I need help authoring a dvd. I¡¦m using VideoStudio 11 Plus (Trial Copy) I have captured my video from my digital video recorder. I had two tapes that I have in one project. The total time is 1 hour and 56 minutes. Shouldn¡¦t I be able to put this on one dvd? After I have added titles and was ready to burn my dvd I clicked ¡¥Create Disk¡¦ and it said that the size was 7.45GB. My dvd only holds 4.7G. How does this work, do I need to break it up into 2 separate projects? I always thought you could fit 2 hours worth of video onto a dvd. Am I missing something or did I mess something up? Do I need to somehow condense the video to make it fit?
Thanks
How much can you fit on a dvd
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How much you can get on to a DVD depends on the combined bitrate of the video and audio.
8000kbps will give you about 1 hour on the DVD.
And, to toally plagiarise DVDdoug:
The DVD standard does not set a fixed level of compression -
Higher bitrate = higher quality = bigger file size = lower compression = less playing time.
Lower bitrate = lower quality = smaller file size = higher compression = more playing time.
A good "rule-of-thumb" is 90 minutes per DVD. You can get that with a 6000k bitrate and Dolby AC3 audio. This bitrate is typical of commercal DVDs. (The DVD spec allows video bitrates up to about 9,800k, and up to about 10,000k combined audio & video.)
When you squeeze more than 2 hours on a (single-layer) DVD, you will start to see the video-quality degrade. You'll have to judge for yourself... There are lots of variables including the quality of the source video, the quality of your TV, and how critical you are.
Here is a link to an online calculator:
http://www.createspace.com/Special/Auth ... Budget.jsp
8000kbps will give you about 1 hour on the DVD.
And, to toally plagiarise DVDdoug:
The DVD standard does not set a fixed level of compression -
Higher bitrate = higher quality = bigger file size = lower compression = less playing time.
Lower bitrate = lower quality = smaller file size = higher compression = more playing time.
A good "rule-of-thumb" is 90 minutes per DVD. You can get that with a 6000k bitrate and Dolby AC3 audio. This bitrate is typical of commercal DVDs. (The DVD spec allows video bitrates up to about 9,800k, and up to about 10,000k combined audio & video.)
When you squeeze more than 2 hours on a (single-layer) DVD, you will start to see the video-quality degrade. You'll have to judge for yourself... There are lots of variables including the quality of the source video, the quality of your TV, and how critical you are.
Here is a link to an online calculator:
http://www.createspace.com/Special/Auth ... Budget.jsp
Hi Michael,
the packaging on most DVD discs says something to the effect that they will hold "up to 2 hours of video". Whilst this is true, at the highest possible quality level available with mpeg-2 files, you can fit on just over one hours worth of video.
In VS11+ the default NTSC DVD profile uses a variable bitrate of 8000 kbps for the video and Dolby 5.1 audio at 384 kbps.
If you wish to fit your whole project onto a single layer DVD, you'll have to use a lower video bitrate. Trevor Andrew might chip in here, but you might need to drop down to 5000 kbps. In order to squeeze the highest possible picture quality out of the video, you might change the audio to Dolby 2.0 at 256 kbps if you don't need surround sound.
You write "After I have added titles and was ready to burn my dvd I clicked ¡¥Create Disk¡¦ and it said that the size was 7.45GB. My dvd only holds 4.7G." Now that might seem to be a logical thing to do after reading the VS manual - but in fact many, if not most users get more reliable results by using a workflow known as "The Recommended Procedure" It's a workflow developed by John Hunter and other VS users over the years. Some people get perfectly good results using the procedure laid out in the VS manual, but many prefer to use the "RP" (sorry Heinz!)
Instead of having your clips on the timeline, doing all your edits, adding titles and so on, then going straight to the "Share > Create Disc" step, you should instead use "Share > Create Video File"
This will produce a single large mpeg-2 file of your project and you need to make sure that there is enough space on the hard drive for it.
To create the .mpg file with all the right settings, you will need to use "Share > Create Video File" and hit the "Custom" option in the drop down box. You can see the video and audio properties in the image below.
To get to set or change the properties, click on the "Options" button. This brings up the "Video Save Options" box. I generally prefer to uncheck "play file after creating it" and in this case, since you will be re-encoding the source files, I also uncheck "Perform SmartRender"
Hit the "General" tab. These would be the settings for NTSC video captured from a digital source, eg a MiniDV camcorder. For analogue video sources, you'd set the "frame type" to "upper field first". If you intended to play the finished DVD only on a pc, you might even choose "frame based".
Now to set the video bitrates and other settings, click on the "compression" tab, which will bring up the following box:
First of all, you'll see that it's set for NTSC-DVD. (In PAL lands, you'd obviously select PAL-DVD.) Below that is a mysterious slider, with "Speed" at one end and "Quality" at the other. The default setting is 70%, and I generally leave it at that, though sometimes push it up to 100%.
More significantly, perhaps, you'll notice that I checked the "Two-pass encode" box. That would be my personal preference in order to squeeze the best possible quality out of the resulting video - but it comes at the expense of roughly doubling the encoding time.
Now assuming you've created a single mpeg-2 file of less than 4.7GB (in fact usually less than 4.35GB to give a bit of a margin on the disc) you should open a new, blank VS project file. In order to set the project properties, insert your previously created mpeg-2 file into the timeline. This should bring up the following box - I've clicked on the "Details" button:
Unfortunately the image doesn't show all of the video and audio properties - you can't resize the box, but have to scroll down instead. In any case, you can see that the VS defaults were for 8000 kbps variable bitrate, Dolby 5.1 at 384 kbps, and that the box prompts you to click on the "Yes" button to change them to match the properties of your mpeg-2 file, which is what you want.
Now here's the counter-intuitive bit. Having set the project properties, you delete the file from the timeline! I don't think I would ever have guessed that step, and it's not something that was ever in the manual! Then go to "Share > Create Disc" which brings up this box:
Under "Add media:" click on the left filmstrip icon and add your single large mpeg-2 file. If you then click on the "cogwheel" icon at the bottom left, you can bring up the following box, which should confirm that your project properties now match your mpeg-2 file:
Note that this time, the "Do not convert compliant MPEG files" box is checked - this will cause VS to SmartRender your project, which is what you want.
At this point, you will go on to set all your chapters and DVD menus - I'll not go into that part, since otherwise this post will be closed before I'm done!!
I hope Trevor Andrew does chip in to let you know what actual video bitrate you'll need to use - I was just guessing at 5000 kbps. My personal preference is to keep my DVD's down to an hour or so in length. Good luck anyway, and happy editing! But beware, video editing is a great thief of time!
the packaging on most DVD discs says something to the effect that they will hold "up to 2 hours of video". Whilst this is true, at the highest possible quality level available with mpeg-2 files, you can fit on just over one hours worth of video.
In VS11+ the default NTSC DVD profile uses a variable bitrate of 8000 kbps for the video and Dolby 5.1 audio at 384 kbps.
If you wish to fit your whole project onto a single layer DVD, you'll have to use a lower video bitrate. Trevor Andrew might chip in here, but you might need to drop down to 5000 kbps. In order to squeeze the highest possible picture quality out of the video, you might change the audio to Dolby 2.0 at 256 kbps if you don't need surround sound.
You write "After I have added titles and was ready to burn my dvd I clicked ¡¥Create Disk¡¦ and it said that the size was 7.45GB. My dvd only holds 4.7G." Now that might seem to be a logical thing to do after reading the VS manual - but in fact many, if not most users get more reliable results by using a workflow known as "The Recommended Procedure" It's a workflow developed by John Hunter and other VS users over the years. Some people get perfectly good results using the procedure laid out in the VS manual, but many prefer to use the "RP" (sorry Heinz!)
Instead of having your clips on the timeline, doing all your edits, adding titles and so on, then going straight to the "Share > Create Disc" step, you should instead use "Share > Create Video File"
This will produce a single large mpeg-2 file of your project and you need to make sure that there is enough space on the hard drive for it.
To create the .mpg file with all the right settings, you will need to use "Share > Create Video File" and hit the "Custom" option in the drop down box. You can see the video and audio properties in the image below.
To get to set or change the properties, click on the "Options" button. This brings up the "Video Save Options" box. I generally prefer to uncheck "play file after creating it" and in this case, since you will be re-encoding the source files, I also uncheck "Perform SmartRender"
Hit the "General" tab. These would be the settings for NTSC video captured from a digital source, eg a MiniDV camcorder. For analogue video sources, you'd set the "frame type" to "upper field first". If you intended to play the finished DVD only on a pc, you might even choose "frame based".
Now to set the video bitrates and other settings, click on the "compression" tab, which will bring up the following box:
First of all, you'll see that it's set for NTSC-DVD. (In PAL lands, you'd obviously select PAL-DVD.) Below that is a mysterious slider, with "Speed" at one end and "Quality" at the other. The default setting is 70%, and I generally leave it at that, though sometimes push it up to 100%.
More significantly, perhaps, you'll notice that I checked the "Two-pass encode" box. That would be my personal preference in order to squeeze the best possible quality out of the resulting video - but it comes at the expense of roughly doubling the encoding time.
Now assuming you've created a single mpeg-2 file of less than 4.7GB (in fact usually less than 4.35GB to give a bit of a margin on the disc) you should open a new, blank VS project file. In order to set the project properties, insert your previously created mpeg-2 file into the timeline. This should bring up the following box - I've clicked on the "Details" button:
Unfortunately the image doesn't show all of the video and audio properties - you can't resize the box, but have to scroll down instead. In any case, you can see that the VS defaults were for 8000 kbps variable bitrate, Dolby 5.1 at 384 kbps, and that the box prompts you to click on the "Yes" button to change them to match the properties of your mpeg-2 file, which is what you want.
Now here's the counter-intuitive bit. Having set the project properties, you delete the file from the timeline! I don't think I would ever have guessed that step, and it's not something that was ever in the manual! Then go to "Share > Create Disc" which brings up this box:
Under "Add media:" click on the left filmstrip icon and add your single large mpeg-2 file. If you then click on the "cogwheel" icon at the bottom left, you can bring up the following box, which should confirm that your project properties now match your mpeg-2 file:
Note that this time, the "Do not convert compliant MPEG files" box is checked - this will cause VS to SmartRender your project, which is what you want.
At this point, you will go on to set all your chapters and DVD menus - I'll not go into that part, since otherwise this post will be closed before I'm done!!
I hope Trevor Andrew does chip in to let you know what actual video bitrate you'll need to use - I was just guessing at 5000 kbps. My personal preference is to keep my DVD's down to an hour or so in length. Good luck anyway, and happy editing! But beware, video editing is a great thief of time!
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