Usual Suspects and IfoEdit Question

[cinephile]

Hi,
This film is 101 mins long and should easily backup to 1 DVD-R.
However, the movie VOBs total c. 7GB. I stripped out unwanted audio and subtitle streams in IfoEdit 91, and I'm still at about 6GB for the movie.
I thought that if the film was under 2 hours there is a good chance of it fitting.
So why is it still so big?
The audio stream is AC3 5.1.
Is it the video bitrate that is really high which is causing the problem.
I know I can put it onto 2 DVD-Rs but I would like to keep on one disc if poss, and that I can re-encode but I don't want to lose quality
BTW, I am a newbie so I may be talking crap.
Oh, I did the extras OK cos it was under 4.5 GB.

Can anyone tell me why?
Cheers,

BTW, this forum and the guides have been helping me a lot this past week since I got my writer

[dmonty]

Sorry dude but it looks like re-encoding is your only option if you want to keep the movie on one DVD-R. The length of the movie does not have much bearing in regards to the VOB file size. I have several 90min +/- movies that needed to be re-encoded because they were larger that 4.7(4.33) GB. It all depends on what bitrate is used to encode the movie. As for re-encoding, you would be surprised how good a re-encoded movie can look. I just ripped a movie using TMPGeng with all quality options turned on and set to the max. (Painfully slow. 16+ hours) On a 35 inch TV I was unable to tell the difference between it and the original.

[cinephile]

Thx for your reply m8.
I think I feel a TMPGeng training session coming on......
BTW, is this the best tool for re-encoding cos I've seen ReMPEG mentioned alot.
Cheers.

[dmonty]

Alot of people here swear by ReMPEG cause its easy to use & produces good results. My only gripe is that I am unable to produce good quality movies if I use a DVD MPEG2 (i.e. 29fps) source. It introduces bad motion artifacts into my movies. I tried all the options that I could find but it will not limit the FPS to 24.

TMPGeng is able to process all my movies without much drama but its got a steep learning curve. It also has A LOT of options.

Between the two I would recommend TMPGeng. But try them both, after all, you should be the one to decide what is best for you.

D

[cinephile]

Woohoo,
Managed to re-encode The Usual Suspects from avg bitrate of 9Mb/sec to 5Mb/sec and it fits on one DVD-R (inc. the flash menus!).
You were right, the difference in quality is minimal.
I used ReMPEG cos it was quick and easy, but will try TMPGeng next time after I have learnt how to use it.
Thx for your help.
C.