Converting 8 VCDs into one dual-layer DVD

[Slickrobie]

Is it possible to put 8 VCDs into a single dual-layer DVD?

The total time of recording on the 8 VCDs is about 8.5 hours.


Any ideas please? I can't seem to do with PowerDirector or VideoStudio. I thought that the 1 VCD= 700mb and therefore 8 vcd= 5.6gb. Therefore, it should fit on a single Dual-layer DVD (8.5gb) as I don't want to upscale. Basically leave the content same as it is on the VCDs. Of course, I was wrong.


Please give me some ideas to achieve this.


Thanks.
Robie

[jman98]

Is it possible? Yes.

Better question - do you have access to a tool that will let you do it?


General work flow:
1) Get DAT file(s) off VCD(s) using VCDGear or similar tool.
2) Demux into separate audio and video streams.
3) Resample audio from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz and possibly convert to AC3 as NTSC DVD technically does not allow MPEG audio. However, some authoring applications may allow you to do it anyway. MPEG audio should be OK for PAL DVDs once upsampled to 48 kHz.
4) Put resampled (and converted if you did that) audio and unchanged demuxed video as assets into DVD authoring program. Make new DVD.


Note that many if not most free DVD authoring programs do not accept MPEG-1 video as input for DVDs and will either refuse to make the DVD or will re-encode to MPEG-2, but that is wrong. I have a sample DVD that I made with VCD MPEG-1 video input and converted the audio to 48 kHz AC3 just to use as a test disc. I had to use an old copy of Scenarist, a VERY expensive commercial DVD authoring application, to make the DVD. It is possible that some tool like GUIforDVDAuthor may correctly accept MPEG-1 video input without complaint, but I did this years ago and at the time did not use that program.

[Baldrick]

They are reconverting the video with higher bitrate so it wont fit.

I think tmpgenc authoring works supports vcd to dvd without video reconversion. (The old tmpgenc dvd author 1.5 supported it.)

[Slickrobie]

Thank you so much jman and baldrick.

I will look at your options. Cheers.