What transforms 1gb video to 700mb CD?

Banji Abereoje · Post by **Banji Abereoje** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:19 pm

Good people, pls enlighten me, I'm a bit new to this.

I captured a 5min video with firewire amounting to over 1gb. Importing it to VS10 timeline, I retain the video properties, being DV type1..... against the project setting prompt to uniform the setting: I'm amazed to see that while burning it out to VCD plate of 700mb, no caution on the video size not fitting into the CD.

Is there any ''invincible encoder'' as soon as create VCD is selected because inspite of this, the quality cannot compare again to what I have on the cam LCD?

I'll appreciate any contribution in this regard.

Thanks BA

martythebrit · Post by **martythebrit** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:46 pm

If your creating a VCD it will be converted to an mpeg which is a smaller compressed video standard than DV.

rguthrie · Post by **rguthrie** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:07 pm

Banji,

Just to add to martythebrit's comments....and VCD is of poorer quality than the DVD standard. For example the VCD standard uses an NTSC resolution of 352x240, whereas DVD standard uses an NTSC resolution of 720x480. Also VCD uses MPEG-1 and DVD uses MPEG-2.

Ronald Guthrie

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:56 pm

File size is a function of the combined audio and video bitrate (kbps).

You can estimate file size with the following formula:
File Size in MB = (Bitrate in kbps x Playing Time in minutes) / 140

A 1GB AVI/DV file (about 5 minutes) should compress easily onto a VCD disc with reasonable quality. In fact, I think it's impossible to make a valid 5-minute VCD file that won't fit on a CD!

Quoting myself

DVDdoug wrote:Higher bitrate = higher quality = bigger file size = lower compression = less playing time.

Lower bitrate = lower quality = smaller file size = higher compression = more playing time.

The above comments are for a given format. (An MPEG-4 file can have a lower bitrate and higher quality than an MPEG-2 file.)

Trevor Andrew · Post by **Trevor Andrew** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 8:10 pm

Hi BA

Capturing via firewire to Dv-Avi (DV-Type 1) is probably the best capture quality you will get.

If you only have a CD-rom burner then you are stuck with VCD or SVCD.

After editing, if you go Share Create Disc you select VCD as the disc option.
Video Studio will re-code/render the AVI to a Mpeg1 file prior to burning the disc.
This file will be approximately 700Mb per hour. Your 5 minutes being about 60 Mb.

A better option may be to first Share Create Video File, select the VCD option, this will render the project to a Mpeg 1 file.
You can play this on your pc to check quality.

Starting a new project and Share Create Disc, Add Video¡XUsing the VCD you can burn your disc.

SVCD
By using this option the quality should be better, you can get about 40 minutes per CD.
Although its been a long time since I used VCD I found a Constant bit rate to be better than Variable, Play back problems if I remember correctly.

Otherwise buy a DVD burner.