Can I fit 5 hours on 1 DVD?

[m_vallee]

I wanna put 5 episodes on one DVD, the episodes are of a talk show so they are an hour but without commercial I expect they will be 45min each.

If I use DVD Shrink and put 5 episode on one regular DVD, will the quality be terrible or still good?

Just wondering if thats pushing it with the amount on one DVD or if that is still good.

[victoriabears]

best advice from me would be use a RW disc and see what you think.

All this talk of best quality,these days everyone has differing views and even equipment,so if you do not like it, spead over 2 discs.

[jman98]

You'll have a pretty low bit rate to get that much data on a single layer DVD (well, I'm assuming you're going for single layer DVD), but you can do it. Talk shows don't have a lot of motion, so that may help to improve the quality. I agree with Terry B that you'll just have to try it and see what you think. I knew a guy once a few years ago who insisted that his VCD captures were "almost DVD quality" and they certainly were NOT as they had macroblocks and suffered from every problem VCD is prone to, but he thought they were great. We have people on this very forum who insist that if you don't capture in AVI and convert to MPEG-2, you care nothing about quality, which is going too far to the other extreme I think. I would not expect the quality to be terrible and maybe for your needs it's good enough. I would advise setting DVDShrink to one of those settings that emphasizes the quality of the encode.

[FulciLives]

At 45 minutes each the 5 episodes would be around 3 hours and 45 minutes. This is doable especially since it is a talk show and probably will not be overly taxing on the MPEG encoder but the trick is ... you have to use a real MPEG-2 DVD spec encoder and you have to resize to Half D1 resolution (352x480 if NTSC or 352x576 if PAL).

That will work but will also take a lot more time than using DVDShrink yet what you ask will look like crappola if you let DVDShrink do it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Oscar wallace]

Agree with FulciLives, I would go the way of Half D1 resolution KDVD template, a simple script and CCE or TMPGEnc encoder, but like the man said takes more time and a bit of work but worth doing.

[fritzi93]

Agree as to resolution. Simplest way would be to author the compilation with something like TDA, or even compile them with DVDShrink (save with NO compression!). Then run it through DVDRebuilder using the Half D1 option.

Good luck.

[lordsmurf]

I've read nothing here that is correct. It's so ass-backwards. Using the wrong software especially. DVD Shrink and DVD Rebuilder have no place here. KVCD/KDVD are non-compliant crap templates.

This is not even remotely complicated:

Capture whatever (AVI, direct to MPEG).

Resolution set to Half D1 352x480. Those hour-long shows will be about 42 minutes without commercials. So you're looking at 210 minutes. That 3½ hours. It will look fine. Calculate bitrate accordingly. That will be somewhere around 2.5Mb/s VBR total (including audio, stereo 256k AC3).

Author with authoring software. Burn with burning software.

This is such a simple question with such a simple answer.

[Scorpion King]

I wanna put 5 episodes on one DVD, the episodes are of a talk show so they are an hour but without commercial I expect they will be 45min each.

What format, framesize, etc, are they now? If already MPEG2 compliant files then how big (filesize) is the combined commercials out 3 1/2 hours? Also, what quality level would you give to these captured files? Are they HQ or low quality?

I think this information is critical before anyone can make a good suggestion about how to approach this proposed project.... Just my 2 cents.

[fritzi93]

Considering the OP's join date and the mention of DVDShrink, I assumed he had DVD files, or at least MPEGs. But perhaps that was assuming too much? :P Yeah, m_vallee, by all means tell us what exactly you have.

[FulciLives]

I've read nothing here that is correct. It's so ass-backwards. Using the wrong software especially. DVD Shrink and DVD Rebuilder have no place here. KVCD/KDVD are non-compliant crap templates.

This is not even remotely complicated:

Capture whatever (AVI, direct to MPEG).

Resolution set to Half D1 352x480. Those hour-long shows will be about 42 minutes without commercials. So you're looking at 210 minutes. That 3½ hours. It will look fine. Calculate bitrate accordingly. That will be somewhere around 2.5Mb/s VBR total (including audio, stereo 256k AC3).

Author with authoring software. Burn with burning software.

This is such a simple question with such a simple answer.

That's funny ... I thought I said basically the same thing :P

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SingSing]

:P Yeah, m_vallee, by all means tell us what exactly you have.

The people ask questions always expect that we are mind readers, and able to google earth into their PCs and bed rooms. We really should not disappointed them.

[lordsmurf]

Considering the OP's join date and the mention of DVDShrink, I assumed he had DVD files, or at least MPEGs. But perhaps that was assuming too much? :P Yeah, m_vallee, by all means tell us what exactly you have.

It still does not matter. At most, it means he won't capture, he'll just have to decompile the DVD. Either way, the other steps remain unchanged.

[fritzi93]

You're right. But doing a proper job of it means the OP has some reading to do. Or he/she wouldn't have mentioned DVDShrink.

[AlanHK]

I routinely put 6 or 7 43-minute TV episodes on a DVD. Encode avi with HCEnc using 1600 or 1700 bit rate.
Looks fine on my 29" CRT TV, better than local broadcast. If you have a 72" plasma, you may not agree.

I've also put 10 MPEG1 episodes, originally encoded for VCDs, onto a DVD. Not quite so nice, but still fine if for a drama you'll only watch once or twice.

384k sound is also a bit of overkill for my sound system, I go to 192 or 128 if space is tight.

Call me a Philistine if you will, but this works for me.

[lordsmurf]

I routinely put 6 or 7 43-minute TV episodes on a DVD. Encode avi with HCEnc using 1600 or 1700 bit rate.
Looks fine on my 29" CRT TV, better than local broadcast. If you have a 72" plasma, you may not agree. .

I would not agree on a 20" CRT that is 15+ years old.