Playback DVD

[Deathcakes]

So i'll get straight to the point, but let's just say there's a reason i'm putting this in the Newbie section.

Alright, i wanna burn a dvd with multiple videos on it and for it to play as a dvd movie kinda, pref. with a menu system. Now then, i've tried some program but when i added the videos it went way over the disc size limit. I've practically never burned a playback DVD before so i find it odd that a couple of videos that average on about 180 MB in size can blow past the 4.7 gb limit just like that.

So why is this happening? Is there anything i can do for it to fit?

[hech54]

MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more information needed.

[Deathcakes]

MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more information needed.

Such as....? Help me so i can help you help me!

[jman98]

Whatever you used to make the DVD converted your videos to DVD format and didn't do a great job of it. So you should tell us

1) What format the source videos are in (a program like GSpot might be helpful here)
2) How many videos do you want to put on one DVD?
3) How long (approximately is fine) is each video you want to put on one DVD?
4) What you used to create the DVD

We may have other questions after that.

[Deathcakes]

Whatever you used to make the DVD converted your videos to DVD format and didn't do a great job of it. So you should tell us

1) What format the source videos are in (a program like GSpot might be helpful here)
2) How many videos do you want to put on one DVD?
3) How long (approximately is fine) is each video you want to put on one DVD?
4) What you used to create the DVD

We may have other questions after that.

1 - AVI, XVID codec.
2 - As many as possible, the current project i'm working on has 26 videos so that will do.
3 - Ranging from 20-25 minutes and they're around 150-210 MB each.
4 - Tried several programs, such as Cyberlinks Powerproducer. Same result with each one though, 3 files and bam - It's full.

Like i said i'm not very experienced in the field but i have a hard time believing i can only fit three videos and a simple menu system onto a playback-DVD that has 4.7 GB to use. I do have some Dual layered discs but i don't want to use them unless i really have to. :/

[bendixG15]

your answer maybe here ...........
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic373651.html

[jman98]

Yes, you certainly can get more than 3 videos on a single layer DVD, but whether you can do it with PowerProducer is another question entirely. You might try something like ConvertXtoDVD. Your problem, which I alluded to in my first sentence, is that the tools you are using are using too high a bitrate for the conversion to DVD format video. Do note that the more videos you pack onto a disc, the worse the quality will be. At anything more than 2 hours of total video essentially you are going to have degraded video on the DVD. If you really know what you are doing it's possible to exceed 2 hours, but that requires some experience doing this and less user friendly tools to use.

[Deathcakes]

your answer maybe here ...........
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic373651.html

Oh nice! I could fit 11 videos on instead of 3, which is a great improvement ^__^ At least i guess so, as that bar in DVDFlick reached 98% on 11 videos. But is that cutting it too close to the limit perhaps?

Yes, you certainly can get more than 3 videos on a single layer DVD, but whether you can do it with PowerProducer is another question entirely. You might try something like ConvertXtoDVD. Your problem, which I alluded to in my first sentence, is that the tools you are using are using too high a bitrate for the conversion to DVD format video. Do note that the more videos you pack onto a disc, the worse the quality will be. At anything more than 2 hours of total video essentially you are going to have degraded video on the DVD. If you really know what you are doing it's possible to exceed 2 hours, but that requires some experience doing this and less user friendly tools to use.

So at the moment it seems i gotta use 3 discs, where one would would only contain 4 videos, which is something i'd rather not do. So is there an easy way i can edit the videos to make the discs take two more videos each?

The files are running on 704x396 and with a bitrate ranging from 122 to 255 kbit/s. Now as you probably understand, i wanna keep as much as possible of the quality that's there but i'm willing to cut some corners.

[MOVIEGEEK]

In DVDFlick you could go to Video->Target Bitrate->Custom and set it lower than 2Mbps, this will give you more space at the expense of video quality.

[Deathcakes]

In DVDFlick you could go to Video->Target Bitrate->Custom and set it lower than 2Mbps, this will give you more space at the expense of video quality.

Oh sweet! I think that solved... Hm i was about to say "all my problems", but there are some problems not even a nicely compiled DVD can solve :P

I set it at like... 1.935 Mbps instead of 2, is that gonna drag the quality down much at all? I mean it's still close to 2 so :S

I'll testburn tomorrow and get back to you, regardless the outcome.

To be continued...

[KBeee]

Merely converting from one lossy video format (Xvid), to another lossy format (mpeg2 for DVD) will lower quality. Then starving the mpeg2 encode of bitrate to save space will lower the quality even more.
However "quality" is in the eye of the beholder, you might find the end result perfectly acceptable, whereas others would rather claw their eyes out than watch it.
It's also dependent on what you'll be watching the final output on - might look ok on a 14" CRT, but it'll look like crap on a big screen.