Newbie on DVD burn and MPEG-1 capture

[Woods1]

:-? Recorded Rose Red on VHS (6 hours (2x3)) and want to burn the 3 movies onto DVD. What is the best way to compress these movies, edit out the comercials, and burn them onto a DVD. So far I am leaning towards MPEG-1, 352x240, 18 frames, 29.97 Hz, Bitrate 1.15 for the capture, unless there is a better solution. I will be using DVDit or NERO 5.5 to burn the DVD.


1.7 Gz PC Clone, 768 Meg Mem, 2 80 gig hard drives, Win2000, Pioneer PVR-A03.

[Woods1]

Can't get the 3 videos to fit on 1 dvd even though they are 800 megs in size each. DVDit says insufficent space on DVD (4.7 Gig). I have an AIW Radeon 8500 w/MMC 7.5. Any suggestions on what settings I can capture the videos with this software.

[deadpac]

Try this link

http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm

Never tried DVDit but it seems like that program will convert your MPEG-1 VCD streams into DVD streams; that would produce rather ugly results.

Think about it, you are going to compress video that is already compressed!

Granted DVD video is not as compressed as VCD, but your source [VCD] is really compressed.

Like taking full sized baby out of a skinny woman and sticking that baby back into a slightly not so skinny woman; NOT A PRETTY SITE

[Woods1]

You're right. Right now I am at square one with my VCR connected to my AIW RADEON 8600DV composite and I haven't a clue what to do next. I have about 4 hours worth of video (1hr 20 mins x 3) I want to compress and put on DVD. Should I use MMC7.5 and if I do at what setting? or should I use VirtualDub, and what settings? Everytime I try something the video either comes out with lots of squares on the videos during playback, or if the video is perfect, it doesn't fit the DVD or wrong data rate per DVDit. Right about now I am close to archiving the tape and waiting for the movie to be released on DVD. My problem is I never have any free time to do this since I am at work 8-10 hours a day and with family on weekend. So when I do work on this it is usually overnight running. Time is my big enemy. I do my studying at lunchtime or breaktime at work. It's great to have a hobby but rough when you don't have time to play with it.

[sracer]

This may sound dumb, but why not just burn a set of VideoCDs first? The specs you've cited as "leaning toward" are virtually the VCD-standard. Your source material is VHS tape and you will be capturing via a composite connection. The quality of the resulting DVD is not going to be any better than a well crafted VCD, IMO.

If you were able to get a VCR with S-Video OUT and a capture card that supported S-Video IN, then I'd consider the DVD option.

Of course this assumes that your DVD player can play VideoCDs.

I've converted dozens of VHS videotapes over to VCD, using the capture-at-hi-bitrate-MPEG1 -> reencode to VCD-compliant MPEG1 -> burn VCD approach, and the results are quite acceptible to me. (though as you know, quality is a subjective matter).

[disturbed1]

120mins x 3=6hours.

Unless your using DVD it PE, or another authoring solution that uses AC3 audio, it isn't possible. DVD it LE, and My DVD use uncompressed PCM audio. Your suggestions in the first post should work

With 128kbit/s 2/0 ac3 your video is limited to ~1500kbit/s.

With uncompressed audio you can fit ~200 minutes at the same video bit rate.

Use a bitrate calculator (like DVtool) with CD size set as 4300 MB.

Secondly, does the AIW support 48khz audio? This is needed for the audio. If not, you'll have to resample.

If you do have DVD it PE, don't let it encode the ac3 track. You'll lose sync. You'll have to use a stand alone ac3 encoder like Sonic's soft encode.

Ulead's DVD movie maker supports mpeg audio (@384kbit/s) but I don't think it does Mpeg1 DVDs.

For DVD mpeg1 authoring, the mpeg stream has to have a sequence header before each GOP, maxium GOP length of 18 frames, upto 1856kbit/s and have the Constrained Parameter Flag set. If your stream doesn't have the correct sequence headers (DVD it will tell you if it doesn't), you can use Mpeg Sequence Maker from the tools section to fix this.

Nero to burn? Didn't your AO3 come with Primo DVD?

[Woods1]

I can't find my copy of Primo DVD... I have several towers of discs that I went through. I am so messy :oops: . Anyhow, I am going to take some vacation either this month or next month and have some time to work on these videos. I just downloaded a bitrate calculator and the latest conversion/authoring software so I will take what you said in mind and try it. The numbers you gave me are important. If worse comes to worse I will make simple vcds or svcd. I know enough to do that and I have MMC_REG_Tool to help. Thanks.