Help: Why does an 89MB, 20 Minute Flash video Take up 1.19GB on a DVD?

[todd2000]

So Im trying to burn some FLV files to DVD with Toast 10 to play in a DVD player. They are roughly 89MB a piece and about 20 min long, but each file is taking up about 1.19GB of space on the DVD. Seems kind of excessive. I have some other video files that are longer, and 3 times the size and they take up less then 1/2 the space. I tried converting the FLVs to MPEG, but that didn't help. Im kinda new to burning DVDs. Any ideas?

I attached a screen shot with the info for one of the files:

Thanks!

[simsaladimbamba]

That is because most modern videos, distributed via file sharing or video viewing sites like YouTube, use an MPEG-4 codec variant like Dvix or Xvid or H264 or .x264 or ..., which is much more efficient than the MPEG-2 codec used for video DVDs, as MPEG-2 is older than MPEG-4.
Video on video DVDs is bound to take more storage space than a downloaded .avi file with 700MB for 90 minutes of video, use the forum search to find dozens of similar threads. Or use MRoogle.

[jwheeler]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

That is because most modern videos, distributed via file sharing or video viewing sites like YouTube, use an MPEG-4 codec variant like Dvix or Xvid or H264 or .x264 or ..., which is much more efficient than the MPEG-2 codec used for video DVDs, as MPEG-2 is older than MPEG-4.
Video on video DVDs is bound to take more storage space than a downloaded .avi file with 700MB for 90 minutes of video, use the forum search to find dozens of similar threads. Or use MRoogle.

I thought DVDs were just less compressed to make them easier to read.

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by jwheeler

I thought DVDs were just less compressed to make them easier to read.

MPEG-2 is not as CPU intensive as MPEG-4, if that is what you think. As the video DVD emerged in the 90s of the last century, decoding units were a lot slower than today, especially with entertainment utilities.
Otherwise, MPEG-2 is harder to read on Mac OS X, as you need the QT MPEG-2 PlayBack Component to open a video DVD in QT or even MPEG Streamclip, though one can open video DVDs easily in Handbrake or VLC Player, though if one wants to edit footage from a video DVD, it is quite "complicated" to get the proper format out of it.

MPEG-4 is newer and much more CPU intensive, see AVCHD editing threads.

[-DH]

Originally Posted by jwheeler

I thought DVDs were just less compressed to make them easier to read.

You thought wrong.

-DH

[martinX]

A couple of general principles.

• Increased data rate gives increased quality
• Bigger frame size means bigger file size

The first one is only half applicable to you. You are going from a very compressed file to a not as compressed one. Toast has no idea about the quality of your source file, it's just doing what it always does: makes a DVD of average MPEG2 bitrate that looks OK on a TV.

If you were coming from a less compressed project, that'd be fine. You'd get a nice DVD at a comparatively reasonable size. However, you're going the other way so you're thinking "Why is this so?". To compound your confusion, you're going from a small frame size to a larger one which will also result in a bigger file size. Sad thing is, none of this will help your final result look any better.