Ulead Project Size Size

[jmsrickland]

I am using Video Studio 10

After capturing all the clips and stuff for my video I attempt to create a DVD folder on the hard drive where it will save the VOB files. When I click on Burn I get this message:

This project exceeds the maximum project size. Do you
want to reduce the project size? Click Yes to fit, No to
continue, ot Cancel to abort.

What exactly does this mean? This is only an hour and 22 minute video movie. The info panel where you select Create DVD folders says I need 9.56GB and I have 15:17 GB free space on the hard drive so I know I have enough room.

What will happen if I select Yes to fit? Will I lose some of the video?
What will happen if I select No to continue? Will I still get the entire video in the folders?

If an hour and 22 minute video project exceeds the project limits then how could possible do a 2 hour video?

A little confused.

[yoda313]

What that is referring to is the 4.7gb (well actually 4,344gb) size limitation of a single layer dvd (most likely that version may support dual layer discs which would be 8.5gb).

You can choose ignore but you will have an out of standard dvd. You would have to shrink it with dvd shrink to fit on one dvd. Or use a dl disc.

[jmsrickland]

What I dont understand is that the video being only 1 hour and 22 minutes will definitley fit on an standard single layer DVD and besides I'n not burning it to a DVD so I dont need a DL disc and Video Studio wouldn't know if I had one in the DVD burner anyway because I'm not burning the video to DVD disc; I am saving it to the hard drive as VOB files. Based on you comment, it looks like VS is telling me that no matter if I do write it to a folder on the hard drive it is still too big.

I just don't see how an hour and 22 minute video can possible exceed the DVD disc size.

So you are saying that if I select the Yes option I will lose some of the video and if I select No I will get the entire video but it will be a non-standard DVD?

[guns1inger]

VS assumes that if you are making a DVD Video structure, you will be eventually burning a DVD, and therefore the output needs to fit within either single or dual layer sizing.

What you need to do is use a bitrate calculator to determine the correct bitrate to make everything fit, and use the to get VS to encode to the correct size. That way you can fit 2 hours onto a disc without any issue. Is VS doesn't allow you to enter bitrates, but uses some artitrary quality based system, then ditch it for a real encoder.

[Nelson37]

You do not measure what will or will not fit on a DVD disk by "minutes".

You measure it in megabytes.

Minutes times BITRATE will give you megabytes.

You could encode 1 minute that would NOT fit, you could encode 10 hours that WOULD fit.

Your bitrate is too high for that amount of play time to fit on one single layer disk. Reduce the bitrate, or reduce the playtime.

[jmsrickland]

guns1inger,

I only somewhat understand your first paragraph; ie: I understand what you are saying just don't understand why VS thinks that a 82 minute video is too big for 120 minute DVD.

Your 2nd paragraph really throws me off. Have absolutely no idea about this bitrate thing nor have any idea how to calculate it nor have any idea what a bitrate calculator is.

[jmsrickland]

"Your bitrate is too high for that amount of play time to fit on one single layer disk. Reduce the bitrate, or reduce the playtime. "

OK, since I don't want to reduce playtime how then do I reduce the bitrate?

[guns1inger]

Too your left is a menu. One of the options is Tools. Click on it, and you get a lit of sections, one of which is Bitrate Calculators.

basically, the bitrate is the amount of data, measured usually in kilobytes per second (kbps), required to store the data that makes up the video and audio. The higher that rate, the better the quality (all else being equal), but the more space it requires.

Time x Bitrate = Space.

In this equation, space is a constant. You are working with either a single layer or dual layer disc in most cases. In most cases, the running time is also a constant. Movie A runs for X minutes. X cannot be changed.

Therefore, the only true variable most of the time is bitrate. Most calculatore therefore require you to choose a target size (usually by disc capacity), and to enter the running time of your video assets (total running time if multiple clips are involved), and from this will give you a bitrate.

In your instance, assuming an audio bitrate of 224 kbps, and 20mb for menus etc, you have a bitrate of 7200 kbps for your video. If you use a higher rate, the resulting output will be too large to fit on a single layer disc.

VS isn't actually stopping you from creating a disc that is too large, and you do then have the option to transcode it down with DVD Shrink or similar afterwards (just answer No to the question you posted above), however from a quality perspective, it is always best to get the size right first time.

[Nelson37]

If you have no idea what bitrate is, what in God's name are you doing creating a DVD?

Fields, field order, interlacing, framerate, IVTC, pulldown, AC3, mp2, GOP, These are just a few of the terms you need to get familiar with. You are digitally standing in the middle of the greatest single wealth of information about this subject that exists in accessable form, anywhere on the planet. ABSORB some of it.

You may, through pure blind luck, be able to create something decent without any further reading. However, I GUARANTEE that a few hours spent reading here will greatly improve the quality of your production.

I would start with the Dynamically Updated Master Breakdown for Access to Superb Statements, otherwise known as the FAQ.

[RabidDog]

Many dvd recorders record in HQ mode which will use a bitrate(15000kbs) that is so high only 1hour of footage will fit on a 4.7gb single layer disc dvd. they also have modes that allow two hours of footage to fit on the same disc (SP) guess what ? the bitrate is half. they also generally have modes in which 4 hours will fit on a single disc, with correspondingly, a bitrate one quarter that of HQ mode. If you intend to keep yor files on hard drive then this need not concern you, just click NO to continue you will NOT lose any of your footage. (unlike that drugs trial volunteer who is having his toes cut off) Incidentally 9.5gb is too large even to fit on a dual layer disc.
In general higher bitrate = higher quality

[jmsrickland]

gunslinger,

There is no Bitrate Calculator option directly under Tools. Here are the options listed:

VideoStudio DV-to-DVD Wizard
VideoStudio Movie Wizard
Create Disc
Select Device Control
Change Captiure Plug In
Batch Convert
Recover DVB-T Video
Full Screen Preview
Save Current Frame As Image
Print Options
Smart Proxy Manager
Make Movie Manager
Preview File Manager
Library Manager

However, under Make Movie Manager there is a dialog box that says Make Movie Template Manager and if I highlight the entry that describes my video and click on Edit I get another dialog box that says Template Options and if I select the Compression Tab I will get some fields and one of them says:

Video data rate: Variable/Constant <-- I can select either one
8000 kbps <-- I can go up and down on this value.

Is this what you are talking about?

Nelson,

I am a beginner. People have to start somewhere. I am creating a DVD because I have done it before using VS but this is the first time I have encountered this problem about exceeding the project size limits. On the previous DVD's that I have made I didn't need to know anything about bitrate because everything went really smooth. I learn as I go - I do not try to learn everything that you mentioned first then make a DVD - one step at a time - for me that's the way to do it. And that's why I ask questions as I go along. I will catch on, slow and easy like

So, if that option in the Template Options dialog box under Compression is what I need to calculate with then I can that.

I suppose I can also just create the VOB files on the hard drive by selecting "No" to the original message that I got and then let DVD Shrink do what it does and I will probably be alright going that route - I can try both - I am in no hurry.

[guns1inger]

I meant the menu on this site, not on your PC or in your software.

The Tools section of Videohelp is possibly the most comprehensive single database of free and payware video tools available o the web.

[jmsrickland]

Oh, LOL. OK, now I got ya.

[thecoalman]

Video data rate: Variable/Constant <-- I can select either one
8000 kbps <-- I can go up and down on this value.

That is exactly what he is referring too. You should be able to adjust that within the project properties or on the final burn menu too... can't really say as I haven't used VS in a while. 8000 will give you 1 hour on a 4.7 gb DVD. 6000 will give 1.5 hours....

If you use the calculator you can find the exact amount so you can maximize it to get the best qulaity and still fit it on the disc. Bear in mind lower bitrates equal lower quality. Don't go below 4000 if you are using a resolution of 720x480 or the PAL quaivalent if you're in PAL land.

BTW the fit to disc option you mentioned above is new for VS as far as I knwo and should perform the same task.

Is VS doesn't allow you to enter bitrates, but uses some artitrary quality based system, then ditch it for a real encoder.

VS was fully adjusable as far back as 7 or 8... maybe even further. You can even go outside of the DVD spec if you are just encoding to a file.

[guns1inger]

I haven't used VS, so I was taking a punt. There is still some software that uses a 1 to 5 scale, or a High Medium Low quality scale instead of true bitrate.

[jmsrickland]

Well, that didn't work. I left the bitrate alone (ie, I didn't change it from what VS had it set at) and I select "No to continue" and when it was all done (7 hours later) it still chopped off the last five minutes of the movie. If it's going to do that it should tell you that but it looks like it doesn't matter which option you select, Yes or No, it's going to remove some of the movie at the end anyway. VS kind of SUCKS if you ask me.

So, I guess I have to do it again. This time I will calculate the bitrate. I just wanted to see what I was going to get by doing nothing and clicking on the "No" button. Won't do that again.

[jmsrickland]

No way out of this! I lowered the bitrate (6000, then 5000, then 4000) and even when I went down to 4000 VS still says the same thing and still tells me that the size is the same. Looks like VS either doesn't work or this is not how it's done.

[yoda313]

@ jmsrickland:

Try a different editing program. Tmpgenc and tmpgenc dvd author both have free trials available - tmpgenc for mpg/avi encoding and tda for authoring)

If you get the same problem you may be going about your editing incorrectly.

Perhaps if you describe your step by step procedure one of us here could offer suggestions.

[jmsrickland]

"Perhaps if you describe your step by step procedure one of us here could offer suggestions."

OK, here is what I have done step by step.

I had this old movie that I had recorded off of TV. It was originally copied from TV onto a DVD disc by me. But it turned out that there was some stuff at the begining of the movie that I didn't want and I wanted to edited that stuff out and re-burn the movie back on DVD again using some video editing program.

I just happened to have Video Studio 10.

I put the original DVD in the PC DVD burner drive and copied the VOB files off of it onto my hard drive.

I opened VS. Captured the VOB files off of the hard drive into the Capture pane of VS. I then selected the Edit tab. Clicked on each video clip to insert them into the time frame. Then I clipped off that crappy stuff at the begining so that the movie would start at the begining of the movie instead of showing that stuff I didn't want. I then went into the Create Disc step. Here, instead of selecting to burn it to disc I wanted to write the finished project back out onto the hard drive. Here is where the problems begin.

Three times I have tried this and all three times I didn't get the entire movie.

1st time - the bitrate was at 8000 and I clickd on the "No, continue" Button and when it was through creating the DVD file the last 5 minutes or so were truncated. I thought that clicking on that button that VS would go ahead and write the entire movie out even though it said it was too big. Well, it didn't.

2nd time - I lowered the bitrate down to 7000, 6000, 5000, and 4000 respectively. On each time I lowered the bitrate I went back to the step where you create a DVD folder on the hard drive. Each time I got that meggage box telling me I have exceeded the project size - I didn't select any of the options but canceled the steps because I figured it wasn't going to write out the entire movie anyway. I figured that lowering the bitrate doesn't make any difference - I still got that message box on each lowering of the bitrate.

3rd time - I started a new project. Before I captured any video clips at all I went in and lowered the bitrate to 6000. Then I captured the video clips and VS aligned them up one after another in the Capture Pane. I clicked on the Edit Tab. I clicked on each clip and inserted it into the time tract. Now I went to the step where you either burn to DVD disc or create a DVD folder. I selected the DVD folder. Then I clicked on burn. This time that message box did not appear and so I figured you neeed to set the bitrate first and because I didn't get that message I figured that everything was OK. So I continued on. 6 1/2 hours later it finished creating the folder with the VOB files. I then loaded the VOB file back into VS for a proof viewing. Once captured and brought into VS I clicked on play project. It played from begining to end and still 5 or more minutes were truncated from the end of the movie.

I know a 6000 bitrate should be adequate. This is what one of those bitrate calculators told me and also VS didn't display that message box about exceeding the project limit.

Now I have used VS on previous occasions with movies that were pretty much in the same line as this one. Each of the previous times the movie was 90 minutes and I never had to be concerned about that bitrate thing and was able to edit and re-write the VOB files without any problems. Only on this last movie am I having this problem of losing some of it at the end.

I am at a total lost.

[thecoalman]

Lopping off the end of the project is strange behavior and I don't see why VS would do that under any circumstances. A wild guess but what do you have your drive(s) formatted as? NTFS or FAT?

[jmsrickland]

FAT32. However, I really don't think it matters which file structure I am using. Although alot of people like NTFS I personally would rather ise FAT32 for several reasons.

There is nothing mysterious about this movie I am trying to edit. It is a simple B&W 82-minute movie copied from TV. I have several of these old TV movies and have used VS before to do the same thing and have had absolutely no problems.

All of the movies I have that were recorded have garbage at the begining because when I recorded them I always started the recording a few seconds prior to the movie starting. Now I want to strip off this garbage stuff. No problems with previous edits using VS until I got to this last movie and as I have stated it just will not compile the entire 82 minutes. Even when VS did not display that over the limit message it still cropped of the last 5 minutes. Really bizzare if you ask me.

[thecoalman]

FAT32. However, I really don't think it matters which file structure I am using. .

It wouod if you're trying to cram as much as possible onto the disc. FAT32 has a 4 GB file size limit, your project is probably getting lopped off at that point. If you check the VOB it's probably 4GB.

[jmsrickland]

That's a very good point you have there. I will have to re-create the project again since I have already deleted that folder to check the VOB file size. But for the sake of argument and taking your thoughts as valid it brings up one another thought. On all of the previous projects that were written to folders and the movies were complete I notice that in these folders there is not one giant VOB file but several VOB files where each file being about 1GB in size. If this is the normal output of VS for these movies then wouldn't it stand to reason that VS would also write out several VOB files for this movie I am having problems with. For it to be a FAT32 file size limitation, as it may be, then that would tell me that VS wrote the VOB of this movie as one large VOB file exceeding 4GB in size and it was truncated by the OS. So, if that be the case then why would VS create only one VOB file now for this project when it created several VOB files for all of the previous projects? That doesn't make sense to me. But like I said, to check the VOB size I will need to re-create the project again and that will take 6 1/2 hours (uck!) to do so. I will re-create it just to see if that is the problem and cross the bridge when I get there as to what I should do. Maybe I will have to re-format the HD to NTFS.

[Nelson37]

One of the things doing some reading would show you is that not many people use the Video Studio products, for some of the reasons you are encountering. Poor encoder quality, limited options, settings with obscure access menus, etc.

The reading would also show you which products are used by large numbers of people with relatively few problems and good results. These products vary by situation, the situation is defined by a number of conditions, these conditions are explained by terms you do not understand.

So it is hard to explain to you that TV captures have many unique problems related to broken GOP's and timecode issues, in addition to changing telecine patterns and aspect ratios, among many other issues that make TV captures unique. Programs that do NOT deal with these correctly are more numerous than programs that do.

As to your current problem, the lack of change in filesize indicates that there is an option somewhere that is locking in the bitrate so that you cannot change it. Being aware that bitrate, and nothing else, controls filesize would have pointed you in the right direction of what to look for. If your program was good, more people here would be using it. If more people here used it, somebody would have had the exact answer by now and you would be making good disks.. But it's not, so they don't, and they haven't, so you aren't.

You do not HAVE to do the research. However, it certainly won't hurt, and would save you a LOT of wasted time and frustration. How many more 6-hour encodes do you want to waste your time waiting through?

[thecoalman]

Poor encoder quality,

Wrong, VS uses the Mainconcept encoder for mpeg encoding. Maybe not the best but far from poor.

limited options,

Again wrong, the encoding settings are fully functional including the ability to make mpeg video outside of the DVD spec using odd resolutions or other odd attributes if you wish. As I mentioned above this goes back many versions. These files of course can't be used in a DVD project but it can make them. If anything it has too many features for a product designed for consumers.

settings with obscure access menus, etc.

And again wrong, all encoder settings are avaialble through the project settings menu or on the final burn menu. It's been a while since I've used it but they were readily available and not buried anywhere.

The problems he is encoutering is not understanding how the product works. It's just like any other product with a lot of features there is no one click solution and <poof> out pops great video. Would you blame TMPGenc if the nuser had selected poorly on the settings or blame the product? You'd blame the product...??? Perhaps it is you that should do some some reading before you go bashing something you obviously have no clue about.

[thecoalman]

For it to be a FAT32 file size limitation, as it may be, then that would tell me that VS wrote the VOB of this movie as one large VOB file exceeding 4GB in size and it was truncated by the OS. So, if that be the case then why would VS create only one VOB file now for this project when it created several VOB files for all of the previous projects?

In answer to that I really don't. The NTFS issue may or may not be your problem. It's just a suggestion. It may just be a temp file that's it writing that exceeds 4GB. I really have no idea.

[jmsrickland]

Well I am going to recreate that same project and perhaps with a little snooping around I might find something I overlooked the last time I did that project. And just out of total curiosity I am going to format another HD in NTFS and do the project again on that drive also. I pretty much understood (although I didn't expect it to occur) as to why the file was truncated when I selected the "Yes to fit" option. At that time what I thought was going to happen was that VS would "squeeze" the video so that it would fit; I didn't think for one minute that I was going to wind up with a cropped off video file. But it was really a shocker when I got a truncated file as the result of selecting "No, continue" option. On this option I thought that VS would go ahead and create the VOB(s) the full size and that it was just giving me a warning that the file(s) would be too big; but not cropped.

[thecoalman]

I pretty much understood (although I didn't expect it to occur) as to why the file was truncated when I selected the "Yes to fit" option. At that time what I thought was going to happen was that VS would "squeeze" the video so that it would fit;

The fit to disc option is supposed to work as you think, it selects an appropriate bitrate so the entire project fits on the disc. It should work the same as if you used the calculator and selected a bitrate yourself.

I didn't think for one minute that I was going to wind up with a cropped off video file. But it was really a shocker when I got a truncated file as the result of selecting "No, continue" option. On this option I thought that VS would go ahead and create the VOB(s) the full size and that it was just giving me a warning that the file(s) would be too big; but not cropped.

Even then it should not be cropped if you're writing to a folder. VS is compatible with DL discs.... I really think you're hitting the NTFS limit somehow as it stands to reason that a the total amount of video is going to be in the 4GB range if you're trying to fill the entire disc. There should be a warning to state that but it might have been something that was overlooked since the majority of people using it and the people testing it would have been on NTFS drives.

BTW make sure you have the latest updates if any available from Ulead. 10's a pretty recent addition and I wouldn't doubt that a patch file has been released in the interim to fix minor bugs like that one if that is the problem.

[jmsrickland]

I re-did that project just like I did it the first time. When I start to do the Create DVD folder option I get that same message box. I selected "No, continue" button to start the process. The finished folder contains the following:

VIDEO_TS.BUP <---- 32,768 Bytes
VIDEO_TS.IFO <---- 32,768 Bytes
VTS_01_0.BUP <---- 65,536 Bytes
VTS_01_0.IFO <----- 65,536 Bytes
VTS_01_1.VOB <---- 1,024,139,264 Bytes
VTS_01_2.VOB <---- 1,024,075,776 Bytes
VTS_01_3.VOB <---- 1,024,174,080 Bytes
VTS_01_4.VOB <---- 1,024,032,760 Bytes
VTS_01_5.VOB <---- 196,546,560 Bytes

Didn't I read somewhere that no VOB file can be greater than 1GB in size?

The size of the entire folder is 4,293,165,056 Bytes (3.99GB)

As you can see there is no single file that exceeds the FAT32 file size limitatation. This tells me that it makes no difference whether I have NTFS or FAT32 file structure. I still think the problem lies with VS screwing up.

[yoda313]

To jmsrickland:

I think its time for you to download a trial of another authoring program. If its giving you this much grief its time to look at something else.

Tmpgenc Dvd Author is very highly regarded by many users on this site. I'd suggest downloading the trial version and see if that produces good results for you.