DVDSP: Creating Dual Layer Home Videos

[redAPPLE]

hello.

i hope somebody with more experience could give me (and anybody else who would like to create one) information how to calculate the movie length etc.

so here is my question:

i have 3 mini dv tapes from a recent holiday and i would want to pack a lot of footages as possible, because i think it was a memorable holiday. i have read, that DVDSP could create dual layer dvds (i have an external dvd+r drive (dual layer)).

i have edited the movie in FCP and i would want to import it to DVDSP. but i do not know, if the whole thing would fit in a dual layer dvd.

hopefully someone could give some insight on this issue. thanks.

 

[tobio]

first of all, the link that you are looking for http://www.videohelp.com/calc

As far as I am aware DVD Studio will just encode your video to MPEG2 at 4Mbps, VBR unless you specify otherwise.

For best results, fill in your video length in the bitrate calculator above, and enter the results it gives you into Compressor (take an existing DVD High quality profile and tweak the values)

The absolute maximum amount of video I have squeezed onto a dual layer DVD is about 6 hours that only looked slightly ropey in parts. That was all encoded at a little over 2Mbps two-pass Video encoded at about 3Mbps is about the minimum you really want to go down to. That is about the quality of digital TV (in the UK anyway)

As a bit of a rule of thumb i think of about an hour of video as 2Gb, therefore dual layer DVD 8.5 GB could get you nearly 5 hours of reasonable quality video.

 

[Bulb]

the quality versus running time trade off on a dvd is very reliant on the source footage.. If your footage has a lot of redunancy in the scenes than you could fit many hours on a dual layer disk.. For example if you filmed 6 hours of someone fishing by the lakeside and the camera was stationary on a tripod this would translate with perfect quality at very minimal bitrates.. The reason being there wouldnt be too much changing from frame to frame and the background would likely be the same the whole time, thus a low bitrate will recreate the picture without artifacts..

If however, you have footage with lots of changes or erratic movement than you will either need to raise the bitrate (which effectivey reduces disk space and running time) or accept artifacts in the picture quality when the bitrate isnt high enough to handle the conversion properly.

Basically, you can always get 2 hours of great quality on a dual layer disk, pretty much regardless of the footage. so once you get 2 pass VBR encoding happening you can usually stretch that out to at least 3 hours.. Assuming your holiday footage isnt too over the top i would say you could get between 3 and 4 hours at good quality, providing you use AC3 audio (not pcm) and use the calculator to fully optimise your bitrate..