Transferring video to DVD

[Special-K99]

Hi

A friend's asked me to transfer a 3 1/2 hr PAL video to DVD.

I'm using Pinnacle DV90 and their software (Studio 9).
I'm capturing the video in MPEG-2 format 352x576 (a few tests provided pretty decent quality).
The Pinnacle software tells me my 40G hard drive has 25G available and can store up to 3 hours of video so there's not gonna be enough space.

However what's puzzling me is if a DVD can hold a movie of around 2hrs at DVD quality, as my video is less than 4 hours long and I'm not even using DVD quality, shouldn't the space I need on the hard drive be roughly 2 x 4.7G (2 DVDs worth), ieroughly 9.4G and therefore nowhere near 25G ??


Regards
Special-K99

[hech54]

Uh Oh.....

[guns1inger]

File size = Bitrate X Running Time.

So, if you capture direcly to DVD compliant mpeg-2, use a bitrate calculator to tell you want bitrate you need to fit your footage on a single disc. If you are working with half-D1, you should be able to fit it on a single 4.3 GB DVD (DVDs do not hold 4.7GB, that is marketing bullshit). If you go to full D1 you might want to use two discs, or a dual layer disc. But capture at the correct bitrate first, so you don't have to re-encode later.

[Special-K99]

Ah, that makes sense now. I knew I was missing something!
Thanks, I'll have a careful check of the settings before I start next time.

[guns1inger]

I don't know how much freedom Pinnacle will give you in setting the bitrate though

[pepegot1]

Try WinFF - good and free. You can set the bit rate and use the DVD preset.