How many minutes on a DVD using Ulead DVD Workshop 1.2

[xtjcx]

I am using Vegas Video to create MPEG2 files from my raw AVI-captured home videos (since Vegas Video has one of the btter MPEG2 encoders out there).

I then use Ulead's DVD Workshop 1.2 to create some simple menus and then place my MPEG2 videos on those menus within the project. When I go to the last step 'Finish' and attempt to burn the DVD, Ulead prompts me with a list of types (e.g. Best Quality - 60 minutes, Good Quality 90 minutes, Fair Quality 120 minutes, etc). What is up with this? If I want the BEST quality for my DVDs I can only fit 60 minutes of my videos on one DVD and if I want more minutes I have to sacrafice quality?

How can there be DVDs out there like "Lord of the Rings" that have superb quality and are close to 3 hours of video?

I am simple looking to get the best quality possible and to fit as much video on one DVD as possible.

Is Ulead's DVD Workshop the best DVD authoring tool to use? What other tools could I use instead?

Thanks for any info.

[EricB]

I only have the trial version of Workshop (1.0) but from the information on the web, 1.2 allows you to leave the MPEG2 files you've created in Vegas and not re-encode them. It also allows you to mix MPEG files that are various bitrates.

There is no magic to getting a lot of video on a commercial DVD. They are often dual layer which doubles the capacity from 4.7G to 9.4G. You lower your bitrate to get a longer file on a DVD. Thats why the ULEAD options allow you different quality settings if you use their encoder.

DVDs are also encoded with VERY expensive hardware encoders. The encoder in DVD Workshop I think is pretty good. With Version 1.2 you should be able to use any encoder you want.

[MoovyGuy]

I then use Ulead's DVD Workshop 1.2 to create some simple menus and then place my MPEG2 videos on those menus within the project. When I go to the last step 'Finish' and attempt to burn the DVD, Ulead prompts me with a list of types (e.g. Best Quality - 60 minutes, Good Quality 90 minutes, Fair Quality 120 minutes, etc). What is up with this? If I want the BEST quality for my DVDs I can only fit 60 minutes of my videos on one DVD and if I want more minutes I have to sacrafice quality?

How can there be DVDs out there like "Lord of the Rings" that have superb quality and are close to 3 hours of video?

Is Ulead's DVD Workshop the best DVD authoring tool to use? What other tools could I use instead?

Hi xtjcx,

I'll try to tackle your questions ......

Lord of the Rings is on a higher capacity DVD that what a DVDr uses. On a burner we only have access to 4.37 gig, as LOTR is on a 9.4 gig disc. They have a lot more room to work with.

Personally, I get 4 to 6 hours on a DVDr and I also use DWS 1.2. The trick here is to preencode your compatible MPGs and to not let DWS reencode them. You trick DWS by simply choosing the highest quality setting regardless of your content and making sure to check the Do not convert compliant file checkbox.

Make sure that your audio is compliant or DWS will want to convert it to space hogging PCM, which is why it says it can only give you an hour of "best" quality.

As to if DWS 1.2 the best authoring tool is a very subjective thing. It all depends on the level of difficulty that you want to put up with and the depth of your pocket book. For $279 US list price, it's pretty good. It can even be tricked into accepting AC3 audio, but that's another thread ....

[G-man]

You would have better control over this if you encoded to MPEG2 using TMPGEnc. You can then pick a bit-rate of your choosing to fit the media. Then author/burn the results using Ulead.

If you are willing to encode to 352x480 @ about 2700 avg VBR, you can get up to 3 1/2 hours on one DVD, and quality is still very good.

[ahfairley]

First of all, you can import a compliant mpg to DVD WS and tell it not to encode it (that was already done), the DVD WS numbers are good guides, though.

Second, many commerical disks are two-layer and therefore hold twice the data than a single layer DVD-R holds. Many commercial disks are encoded at bitrates of 4000 to 5000 also. The quality is better than you'll get encoding your stuff at home at those bitrates. The difference here, as I understand it, is that they start out with very high quallity files (hey, they're shooting on film usually), use encoding products that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the video may be encoded frame by frame.

The bottom line is that the disks hold a certain amount of data. The lower the bitrate, the more frames can fit on a disk, and therefore the longer the video. What you should do is to test to see how far you can go below 8000 before you can actually see a difference in quality with your player and TV. (the DVD spec actually allows up in the 9000s, but some players have problems near the spec limits, so the consensus seems to be that you stay below 8500). Using VBR instead of CBR will help some, since that allows the encoder to allocate more bits to the more complicated frames.

[xtjcx]

Thanks for the info EricB. I understand the deal with commercial DVDs and how they are created. I am using VegasVideo to encode my MPEG2 files, but I am not sure if I can simply "lower" my bit rate to get more space out of a DVD?? Not quite sure I understand the whole bitrate thing. Can I burn 120 minutes of excellent/best quality video on a standard DVD-R? By simply lowering the bitrate? It can't be that simple can it?

Right now...using the defaults in UleadDVD Workshop, it looks like I can only get 60 minutes.

[xtjcx]

Thanks all for the replies....I sill have a couple questions

When you say..."make sure your audio is compliant or DWS will try to convert it taking up space on the DVD."...how can I avoid this. I use Vegas Video to create my MPEG2 files and when I try to burn the DVDs in DWS I get a message saying "MPEG2 Audio not supported...blah..blah". I posted a question about this a few days back and the jist of the answer was to ignore it. Should the audio be something else and can I use Vegas Video to encode MPEG2 files with different audio? I spent $300 on Vegas Video and would prefer to use it

When I was choosing the MPEG2 video clips to include in my DWS project I simply (or maybe foolishly) calculated and totalled 4.3 gigs worth of files...and thought that was my limit for the DVD. Once burned it was only 60+ minutes with a 8000 bitrate setting and an audio format (MPEG2 Audio) that Ulead didn't like. When burning it did not re-encode my files.

Should I go back to Vegas Video and re-render my MPEG2 files with a different bitrate or does DWS do this for me?

[ahfairley]

If you want to re-render your original AVIs at a lower bitrate in order to make the mpgs smaller (and therefore allow you to fit more of them on a disk for longer play time), use VV3 to do it since its encoder is better than DVDWS. (But you don't want to re-render already encoded files since that would hurt quality)

Don't worry about the mpeg audio VV3 renders, virtually every player will handle it. Your only othe real alternative is uncompressed PCM audio (which VV3 can do), but that really eats up space on your DVD.

Stick with VV3, use VBR encoding with the average set at whatever you need to fit the amount of video you want on the DVD, set the max at 8000 or 85000 and the min at 2000.

[MoovyGuy]

When you say..."make sure your audio is compliant or DWS will try to convert it taking up space on the DVD."...how can I avoid this. I use Vegas Video to create my MPEG2 files and when I try to burn the DVDs in DWS I get a message saying "MPEG2 Audio not supported...blah..blah". I posted a question about this a few days back and the jist of the answer was to ignore it.

When I was choosing the MPEG2 video clips to include in my DWS project I simply (or maybe foolishly) calculated and totalled 4.3 gigs worth of files...and thought that was my limit for the DVD. Once burned it was only 60+ minutes with a 8000 bitrate setting and an audio format (MPEG2 audio) that Ulead didn't like. When burning it did not re-encode my files.

Yeah, you can ignore the DWS warning about the audio, MP2 audio is fine.

Calculating 4.3gig worth of content is perfectly OK as you'll be telling DWS to not convert compliant file. By doing this, the DWS encoder will not be engaged. Your MPGs will still be muxed into VOBs. But not reencoded.

Cheers