Two hours of video over 7 GB MPEG?

[Canopus Smoker]

I just captured a two-hour videocassette of old 8 mm movies with WinDVD that was recommended here (thank you!). The raw AVI is 29 GB. After editing together a DVD (no effects, no titles, no menu), Ulead is telling me the MPEG2 is going to be 7.X GB! So I guess I'll have to use two 4.7 GB DVD's, but shouldn't this fit into one? The only thing I can figure is that a 8mm movie to VHS has so much noise in it that it results in a huge file...?

[poisondeathray]

filesize = bitrate x running time

Noise and detail require more bitrate than the corresponding "smooth" image.

You may be able to reduce the bitrate required for a certain "quality level" by "denoising" or using processing filters

You can use this bitrate calculator to figure out settings to fit an exact size (e.g. DVD5)
https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

[Noahtuck]

Is the actual running time of the video only 2 hours that you have captured to your hdd ??
Knowing that will help a lot.

It's been a long time since i have used 8mm tapes but i believe they can hold more than 2 hours of video depending on the speed in which they were recorded.

Also i don't use windvd to capture with so i don't know what settings can be changed in it, as in what audio format it can convert to, if the bitrate can be set or if it just uses what "it" thinks is the correct or highest bitrate.

For home videos just changing the audio from LPCM/wav to ac3 192kpbs will save a ton of space with no problem as home videos usually are not really high fidelity to begin with.

If the bitrate can be changed use a bitrate calculator to figure out what you need to set it to.
If not, i'd use a better mpg encoder.

Ahhh... now i see you are using Ulead for the encoding or conversion, although you don't say ulead what ?
I'm still not sure if you can set the bitrate in that either as i don't use their products either.
I prefer more control and to be able to do what i want the way i want it

[Canopus Smoker]

I should clarify: 8mm FILMS. These are old movies my dad had from the `60's all the way up to the mid `80's. Yes, the videocassette they were transfered to was two hours, and the DV-AVI file(s) are two hours altogether. The only audio is VHS tape hiss, which I've zero'd out in the program.

I downloaded QuEnc that someone recommended here. Should I maybe export it out of Ulead (VideoCreator 9 SE...came with my Firewire card, but I really like the program!) as another DV-AVI, encode it to MPEG2 with QuEnc, and then import the MPEG2 back into Ulead VC to create my chapters and disc? I might do that, but just to have something finished this evening, I think I'll make it a two-discer, and check Best Buy or Tape Warehouse for some quality double-layer DVD's this weekend.

[redwudz]

2 hours of video with no audio should fit easily on a 4.37GB DVD-5. From our VideoHelp Bitrate calculator with the audio removed.



Even with AC3 audio, the bitrate would be tolerable for most video, especially from a 8mm VHS cap.

If you needed more space, try 1/2 D1 format, still DVD compatible and will fit 2 hours easily on a DVD-5.

[Noahtuck]

What redwudz said.
2 hours of video should fit no problem on a dvd5, espc. with no audio.
If you have already converted it to mpg and then convert it back to avi to yet encode it again to mpg, that is a lot of unnecessary encoding and will just degrade the quality.

And going from old 8mm silent film, to vhs, then to your hdd, it's not like it's HD video to begin with.

Setting it to maybe 2 pass encode, high quality.
It will take longer to encode and may make a diff. and may not, seeing as it's pretty old video of not real high quality to begin with and already going through a vhs tape.

If you have the original avi file you captured, you should not have to export it out of anything, i would just load that into an mpg encoder, the one you mentioned, TMPGEnc, or a couple of others.
Encode it to mpg2 then load that mpg into an authoring program that will NOT re-encode.
There are plenty of them.

Some like to even if the mpg2 is dvd compliant.