"Re-rendering" MPG video from 8000 kbps to <800

[zimmebr]

"I've got a friend of mine who would like to know".... (correction its me who would like to know) whether:

a) its possible;
b) likely to cause complications; or
c) worthwhile as compared to "fit & burn"

to "re-render" an existing MPG file at 8000 mbps, to say 6500 mbps, in order to reduce the MPG file size and therefore have it fit on a 4.7 GB DVD.

The alternative is to "fit & burn" or go through the painstaking process of reediting my AVI file (which I have already deleted due to its size).

Thanks

[heinz-oz]

re-render is likely to degrade picture quality too much. DVD Shrink, a shareware program available on the internet, does a very good job in reducing file sizes to fit on a disk.

Best case scenario would be to re-encode the original AVI files at a lower bit rate but you have deleted them

[zimmebr]

I've downloaded "DVD Shrink" - thanks for the suggestion.

When ready to create DVD etc, do I create the DVD on the harddrive and then burn it to the DVD using DVD Shrink, or do I somehow use DVD Shrink whilst within Video Studio?

[Ken Berry]

DVD Shrink is a stand-alone program and does no work with or within VS. That being said, what I would be doing is putting your mpeg-2 file into the VS burning module, building your menu etc, and then 'burning' it, but not to disc, but instead to a DVD Folder i.e. a Video_TS folder. If you have ever looked at a DVD in Windows Explorer/My Computer, you will see that a DVD is made up of two folders: and Audio_TS which is almost invariably empty, and a Video_TS folder. Anyway, once you have that folder, you can open it in DVD Shrink, it will run an analysis just to make sure it can read it, then it will simply sit on the screen and essentially you have to know that you want then to press the Back-up key along the top of the Shrink screen. Then you will get a new small screen where you can either make the choice to burn directly to disc (which may save some time but not much) or else to a new Video_TS folder. This is what I usually do. Then I usually use Nero to burn the new Video_TS to DVD. It really is a nifty program and the results are usually excellent.

[zimmebr]

DVD Shrink is a stand-alone program and does no work with or within VS. That being said, what I would be doing is putting your mpeg-2 file into the VS burning module, building your menu etc, and then 'burning' it, but not to disc, but instead to a DVD Folder i.e. a Video_TS folder. If you have ever looked at a DVD in Windows Explorer/My Computer, you will see that a DVD is made up of two folders: and Audio_TS which is almost invariably empty, and a Video_TS folder. Anyway, once you have that folder, you can open it in DVD Shrink, it will run an analysis just to make sure it can read it, then it will simply sit on the screen and essentially you have to know that you want then to press the Back-up key along the top of the Shrink screen. Then you will get a new small screen where you can either make the choice to burn directly to disc (which may save some time but not much) or else to a new Video_TS folder. This is what I usually do. Then I usually use Nero to burn the new Video_TS to DVD. It really is a nifty program and the results are usually excellent.

I did as recommended and it worked a treat. Thankyou very much.