Movie won't fit on one DVD-R

kamik · Post by **kamik** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:21 am

Hi, new to videos and DVD's. Just got Video Studio 9 and a DVD burner after finding that it took 3 CD's for a 90 minute video of a school play. The whole play fit on 2 one gig SD's (camera) and VS says that the edited video was less than one gb but when I tried to "create disc", it grew to 6.4gb. Could I shrink it with VS to fit a single 4.7gb DVD disc? Or easiest way to split it into two discs? Or should I consider a double layer disc? Any help would be appreciated. I want to present a copy to the director ASAP...
Thanks!

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:21 am

A 90 minute video should fit on one disc by lowering the bitrate to 6000 kbps. The resulting loss in quality should be minimal. Also, using a compressed audio format such as Dolby will also help (versus uncompress LPCM, which takes up a lot of space).

Read about Project Settings in this thread for more info.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:54 am

If you were actually burning them to CDs, you need to tell us what the format of the video you were burning was (right click on a file within in VS and copy the properties down here.) You would normally burn mpeg-1 to CD as a VCD or a special frame size of mpeg-2 as an SVCD. But for a video DVD, the original video has to be converted to DVD-compatible mpeg-2, and this could account for the growth in size of your files.

But as Black Lab has suggested, you can still fit 90 minutes on a single DVD by adjusting the bitrate.

kamik · Post by **kamik** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:55 pm

Very useful info. Will read the articles and also look into the suggestions... Thanks very much!

ps other than the cost factor, would there be a disadvantage to using a double layer disc? I believe I can burn twice as much video/data to that type of disc?

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 11:50 pm

ps other than the cost factor, would there be a disadvantage to using a double layer disc?

Some players can't play burned dual-layer discs. While we're on the subject, some players can't play burned discs at all, others can play DVD-R but not DVD+R, or vice-versa. If you don't know what the player will play, or if you are giving-away (or selling) DVDs, your odds are generally best with DVD-R. And, most new players can play all of the formats.

But like Black Lab said, 6000kbps is quite good quality. Many commercial DVDs are encoded at 6000 or less (with better MPEG encoders, of course). If your program is less than 2 hours, a single-layer DVD should be fine, as long as you avoid uncompressed LPCM audio. (I start to notice the quality loss when I push it much beyond 2 hours. But, you'll have to judge for yourself. I have a standard definition TV... I'm sure some people with plasma TVs are more picky than me.)

Your highly compressed (low-quality?) format probably won't look any better at a higher MPEG-2 bitrate.

believe I can burn twice as much video/data to that type of disc?[

Yes... approximately. A dual-layer disc holds slighty less than twice as much data as a single-layer.

The whole play fit on 2 one gig SD's (camera)

The size of the original file isn't that important. The file size depends on the playing time and the compression format. Normal video-DVDs use MPEG-2 video compression, so your file will have to be converted to DVD-compatible MPEG-2.

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FYI - Some users report weird problems when trying to make DVDs from highly compressed formats (i.e. MPEG-4 such as DivX or Xvid). This may not happen with your particular files, but if you get anything like Video Studio crashing or freezing, or "lip-sync" problems, or no sound... or anything else "weird"... it probably has something to do with the original video format.

And, there is always some theoretical quality-loss when converting from one "lossy" compression format to another lossy compression format, or even when editing or re-coding in the same lossy format. Most "real editing" (other than cutting & splicing) will require the video to be decoded (decompressed), and then re-encoded (re-compressed) in a 2nd lossy encode step.

ArcAngel · Post by **ArcAngel** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:34 am

This is just a suggested guide regarding video data rate in making DVD.

For DVD (MPEG-2, 720 x 480 for NTSC, LPCM, MPEG-audio or Dolby Digital) here are the ranges of video data rate to fit to a single layer DVD (DVD-5, 4.4GB)

To fit a 120-minute video in a DVD-5, use 3500kbps as the maximun video data rate.

To fit a 90-minute video in a DVD-5, use 5500kbps as the maximun video data rate.

To fit a 60-minute video in a DVD-5, use 7000kbps as the maximun video data rate.

Technically, you can go a little bit higher than posted abovem, howeever, this is to ensure that the video will fit to a disc and prevent the no disc space problem.

Info: Generally, if you choose LPCM audio as you ausio in the DVD, the output file size will be higher than if you choose MPEG-Audio or Dolby Digital.

kamik · Post by **kamik** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 7:29 pm

Thanks for all tha invaluable info! Shall give it a try...