iDVD Limitation

[BLINK]

So I have a couple various one-hour productions that I want on one DVD. The 3 of them combined make up MAYBE 1 gig, so it isnt that big. A dvd can hold 4.7 gigs I believe, so why wont iDVD let me put more one-hour specials on the dvd? Does the menu really take up 3 gigs? Is there really a 90 minute limit? (I thought it was 120 minutes)

PS: I cant wait for Blu-Ray discs 🙂

 

[Col. Panic]

I know the earlier versions of iDVD were limited to 1 hour of encoded video. I believe that changed with iDVD 4 which, if my memory is correct, is able to burn up to 2 hours of encoded video. 3 hours is too much for iDVD to handle. Whether that is a technical or designed limitation I am not sure.

 

[WinterMute]

It's a data rate vs quality issue, if you want 120 mins of video on iDVD4, the trade off is lower video quality (although it's not bad at all).

Older versions of iDVD won't allow more than 60 mins I believe.

The set-up is in the preferences, you'll have to encode the video during the burn, not in the background.

Your productions are probably not in MGEG2 format, which is why 3 hours is around a gig, MPEG2 comes out at around 30mins/gig at 720x576 res. Be thankful your not running DV stream, that's a gig every 4 mins...

iDVD will convert your movies to MPEG2, at a preset rate (low or hi quality), if you need more control, get DVD Studio Pro and use the MPEG2 exporter from QuickTime, it's a much more flexible system.

 

[Lacero]

You could encode to half-resolution MPEG2 I believe, that would give you 4 hours of video, or VHS quality. You need a program like BitVice and DVDSP to pull it off.