Can you really fit a two hour movie on a DVD-R?

[Scott_the_Ripper]

I have recently purchase a Cendyne (relabled Pioneer A04) DVD-R / RW drive. I have successfully backed up a couple of movies (with and without menus). I am now noticing that many movies, well under two hours long, will not fit on a single 4.7GB DVD-R (without remuxing). I use IFOEdit and extract only the movie removing all subtitles and all audio streams, except for the 6 channel English stream. I am finding that 90 minute movies are the cut-off for fitting on one DVD-R. For example, the Others is 104 minutes. After extracting just the movie and removing the subtitles and all but one audio stream, the result is 6 VOB's totalling 5.37GB. Extracting with the 2 channel, rather than 6 channel audio stream brings it down to 5.09GB, but still too big.

So, my question is: Is it really possible to fit a full quality movie, longer than 90 minutes on a single DVD-R?

Thanks

[Il_Duce]

that depends on the bitrate, its possible to get 10 hours of low-res, low bitrate, low quality video....so to answer your question...YES it is possible but it would almost certainly require u to rip out extras and re-encode with a lower bitrate dont worry tho u probably wont lose that much quality...since 2 hrs on 5 gb is extremely high bitrate

[Il_Duce]

o sry i misread thought u said 2 hrs but yes the same would apply to 90 mins

[GreyDeath]

Yes, 2 hours will fit comfortably on a DVD-R with menus. TMPGEnc has a template for it, encoding it around 65% Compression. You may notice a bit more fuzzyness on HD systems, but for regular TV it's fine. If you're doing an hour, you can always increase the bitrate and get better quality.

Unfortunately, we probably won't be seeing consumer dual layer burners or media any time in the near future.

[Morphius]

With the lower bit rate, what would the quality be comparable to?

An SVCD perhaps, or better?

Thanks

[Jonma Tifa]

Well, with a lower bit rate, your video wont necisserily look any worse, 5gigs for a two hour video is probably overkill on the bit rate... you have far more video information than you need, bitrate is something you should probably play around with, learn what looks good, what looks bad, what you can get away with etc... because you should be able to fit 2 hours of really good video on a 4.7gb dvd, and you should be able to fit about 3 or 4 hours of pretty decent video...

[GreyDeath]

Yes, a lower bitrate won't look necessarily worse, but it won't look that hot either. Lowering the bitrate is like compressing a JPEG picture, the more compression, the fuzzier the picture will look.

Having said that I would say going 50% quality on DVD compression would be akin to looking like VHS quality. Of course, if your source is already VHS, it shouldn't really look any worse. But if you're archiving family moments or whatever's important to you, you may want to consider a higher bitrate, and therefore less video to fit on a DVD.

The final DVD picture quality is going to mostly depend on your source material, as they say around here, "Garbage in, garbage out."

[drewson99]

that has not been my experience. I've ripped dvds that needed 40% compression (long movies) and still couldn't see the difference.

I have a Sony Vega flat-screen tv and the truth is, if you use the very best settings with tmpgenc (2-pass VBR, highest mothion search quality) you can get away with it fine, until you get into High Definition TV.

Andy

[IremainAMisterE]

Oh good lord! Please don't tell me that!!? You can't fit a 2 hour movie on 1 dvd-r disk? You guys are joking right?
If this is the case, than i do not see the point of buying a dvd burner?? I was just about to buy one, but if this is true...I don't see why i should? I fit like an hour and 40minutes on 1/700mb cd-r, using Kwags Kvcd plus templates!

Guys i really hope this aint true. You're saying i wouldn't be able to make an exact copy(quality and all) of Lord Of The Rings? And if i can...It would have to be shitty quality? For that, why not just make a 2 svcd?

Ooooman! Someone please build my confidence in buying a dvd burner back up.

P.S. I know im everywhere tonight asking questions.

[Morphius]

Hopefully I can answer your question later on this evening,

I just bought the Pioneer A04 DVD-R and am about to try my first rip to DVD-R

Let you know how it goes!

<------------ crosses fingers and steps off the cliff

[Don2050]

iremain,

It depends on each DVD. Some DVD's you can fit on 1 DVD'r if it is single layer or dual layer where the actual VOB (video file) of the main movie is less than 4.3 GB.

Otherwise you either must split the DVD to 2 DVD-R's with IFO Edit or demux it and encode it at a lower bitrate. Lord of The Rings you will have to either split or demux and encode.

IFO Edit is actually easy to use and split DVD's and is much faster as their is no encoding that takes place, however the only draw back to it that I have found is scene selection offset in the menu. Which is where chapters dont match up with the right chapters they are supposed to.
Other than that it is pretty easy.

BTW, if anyone knows how to correct the chapter offset problem please let me know, I would be appreciative, thanks.

[prestonfaiks]

Iremain,
I have a Pioneer A04 DVD-R and have recently copied several DVDs to DVD-R including Lord Of The Rings. In order to do the copy I had to re-encode the video to about 50% of the original. I expected the quality to be noticibly worse, but it turned out perfect, I couldn't see a difference at all. Also the audio is not re-encoded so you will still have the original 6ch sound. The main drawback to re-encoding a DVD is not the loss of quality but the time it takes (~6hrs). With many movies you can get away with just removing the extras which saves a lot of time.

Preston

[Bud]

I have been able to get three on one DVD-R in SVCD format buring with DVDiT and a Panasonsic LDF321 Burner, each movie was about 90 min each. just have to keep in mind you have about 4.7 GB of disk space, (more like 4.3)

Aloha
Bud

[GreyDeath]

I don't know, maybe I'm too picky, but I made a sample of Star Wars off Laserdisc at 40% compression on TMPGEnc using the highest quality and when I saw the result I saw artifacting everywhere. Pixelatious!

[kwag]

@Scott_the_Ripper,
You can fit between 4-5 hours of video on a DVD(+-)R using the KDVD "Full D1" template, or 7-8 hours using the "Half D1" KDVD template.
The "Full D1" will preserve almost the original quality. As an example, the complete "The Matrix" done with the Full D1, makes a 2GB file. That's with audio at 224Kbps. And that's a 2hr, 16 minute movie. There's no quality difference from the original DVD, viewed on a HDTV.

You can access the templates at:
www.kvcd.net/dvd-models
www.kvcd.net and also NEW --> www.kdvd.org

-kwag

[Niceone]

Hi

ive copied hundreds of over 2 hour films, the best way to do this is to get rid of all of the extras on the dvd, and if your not fussed about having menus etc.. then get rid of them too. I prefer to have just the movie on the disc and for it to play straight away, with 4.7gig free for this, you can normally manage about 3900k-4100kbit/s average , using cce gives a reasonble level of Q and almost flawless encode.

Then stick it in something like maestro, dvdit PE or scenerist and select it as first play

Hope that helped

[thxkid]

i use a JVC 36in tv and for Laser discs or DVD's I would not go less than 5000 bitrate on my 2 hour mode on the DMR-E20, tried the 4 hour 2500 bitrate, thats dropping the quality of the original, heck even on SVCD's I don't want less than 2520, I rather like it when its at 3500 so why would I drop DVD less than 5000, sure for Ram recording of TV programs your just gonna watch once then record over, big deal. On Family SVHS or Hi8mm I won't use less than the 1 hour 9800 bitrate.This with the DMR-E20 having a full frame Time Base corrector built in it also.

[Niceone]

I agree with most of what you said but i think 5000kbit/s is a bit high as a minimum your willing to go to. If you chuck an original vob into bitrate viewer such as star wars phantom menace (i just did this one) the actual average is 4613kbits/s and many films are around this, ive seen as low as 4300kbit/s, so why have an average of 5000kbit/s?

what encoder do you use? if not cce then you probably need a bit more, but my personal limit is about 3900kbit/s, if you check the advanced features in cce and check the Q level you can see exactly bitrate you need to use without gray areas appearing, its also useful to manually distribute the bitrate in slight grey areas where cce didnt distribute well enough

[Hazza]

Just a bit of a newbie question once you guys resample at lower bitrate to get the movie <4.3 gigs what do you use to author and burn it. Can you use IfoEdit or other freeware/shareware utilities to get the .mpg file back into .vob files with chaptering etc. Or you just use DVDit or MyDVD or similar and let it handle it.

Also a question about audio if I preserved the 2ch and 5.1ch audio when ripping does TmpgEnc keep it all when making the .mpg?

Thanks.

[drewson99]

preston - i agree, I was referring to LOTR in my post and my copy is dynamite!

iremain - no worries - you'll love dvd-r when you switch!

[\\//\\//óUTéR]

no. only 2 ch sound in a PCM format (very large)

[oflibaer]

I prefer to have just the movie on the disc and for it to play straight away, with 4.7gig free for this, you can normally manage about 3900k-4100kbit/s average , using cce gives a reasonble level of Q and almost flawless encode.

Then stick it in something like maestro, dvdit PE or scenerist and select it as first play

Do you preserve the AC3 audio streams? How do you do it? I have dvdit PE and I can'g get the included streamwaver to recognize my AC3 files.