byranx]

Hi. I have a very dumb question and I am sorry for that but...

I wanted to encode my animation movie, which I've rendered out from Adobe After Effects, to mpeg2 in order to inevitably burn it onto dvd. The .avi file is around 6.43 gigs and the .mov version is around 3.5 gigs. Needless to say its a very large file.

When I encode the .avi to mpeg2 it obviously has some compression...but it seems like too much. I've tried a number of programs (tmpgenc express, divxtodvd...) but they always mark the output size at about 6.88% from its original size...which makes the mpeg2 file around a couple hundred megabytes. The problem is....I want this file to have essentially little to no compression as I want it to be screened or be presented in its highest quality (when I go to submit my film).

I had used DVD studio Pro for MAC when I was back in school and it had fit my quicktime file uncompressed onto a dvd with no problem. However my own computer is a PC and I'm not exactly sure what software or settings to use in order to achieve the highest quality possible. And when I've tried adjusting the output percentage in tmpgenc express or divxtodvd to a much higher value....it wouldn't let me. I've set for the slowest encode/highest quality for tmpgenc but it still outputs fairly small....which worries me because I don't want too much quality loss. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[jagabo]

Use a higher bitrate in TMPGEnc.

[Byranx]

I read that beforehand in some previous posts and had upped the audio bitrate to 384, VBR with the video bitrate at 9200, and thats the maximum....but its still producing an output at around 6.88% capacity of a normal 4.7 gig dvd. (Thanks for responding by the way)

[jagabo]

How long is your video? File size should be bitrate * running time (in seconds). That will give you bits, so divide by 8 to get bytes.

[Byranx]

4 minutes and 8 seconds.....which I guess sounds right according to that calculation....I guess I'm just confused as to how the source file can be compressed by that much. Just made me wonder if there were any additional settings that would help to ensure not too much loss of quality visually.

[jagabo]

It sounds like your source is uncompressed RGB. So 15 to 20 fold compression would be about right for DVD. The MPEG picture quality should be decent at that rate. You can use higher bitrates but the product won't be DVD compatible. TMPGEnc can go as high as 80,000 kbps if you switch to the higher profiles. You can also use a 4:2:2 color encoding but I don't now if that's DVD compatible.

[Byranx]

Ok cool...thanks a lot for your help