How many minutes of MPEG2 onto a DVD

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks for comment on setting to CBR.
For interest I did set the Calculator to CBR and it suggests 9,608,000 any reason not to use this value ?

Not following the AC3 comments though.

On advice here I normally render video & audio separately they drop both files into DVDA, only then render separately the audio AC3.
Video using Main Concept MPEG-2 and then audio using Dolby Digital-AC3 studio

If I go the AC3 encoder in Movie Studio …. there are no options … i.e. the ‘customize Template’ is greyed ?

[Mike Kujbida]

And therein lies the difference between Studio & Pro. I have Pro and have those options but Sony, in their infinite “wisdom”, decided that Studio users didn’t need it so ignore that custom tweak.

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks anyway

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks for comment on setting to CBR.

I also mentioned the following:

For interest I did set the Calculator to CBR and for the same clip it suggests 9,608,000 any reason not to use this value ?
I know you said you use 8,000,000 … is there an issue going above that ?

[Mike Kujbida]

There are two issues with going higher than 8,500,000.
#1 is that most DVD players these days are so cheaply made that they can’t handle a high bitrate and quite often choke on it.
My first DVD player several years ago was a top of the line Pioneer and it was $400. I can buy a blu-ray player today for less than $50. Build quality and reliability suffer (a lot) when that happens.
#2 is that a lot of consumers buy the cheapest blank DVDs they can get and they can’t reliably handle such a high bitrate either. They often don’t last very long either. I’ve had friends who bought cheap DVDs only to have them fall apart in less than 6 months.

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks

[Mike Kujbida]

You’re welcome. Good luck with the project.