I was wondering if there is any other video format that can be recorded onto dvds in dsp3 other than mpeg2. The reason I ask this is because I have about 10 hours of .avi's that I need to put onto DVD and to encode them to mpeg2 will take days. Thanks in advance,
I don't know anything about dsp, but mpeg2 is the only format that a DVD player will read. Well, most will play mpeg1 (VCD) as well, and a few will play mpeg4 (divx), but neither of those is part of the DVD video standard, and as such, won't likely play in most stand alone DVD players. If you want to author a standards compliant DVD, it's gotta be in mpeg2. Rob
ok thanks. Then my question is how do the studios fit so much video onto one dvd (like lotr). For me, a 45 min mpeg2 takes up 1/3 of the dvd. And thats with very low quality settings.
Because commercial movie DVDs are almost always DVD-9s, meaning they have 2 data layers resulting in a capacity of 9.4 GB while normal DVD-Rs only have 1 layer and a capacity of 4.7 GB. Since last year dual-layer burners are available. The downside is that the blank media are still very expensive.
Supposedly all the SDs in the new PowerMacs are Dual Layer with the dual layer burning locked in firmware. You can unlock it and use toast to burn dual layer discs, but they are, as mentioned, very expensive. BTW, the 'official' spec for a DVD is 2 hours of video in regular mode for a 4.7gb DVD, so sounds like you are getting about what you should. I have authored some DVDs with very low quality and squeezed about 6-8 hours onto one disc before, but it was really crappy looking (the source files were fairly low quality, so it wasn't a huge issue at the time). Rob