File Size Explosion

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 1:09 am

Hi, hopefully someone can help me with this. When I try to burn a 3.9GB MPEG file to DVD, VS11.5+ thinks it needs 6.1GB of space on the DVD. Why? When I tried to burn a 750M file, it needed 759M of space, which makes sense. I realize some additional space is needed for DVD file structures, etc. But, exploding a 3.9GB file into 6GB of DVD makes no sense.

The specifics:
1) I did not create a menu or chapters. I simply tried burning the file to create a DVD with minimal overhead.
2) The source file is an AVCHD file which I converted to MPEG format using TMPG Encoder Xpres 4.0. It produced the 3.9GB file which I am trying to burn.
3) When I use another DVD authoring program to burn this file, it works fine and only adds about 100M of overhead for menus and chapters. I used both Easy Media Creator 10 and TMPG DVD Authoring with the same file and burned the DVD OK.

I like the uLead product best and would prefer to stick with it, but I can't if it's going to keep turning 4GB files into 6GB DVDs.

Any ideas what's going on here?

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 2:31 am

Welcome to the forums!

Can you explain where you saw that 6.1 GB was required? I suspect it might have been on the last page of the burning module (Required/Available space)? If so, you might have been misinterpreting it. In burning a disc, VS needs almost twice the space of the files to be burned, to allow for temporary working files to be created... That could be the reason.

Have you actually pressed the burn button? If VS thinks the space on the DVD is insufficient, it will usually then produce a message saying there is not enough space...

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:26 pm

Yes, it was on the last page of the burn screen. When I try to burn the disk it says the disk is too small to hold the file.

I tried another experiment also. I took the 3.9GB file and had VS convert it to an MPEG file. Guess what? The file it produced was 6.1GB in size, even though it smart rendered 99.96% of the file. The only difference it noted between the files was that the original file was bottom field first and it suggested top field first as optimal.

Something weird is happening. My guess is most people use VS to render, not a third party program, so they may not be seeing this problem[/img]

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 1:30 pm

That in fact could be the case. However, what we first need you to do is right click on the file in question, but do so within Video Studio -- either in the timeline or in the library page. Please then copy ALL its properties here please. Then all of us will have a clearer idea of exactly what kind of video we are talking about.

I half suspect, since you started out with AVCHD video, which is high definition mpeg-4, that the MPEG you said TMPG encoded to might also have been mpeg-4, and that of course is far smaller than the mpeg-2 which is required for a video DVD. But we won't know until you give us all the properties.

As for the Field Order question, that will affect the final quality of the video, but not the size. The basic rule of video editing is that you must maintain the same Field Order throughout. AVCHD invariably uses Upper Field First, so you must use that throughout your project and burning it to disc. So the program was correct in telling you that. But as I say, that affects quality, not quantity...

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 2:06 pm

Ken, Thanks for answering the field order question. Here are the file properties:

Filename: test.mpg
File Format: NTSC DVD
File Size: 3,981,782 KB
Duration: 5762.196 seconds

Video Type: MPEG-2 Video, Upper Field First
Total frames: 172,693 frame(s)
Attributes: 24 bits, 720x480, 16:9
Frame Rate: 29.970 frames/sec
Data rate: Variable bit rate (Max. 8000 kbps)

Audio Type: Dolby Digital Audio
Total Samples: 76,585,385 Samples
Attributes: 48000 Hz
Layer: None
Bit Rate 224 kbps

BTW, on the render screen, the checkbox is checked which says "Don't render compliant MPEG file", just in case you were wondering.

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 8:46 pm

OK, so this time I used VS to render the file. It took the 12GB AVCHD file and turned it into an 18GB Blu Ray compliant file. Went to burn it, and guess what ... not enough disk space. It says it needs 26GB to burn the file. What am I missing? There is no way VS should need 8GB of overhead just to burn an MPEG file to a blu ray disk. This is looking more and more like a bug.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Like I said in an earlier post, other burning software doesn't display this behavior - just VS.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:19 am

It is true. VS needs roughly twice the size of the file being burned, for temp files.

You'll need to free up some space on your hard drive or change your working file to another drive with enough space.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:22 am

I am now getting a little confused as to what you are trying to burn to. Do you actually have a Blu-Ray burner and Blu-Ray discs to burn to?

Also, in your earlier example with the converted mpeg-2 files, can you confirm that you chose Share > Create Disc > DVD and that you did not choose AVCHD or Blu-Ray as the output format?

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 2:46 am

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, I have a blu-ray burner and blu-ray disks. I have noticed the file size increase when burning both blu-ray and standard definition DVDs. Here is the process I follow:

1. Shoot video on Sony HDR-SR11
2. Copy all the individual .mt2s files onto hard drive.
3. Load all the .mt2s files into VS 11.5+
4. Cut out unwanted scenes, add titles.
5. Create 1 output file (share > Create Video File > "use the same format as the first video clip") - this merges everything into a single .mt2s output file
6. Take the file from step 5 and use TMPGEnc to create a DVD (or Blu-ray) compliant MPEG-2 file
7. Load this file back into VS11.5+ to add menus & chapters to burn a DVD (or blu-ray DVD).

At this point, since I have DVD (or Blu-ray) compliant MPEG file generated in step 6, I would expect VS to burn it to this disk needing a total disk size of the file + some space for file structures, etc. I wouldn't expect it to add the enormous amount of space it seems to try to add (i.e., VS says the 3.9GB file from step 6 will actually require 6.1GB of space on the DVD or a 21GB blu-ray file from step 6 will need 28GB of space on the blu-ray disk).

For reference, can you tell me the clip properties for a file that you burn to DVD without issue? Are you able to generate an MPEG file around 4GB and burn it to a 4.7GB disk without issue? The only thing I can think of is that the file generated from TMPGEnc, while DVD compliant, does not exactly match the format VS 11.5+ is expecting. Hence, it tries to re-render it rather than just using the file as an already compliant MPEG file and smart rendering it to the disk.

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 2:48 am

Black Lab, this isn't an issue of temp space needed on my hard drive. It's an issue of how much space VS thinks it needs to burn the finished project on the DVD (or blu-ray disk). Sorry if this wasn't clear from my posts.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:15 am

Thanks. That is all much clearer in my mind now. I am still rather puzzled, like you, as to what is going on.

You asked what properties I would use to burn a high quality DVD. Well, I hate to tell you that, apart from the fact that I live in a PAL country, I would use the same properties as you set out above.

My only problem with those listed properties is the fact your project is around 96 minutes long. Using the high quality bitrate of 8000 kbps on a project that length would, I think, come out normally at well over what could fit on a single layer standard definition DVD, even using compressed Dolby audio. I don't think it should come to 6.1 GB as VS has suggested, but I would have thought it would be around or over 5 GB. To fit 90 minutes or more onto a single layer DVD, I would normally reduce the bitrate to around 6000 kbps.

It could in fact be that TMPGEnc uses a far more efficient method of converting your AVCHD originals to DVD compatible mpeg-2. But I still would have thought a 96 minute project would still come out at more than 3.9 GB even so...

Apart from that qualification, however, the properties you give are solid, high quality settings appropriate to what you are seeking to do. So I am now beginning to agree with you that despite it appearing to be a fully compatible mpeg-2 which VS should be able to burn to disc without recoding, the length of the file or some other aspect of the TMPGEnc encoding is possibly being seen by VS as not being fully compliant. And it then wants to recode it according to its own calculations.

One thing you could try would be to insert the 3.9 GB mpeg-2 into the VS burning timeline, having selected DVD as the output and making sure 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' is ticked (as you said it already is). But on the final page, instead of inserting a blank DVD into the burner, choose DVD Folder (or ISO image file) as the output.

If you get an error message saying it is too large for a single layer disc, then change it to a dual layer disc size on the first page of the burning module. Then get back to the final page and press Burn. If you get a message saying 'Converting title', then clearly it has found that for whatever reason, the mpeg-2 is not compliant according to its rules. But at the end of the process, it would be interesting to see what size it did actually "burn" to the DVD Folder...

If it does not convert the video, then I would have thought that the "burn" process would only last about 15 - 20 minutes. Otherwise, you would probably have to add a further 90 minutes on top of that for the conversion time.

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:27 am

Ken, thanks for the suggestions. I'll try them out as I get time over the next day or two and get back to you. Yes, TMPGEnc is very efficient and, in my opinion, produces the highest quality video for the file size. That's why I've been using it to encode my video for years now.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:04 am

A few rough figures for you.

1.0 hour video at 8000 kbps = 4 GB
1.5 hour video at 8000 kbps = 6 GB
2.0 hour video at 8000 kbps = 8 GB

090 min video at 6000 kbps = 4 GB
135 min video at 6000 kbps = 6 GB
180 min video at 6000 kbps = 8 GB

Based upon these calculations I think the file sizes you mention sound right.

john1952 · Post by **john1952** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:03 pm

Ken, I tried you suggestion last night and yes, it does do a 'convert title'. So, as an experiment, I tried the following:

1. lI oaded a short .mt2s clip into VS and created a DVD compliant MPEG file using the create file option.
2. I restarted VS and loaded the mpeg file that VS just creat3ed and worked through the prompts to burn a DVD. No titles or menus specified.

Guess what? It did a 'convert file' even on the MPEG that VS itself created! I tried generating the file with many different MPEG settings, including those VS said it was going to conver the file to, and it always wanted to do a 'conver title' before burning the DVD.

So, is this behavior normal? Do you see this as well? Can you run a small test like I did to see if you get the same results? I need to try and determine if this is a VS issue or not. If the process works OK for you, then my next step is to do a clean install of VS inside a Windows XP guest (using the MS Virtual machine), to see if the encoding behavior works correctly there. Perhaps there is some environment issue with my machine causing this problem. At this point I'm stumped and frustrated by VS's behavior.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:41 pm

I don't need to run an experiment because I know from long experience that when I create a standard definition mpeg-2 from my high def files (Share > Create Video File > DVD) I get a file which I can insert in the burning module and burn a DVD (or more usually in my case, a DVD Folder) without any 'converting title' in the burning process. That's where I came up with those figures for burning times.

CAn you confirm that when you convert your avchd to DVD-compliant mpeg-2, you first create a new project (File > New Project). You don't have to give the new project a name -- the objective is just to clear the timeline in the Editor module, which is what happens when you create a new project. Then, with a completely clean timeline, you select Share > Create Disc > DVD. The burning module opens, also with nothing in its own burning timelines. (If you leave a project open in the Editor and do this, the project file opens automatically in the burning module timeline, and this means that conversion will take place during the burning process.)