Burn DVD

[juliart08]

Well, I got the DVD to burn with decent quality. Now I want to know if I can burn more shows to the same DVD? As this one is short 2:32 min. I hate to use one DVD for only one show.

[Ken Berry]

I am sorry, but I have searched your previous posts and nothing gives me the slightest clue as to what kind of video you are dealing with or the workflow you followed to actually burn this DVD.

That being said, you have obviously managed to burn a small video to DVD which is a bit of a surprise since a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 file as short as 2:32 is well under 1 GB in size, so the program would have had to pad out the size which requires, as far as I am aware, a minimum of 1 GB of video to burn successfully.

But the basic answer is, yes. You can burn as many videos as you have created to a single or dual layer DVD as long as you do it all at once. In other words, you have project A and go to Share > Create Video File > DVD and produce file A which will be DVD compatible mpeg-2. You do the same with projects B, C, D etc until such time as you have over 4 GB of final video files. Depending on how quickly you work, this might take quite some time.

When you have done your last project, you then open the burning module (Share > Create Disc > DVD) and add all your DVD-comaptible mpeg-2 files in the burning timeline in the order you want. Then you build your menu and burn. And of course, if you are using a dual layer disc, you wait even longer until you have nearly 8.5 GB of final video files to burn.

[juliart08]

Thanks Ken, You mention mpeg-2. Is mpeg-4 better? How do I do that? I always want the best quality available. I went to watch a tutorial about "Burning a DVD" It seemed very good but the audio was not clear because of a second track in the background of garbling.

[Ken Berry]

No, not for a standard definition video DVD. The international DVD standard requires that the video that can be burned to a video DVD can ONLY be mpeg-2, though with frame sizes going down from a maximum of 720 x 576 for PAL and 720 x 480 for NTSC. You can also burn mpeg-1 files to DVD, but that is lower quality stuff and, in my opinion, not worth the trouble. But if you try to burn mpeg-4 to standard definition DVD, it will be converted to mpeg-2 whether you like it or not.

There is, however, an mpeg-4 type of format called DivX. It is a small file size but high quality format, and it can be burned to both CDs and DVDs, though not in DVD format per se. They are burned just as though you were burning a data file to a CD. This cannot be done in Video Studio. But if you have a stand-alone DVD player rated to play DivX, it will recognise the DivX video on your data disc and play it as though it were a video DVD. But you can't build a menu for it -- unless you use a commercial program produced by DivX called DivX Author 1.5. And then you need a player which is not only rated to play DivX, but which is also rated to recognise those menus!!

And on top of all that, you will note that I was talking about standard definition DVDs. There is in fact a high definition hybrid disc which takes AVCHD high definition mpeg-4 video and burns it in a Blu-Ray structure to a standard DVD. But you need a high definition camera AND a Blu-Ray disc players which is also rated to play these hybrid discs. The Sony PlayStation 3 is one such player. But if you try to play such a hybrid disc on a standard definition DVD player, it will not recognise it. And there are eve stories that doing so can damage the player.

[sjj1805]

Well, I got the DVD to burn with decent quality. Now I want to know if I can burn more shows to the same DVD? As this one is short 2:32 min. I hate to use one DVD for only one show.

Just to clarify a point that Ken might have overlooked.
When you burn a DVD it becomes "Read only" and you cannot then add more material to THAT disc.

What you can do is add several titles (shows) to one DVD project until you have enough material to fill a DVD. You would then have a DVD with a "Title Menu" containing thumbnails or text links to each of the shows you have on that disc. Some or all of those titles can in addition have chapters - in which case those particular titles will also have Chapter menus.

[Ken Berry]

Steve has, of course, explained in more elegant English what I had attempted to say when I said:

You can burn as many videos as you have created to a single or dual layer DVD as long as you do it all at once.

[juliart08]

I want to thank all of you that are helping me. The manual for VideoStudio is rather lame. I'm sure with all your help I will be able to edit and produce a finished product that will be as good or better then when I used A B roll editing.