I need some tips in getting 9 gigs into a single-layer disk in DVDSP

[Michael Gissing]

Well 9 gigs is too big for two disks or a double sided but I presume you are looking to crunch the data rate even lower to get each to about 3.7 gigs. I would think it unwatchable to drop the data rate low enough for 9 gigs worth of normal DVD mpeg down to 3.7 for a single DVD+R.

[Nick Meyers]

Hang on…

are you talking about putting 9G worth of DV files (45minutes of running time)
onto DVD disks?

or are you saying you’re building a DVD and have 9g worth of already compressed m2v & ac3 files?

nick

[Mark Suszko]

9.8 gigs worth of files, something like 253 minutes or 4.2 hours of running time.

I’m wondering if my workflow is a problem: I’m exporting self-contained QT files, DV NTSC codec, to a drive, then dragging the files into DVDSP and dropping them onto the picons for their assigned tracks in the graphical view. This always used to work just fine, but those projects were all much shorter.

Is there some voodoo I can apply to my files thru Compressor that would make them smaller yet retain good SD resolution?

My fallback is to play each track out of FCP’s timeline, into a stand-alone realtime DVD recorder, set to a 4-hour “speed”. That will probably fit, but I lose the interactive menuing and linking, and it will look “industrial”.

[Chris Tompkins]

If you are creating a DVD video; You need to create DVD compliant files (mpeg2) adjust data rate to fit.

If you are creating a DVD DATA disc, it won’t work.

Chris

[Nick Meyers]

you can drop your data rate in the DVDSP preferences,
but 4.2 Hours might just be a bit too much.

you could be better off with 2 DVDs

one thing though:
if you could drop your audio data rate it could help more than you’d first think.
can you go to mono inside of stereo?
that’ll half your audio size.

i do this for the web, when it’s appropriate, but i’m not sure if you can do it for DVDs

nick

[Mark Suszko]

Where, specifically, do I adjust that data rate?

[Nick Meyers]

i don’t know, i use compressor,
did you look?

i did.
no controls for audio, so maybe compressor is the way.

nick

[Bret Williams]

[Mark Suszko] “9.8 gigs worth of files, something like 253 minutes or 4.2 hours of running time.”

So the 9.8 gigs you’re referring to is obviously the mpeg2 files, right? Because 253 minutes of DV would be 50gigs @ roughly 5 min per gig.

So you’ve already compressed it, but it wasn’t small enough. 4+ hours. That’s immense for a DVD. You need to at least use compressor. But the data rate is going to be so low I think you’re going to see blocky garbage. Hollywood movies utilize a 2 layer disc for this to nearly double the amount of info. They don’t compromise the data rate much. But they also use 24p so they’re getting 20% more use of space right off the bat too.

BTW compression settings in DVDSP are in….. preferences.

[Rafael Amador]

[Mark Suszko] “Where, specifically, do I adjust that data rate?”
In Preferences > Encoding.

Compressor has a Preset for “Best Quality 120 minutes DVD”.
That has 5Mbps data rate.
If you want to make a 4 hours DVD, you need to reduce the data-rate to some 2.5Mbps.
That will make a real crap of DVD.
If you want to keep a minimum of quality, or you use a Double-layer disk, or you use two disks.
rafael