Help with encoding/burning

[Dchristy47]

I recently recorded my sisters wedding with a Samsung SMX-C20, or something similar to it, and it recorded in MPEG-4, I am wondering if there is any way I could get better qaulity out of the video, yet keep it under 4.7gb, so they don't require multiple DVDs for when I burn them. I have Cyberlink PowerDirector 8.0, DVD Flick and ImgBurn, I am wondering if anyone is familiar with these programs, and could help me with choosing a codec, because I would really like to see the qaulity be decent for viewing on a 720p+ TV

[greymalkin]

Why can't you use a dual layer DVD? From what I can see this is a low quality camcorder so unless you shot outside on a sunny day your video is probably very noisy/grainy so you are going to need a lot of bitrate to compensate.

How long will the final edited video be? If you're stuck on using single layer maybe have the wedding on 1 dvd and the reception on another.

Question for the more educated here: Can you make an AVCHD Disc with 480i material?

[Dchristy47]

its only 27minutes, I'm actually rendering it into a 1920x1080 .m2ts file, i found the option on cyberpower director to render it that way....and this is with the reception and wedding on different dvds.

[greymalkin]

hmm..yeah at 27 minutes you should be fine even making a 1080p AVCHD disk...so the camcorder I saw with that model number only records 480i though...so this must be a different camcorder if it's shooting 1080p?

If the whole wedding reception was shot with a single camera and it creates mts/m2ts files you'd be better off using something like TSSniper to do the edits without having to re-encode then try authoring that directly to a bluray/avchd disc structure.

If you're going to standard DVD (for those without an AVCHD Disc Capable bluray player) you'll have to go through a resize/re-encode but you could use the max bitrate allowed for the DVD spec and still be way under the single layer dvd limit.

[Dchristy47]

Yes idk, the "preview" shown on the encoding actually is looking pretty good, I will have to see the final project...but it is encoding slowly, which I guess is expected. I have no idea what the camcorder shoots in because it is my sisters, but I am rendering it in 1080p, will this cause me issues if it wasnt shot in 1080p?

[greymalkin]

well it's hard to speculate at this point without knowing what source you're working with. If you could get the model# from her then we can see what the best process is to get it looking as good as it can on the final product.

Or if you've got the files from the camcorder on your computer you should be able to right click on it and go to "properties" then there should be a "Details tab" that tells you the resolution and codec it's using..that should be enough".

Then again if what you're doing comes out great and everyone's happy then forget I said anything..otherwise come back with the info and we can help get it looking it's best!

[TimA-C]

Can't you get the video's properties from your source video? GSpot or Media Info (or whatever program you're editing/re-encoding) will probably give you the resolution and bitrates.

[Dchristy47]

Frame width 720
height 480
data rate 3729kbps
29 fps
audio
122 kbps
2 channels

-edit
I did convert the file to a MPEG-2 transport file...(m2ts) and the video quality is as good as its going to get as far as I can tell, yet the only problem is, will this burn to a dvd and play on a dvd player? and the audio is a tad grainy but thats how it was on the original = /