How to author a 3 part dvd5

[The FilmAddict]

Hello.

I am having a hard time authoring a home made video captured in dv to 3 pieces of dvd5.

None of the authoring softwares do so and then they will only re-encode/shrink to at best 2 dvd5.

I wonder if if it possible, to encode the video to m2v, ac3 separately and then mux them with dvd authorGui and then split them by re-authoring again with DVD Shrink to 3 DVD5.

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

Thanks

[Baldrick]

What is the total runtime?

If you use a good converter you can adjust the bitrate to whatever you like and it should fit. Have you tried something like avs2dvd, dvd flick?

[guns1inger]

So you have three 4.3GB DV AVI files as your source ? In which case you have less than an hours footage, so authoring a single DVD5 at the highest settings should be possible.

[The FilmAddict]

Thanks for the suggestions people.

The total video length is about 5 hours. I captured my daughter's wedding, though we did hire pros to do it.
My version featured more on the private side of things.

Getting back to what's at hand, after editing, I am still left with 5 hours of footage to transfer to DVDs, and I estimated 3 pieces would be sufficient with the highest bit-rates. What I need to know is how to get the footage on a continual sequence, where I can split them at appropriate points, maybe inserting a jpg " next disc please " like commercial DVDs.

As it is now, all I can find about mpeg to VoB only states 2 DVD5 or 1 DVD9!

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

Use an mpeg-2 editor. Commercial options include Womble Mpeg Video Wizard or VideoRedo. Free options can be found in the Tools section.

I would start by using VOB2MPG to extract the video and audio as MPG files from the DVDs, then combine them using Womble, do whatever editing is necessary, then output the three segments as separate files ready for authoring. Or Womble can do basic authoring for you. These options will avoid re-encoding.

[manono]

He says they're DV AVI (or am I reading it wrong?). Me, I'd split them in advance and then encode 3 times for the 3 DVD5s you'll be making. I don't understand why you'd even consider encoding them as a giant MPEG-2 to be split later on after being authored with menus and all. Doing it that way sounds to me like a giant headache.

[guns1inger]

I thought he meant DV avi, but I am not completely convinced of anything at the moment.

Regardless, the only way to do this nicely is to edit the piece, output the three sections and author each one. I think he is looking for a single tool that will author a long video into multiple discs in one go.

[The FilmAddict]

Thanks for the input guys.

It's Dv AVi and I just want to get in down to DVDs.

Perhaps the easiest way for me would be to able to feed it to AVS2DVD, select the keep temporary files option so that I can avoid it being resized by AVS2DVD, then mux it using DVDauthorGUI. With the resulting VOBs, I can split them using DVDShrink Reauthor option.

Sounds practical but all I get is errors from DVDShrink saying VOB 9, 10 and so forth is not referenced...blah..blah..blah.

It would be easier like guns1inger said, edit and split before encoding but yeah, I would like to be able to mux them all into multi unlimited VOBs and split them later and maybe additional splitting too.

Is there any way I can mux them more than 9 VOBs. Seems like 8 VOBs is the max before I start getting unreferenced warning messages?

Thanks.


Nice blog Gun

[manono]

It would be easier like guns1inger said, edit and split before encoding but yeah, I would like to be able to mux them all into multi unlimited VOBs and split them later and maybe additional splitting too.

Is there any way I can mux them more than 9 VOBs.

You're allowed a max of 9 VOBs (plus a menu VOB) per title. If you're putting these all in one title, then you can't create more than 9. If making 3 titles then you can have more total VOBs, but if doing that you might as well split them in advance (as I first suggested).

You could probably make a giant MPG and then split that for later authoring, but I don't think that's what you had in mind.

[borax]

...encode the video to m2v, ac3 separately...
That's what I would do. Then cut the m2v + ac3 with a lossless editor (mpeg2schnitt or cuttermaran) and author the resulting 3 pairs of m2v + ac3 files to 3 DVDs.