First video project

[click_one]

Hello, Newbie here.

A friend filmed their kids' recital (~35 minutes long) and asked me to make a DVD out of the footage.
They had a rather nice Sony camera and filmed everything in 1080i resolution.
The files I've got are all in H264 MPEG 4 AVC format and are quite large in size (~15 gig for the ~35 minutes).
I've been using Bigasoft Total Video Converter to compress the files, and then use DVD Styler to put everything together.

I've not played w/ video before and the sheer number of options is a bit daunting.
Convention wisdom would be to crank up the bitrate as high as it will go and still fit on one disk.
Is this the prudent course of action?

I've exported from AVC -> VOB and the result looked 'alright'.
Should I have gone from AVC -> MP4 or any other file first?
Is there any use of setting the bit rate to 12000 or so when converting?

Thanks,

[videobruger]

Should I have gone from AVC -> MP4 or any other file first?

No. You should stick to only one re-encode as every loosy to loosy re-encode means a drop in quality. I don't know Total Video Converter but DVDStyler supports ffmpeg 2-pass VBR encoding.

Is there any use of setting the bit rate to 12000 or so when converting?

That would be violating what is allowed on a DVD (9.8 Mb/s for video 10.08 Mb/s total)

[redwudz]

The maximum bitrate for DVD is 'Up to 9.8 Mbit/s* (9800 Kbit/s*) MPEG2 video'
A single layer DVD can hold about 4.37GB of data, so those are two limits.

If you look to the upper left on this page, for 'WHAT IS' DVD, you will see the DVD specifications, format and structure.

The less you re-encode, the less quality you lose. Directly from AVC to DVD spec MPG-2 would be the best choice. Resizing needs to be included in there also.

And welcome to our forums.

[usually_quiet]

AVStoDVD is another good free DVD converter/authoring program, which may use either HCEnc or ffmpeg for encoding, depending on the circumstances. Its menu creation feature is less advanced than DVDStyler, but perhaps easier to start with. The documentation in the help files is fairly comprehensive and the author maintains a support thread on VideoHelp.

[click_one]

Thanks for all the advice so far.
It's still a bit confusing, and I think it's my fault: trying to use too many tools/ steps to do this task.
I should have mentioned that I've been asked to cut a few minutes of dead space where the stage was being set up.

The project is all set up in DVDStyler.
The title screen / looping background audio, and menus all work.
That's been the easiest part so far.

The tricky bit has been coverting the big MXF files to MPEG-2.
I've tried AVStoDVD, and it seemed to work.
I set the options to Full-D1 resolution, HCenc VBR 2-pass for the encoding.
The audio was set to AC3 using FFmpeg+Aften.
The resulting files looked pretty good.
Checking the media info w/ VLC shows the file as being MPEG-1/2 Video (mpgv).
The three audio streams show up as being Mono though.

Trying to cut and splice this didn't seem to go well.
I've been able to cut and splice video w/ the previously mentioned Total Video Converter, but it tries to re-encode the output files from AVStoDVD.
I tried Mpg2Cut2, which was found in the forums here, but it seemed a bit tricky to get the desired result.
Am I missing something fundamental, or is there a better way?

One other question on file format.
Is the preferred output just Mpeg-2, or Mpeg-2 PS, or Mpeg-2 TS?
Thanks

[videobruger]

Is the preferred output just Mpeg-2, or Mpeg-2 PS, or Mpeg-2 TS?

Mpeg-2 PS (Normally implied if nothing else is mentioned).

Using AVStoDVD with HCEnc 2-pass VBR encoding and author in DVDStyler is normally recommendable. However in your case with just about ½ hours playtime not so important. If encoded in DVDStyler the bitrate would be capped at 8 Mb/s and 9 Mb/s in AVStyDVD.

The three audio streams show up as being Mono though.

Did you change the audio setting from automatic? Or is the sourtce mono as well?

I tried Mpg2Cut2, which was found in the forums here, but it seemed a bit tricky to get the desired result.

How? You could try AviDemux - but it can be "cranky" but normally not with Mpeg-2 files.

Also note if the cut is at the begining of the video you could cut in DVDStyler