-
DLT and DVD9 and ??
I’m doing a project which will be the first time I’ve used DVD9. I have a few questions and am hoping someone with knowledge could advise me.
First, the place where I’m having my duplicating done is going to burn a glass master and press copies, as they always do, but for a DVD9 they said they need it on DLT, getting it on DVD -R won’t work for them to do a DVD9. I don’t have a DLT drive, so any suggestions here? Is there a way I can burn it to a DVD9 on my computer and then take it somewhere to be transferred to DLT? I take it DLT is just some sort of backup tape drive which preserves it so my DVD menus work? Don’t really know what a DLT is, but a quick search shows them selling for something like 6 grand!
Second, the DVD9 holds 4 hours, and I want to get 5 hours on it (the usual story). A big part of what I’m putting on (3 hours) could be compressed at a really low rate because it’s not key stuff and I want to make it as small as possible sizewise. I’m going to compress it at 4 and see how big it is, but anyone have any experience with this kind of high compression to save space? (Yeah, I know the studios have $100,000 encoders that make it look great, but I’m doing this using a DVStorm card.)
Thanks.
-
2 Replies
-
Jeff,
You can’t burn your project to DVD-R and transfer it to DLT. Your authoring software must create the DLT tapes, because only the authoring software knows where to place the layer break.
Used DLT drives can be purchased on Ebay for $100-200. Try to get a DLT-4000.
As far as squeezing five hours on DVD-9 goes, either you lower the bit rate so everything fits, or you can encode the video at half D1 or MPEG-1. I assume that your audio is already Dolby Digital. If not, you are wasting a huge amount of space with PCM audio.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Thanks, Bill, for all that, including the tip on Dolby digital.
Here’s another question — can you mix formats on a DVD? Can I encode half my show in mpeg2 and then one other portion in mpeg1?
Looking at ebay, I’m seeing this:
https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=39978&item=5202631979&rd=1
Look like a decent one? This connects via a scsi card in the back of my PC, right? And then my DVD program can see it in the same way it would see my DVD burner, and I have it write it to the DLT rather than the DVD burner?
Thanks for your help.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up