How to put two or more shows on one DVD ?
 

I'm trying to put 2-3 seperate TV shows onto 1 DVD. Each show goes about on average, 1 hr and 10 mins. to 1 hr and 25 mins.

When I encode each show, what bitrate should I use for each one? I know it would be constant bitrate instead of variable, but other than that I'm not too sure..

Also..for shows that length, would you recommend I put 2 or 3 shows onto 1 DVD?

Thanks

I don't know why you'd say it would be constant bitrate (CBR) instead of variable bit rate (VBR). I would only use CBR when the content is short and won't fill a disc. For example, 45-60 minutes on one single-layer "4.7Gb" (4.38GB) DVD. For anything longer than 1 hour, you ideally want to look at VBR, so that bits are used when needed, and not wasted when not needed. That insures the best picture quality. That's one of the ways that MPEG can be compressed effectively -- it's what you might refer to as "Type II temporal compression," if I had to name it.

For the best quality, I would consider one show per DVD, especially if it's the sporting event stuff I know you're usually working with.

You can fit up to 3 hours on one DVD, using 352x480 resolution. In that case, maybe put two shows on one disc, and one show on a disc by itself.

There's a good bitrate calculator at http://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php
For 90 minutes, according to that calculator, you're looking at a video bitrate of 5100kbps, and a max bitrate of 8000kbps. However, in my experience, 5000-5000k is more along the lines of very-compressed 2-hour (SP mode) DVD recordings. You could probably up that number to about 6000, with a max of 9000, and still fit 80-90 minutes with problems. But don't hold me to that , if it encodes too big -- meaning you'd have to re-encode it to make it smaller. But I'd shoot for more, not less. I think that calc maybe undershoots it a bit, erring on the side of safety.

Hope that helps clear things up for you. Thanks. :)

I'm having a problem.
I'm trying to put 2 different shows on 1 DVD, and each show ended up going about 1 hour and 18 mins on average, so I take it into MC, and use the settings you said, I went about 5200 mostly, well when I bring them into Ulead, the shows are cut down to 53 mins...it's happened now on 3 seperate ones...

Did the encoding somehow cut off the rest of the 20+ minutes? It would've had to of because all I did was encode and straight from there bring it into MC.

Why is it doing this, and how can I fix it?

Still need help with this..

Watch them in VLC and see if it's there after MainConcept has encoded the new MPEGs. If the footage is gone, then the source file may be corrupted in some way.

If the video is fine after MC, but not after DVDWS2, then maybe the videos are (again) somehow corrupted.

Your hard drive may be too full and fragmented, too -- it's possible. I don't have enough information.

I'm trying to open the encoded file in VLC..it plays, but it doesn't show the time playing as it usually does, so I can't tell for sure.....do you know why it's doing that?

It's probably doing that because the files are corrupted in some way.

Well, I have 82.8 GB free on my computer...do you think I should try defrag or something? If so, can you again give me the defrag you recommend?

All I did was capture them to my computer thru the VCR as I always do..what do you think could've caused it? Should I just totally re-capture all of them? There was like, 14 of them so I'd like to avoid that if possible..

The best defrag is Diskeeper: http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/h...spx?RId=105864

The corrupted video file is probably a lost cause. Maybe just re-capture the missing part. Then use Womble MPEG Video Wizard (not MPEG-VCR) to merge the two encoded pieces.

That way it's not too time consuming.

But defragment the hard drive before you do -- the drive may still be a mess, especially if it was full or near-full at any point in time since last defrag (if ever defragged).

How would I merge the 2 encoded pieces in womble? I've never done that

Drag them both onto the timeline, one at a time. Easy.

I had to encode the shows with a avg bitrate of 3400 to get them both to fit on DVD..with the 384 ac audio for them both, the file ended up being 4.2 gb

With the missing part that I have to recapture, should I encode that to 3400 as well? It';l only be around 20 minutes..

3400k may work, depending on content. For some things, it's fine, average compression. For others, it may be a tad too compressed, and you'll get noise. At 3400k, you'd usually be looking at 2.5 to 3 hours of content.

In order to merge footage in an MPEG editor, you'll have to encode the new segment to the same specs as the old one. I have no idea if the new files, with the 20 added minutes, will still fit a 4.38GB DVD-R or DVD+R, however. (Personally, I just give up, and run a project on DVD+R DL.)

Now I'm working on 4 videos that are 35 mins each. I'd like to get them all onto 1 DVD if possible. What bitrate would I use in MC for that? I didn't think it'd be around 3300 or so, what do you think would be a good bitrate to use?

At two hours and twenty minutes total (2:20), I'd look at using Half D1 352x480 and a bitrate of about 4500kbps. You could probably go higher to fill a disc, but that should be adequate bitrate, if you're using 2-pass VBR and the content has a stable signal.