DVD Compression Question

[Jovian9]

Here's the deal. I have a bunch of Sealab, AquaTeen, Spiderman (mid 90's animated), and X-Men (90's animated) on my DVR........98 hours of this stuff (only have 2 hours left on my DVR and need to clear some room). I'm a big fan of all these shows but while I can go buy the DVD's for AT and Sealab I cannot for X-Men and Spiderman since they never officially released them on DVD. I looked on eBay and people are selling complete series of these cartoons on DVD that are like 4-5 dvd sets (which these people themselves have recorded and put to dvd). I do not want to buy this from eBay but I'd like to be able to put my DVR stuff on dvd myself. The problem is I would only be able to put 2 hours on each DVD with iDVD or DVDSP. This would take me around 20-30 DVD's. The people on eBay are selling complete set X-Men with 76 episodes spread out on 4 dvd's. That is around 19 episodes a dvd which is nearly 400 minutes or close to 7 hours. I assume they are compressing them somehow, but I've never tried this.

Will I be able to do this using Compressor and iDVD? Compressor and DVDSP? or Compressor and Toast 6?

I took a 92mb QT file and used Compressor (120minute fast encode). This left me with a 72mb QT file. They are both 2:54 in length when opening them in QT Pro. But when I used Toast 6 (video setting) the original 92mb file was listed at 3:39 while the file I used Compressor on was listed at
2:54. So I'm not sure if this will work.

Does anyone out there have experience doing this on a Mac? I would like to be able to fit more than 2 hours of video onto a dvd-r (reduction of quality is fine with me).

Thanks for any help!

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

Just compress each episode individually as low as you can, probably a low VBR like say 2-5, that should yield a 20 minute video around 200megs. Also, the key to saving space on a DVD is to compress the video to AAC or something, and not the uncompressed aiff, you can use A.Pack, it comes with DVDSP.

It is also possible that the spider man DVDs on ebay are dvd-12 or 15 format, (dual layer) which means that they can fit more information.

Also the DVR already has the files compressed in mpeg2, so compressing them again will result in more quality loss.

Good luck

 

[Jovian9]

Thanks. I'll try that. I'm also going to try using HandBrake and OSEx. I'll post results when I'm done.

 

[live4ever]

The best way would probably go with mpeg4 video (with XviD as the codec) I commonly use it to fit >10 hours on 4.7GB DVD-Rs.

My set top is an mpeg4 compatible Phillips so I can watch them on the TV as well.

 

[Jovian9]

The best way would probably go with mpeg4 video (with XviD as the codec) I commonly use it to fit >10 hours on 4.7GB DVD-Rs.

My set top is an mpeg4 compatible Phillips so I can watch them on the TV as well.

What program do you use that would use the XviD codec? Right now I'm using Handbrake to encode a 2hr58min video into mpeg4 with AAC audio. But it has awhile left to complete before I can see if this method works. Thanks!

 

[live4ever]

Handbrake has the XviD codec in it, but it's half as fast as ffmpeg.

I also use ffmpegX with the XviD codec (for single files, not whole DVDs usually).

 

[mmzplanet]

I have a utility called DVD2oneX. It will take the contents of an entire MultiLayered DVD or Multiple DVDs and compress it so it fits onto a single side/layer DVD Recordable. That includes all titles and menus in the compression. It has worked well for me and makes it easy to do. I have yet to notice any drop in quality.

You can get it at www.dvd2one.com

I'm sure this may work for your purposes. If you put all your files in one directory then it will process them all for you.

 

[Jovian9]

The best way would probably go with mpeg4 video (with XviD as the codec) I commonly use it to fit >10 hours on 4.7GB DVD-Rs.

My set top is an mpeg4 compatible Phillips so I can watch them on the TV as well.

What are you using to burn the DVD's once you've compressed your source video? I was able to take a nearly 3 hour(6GB) movie and compress it to 2GB of video. But when I try to burn it with Toast 6 it still registers it as too much video for a normal DVD-R. Thanks!