Before I commit to doing dual layer DVDs, rather than two singles, for the next wedding, I'd appreciate comments about what complaints, if any, to expect from the end users.

The disks will be burned, not commercially pressed.

In the past couple of years, I've only had a few requests for replacement of single layer disks because of some problem with the burn. Safer to stick with two singles, or are home-burned DLs working out okay?

I strongly suggest you try it and see before you commit to anything like offering it to customers.

I, in common with many others I know - see here (http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=35179), have completely given up on Double Layer recordable DVDs - and the industry seems also to have given up, now concentrating on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

BTW: You will find recordable DVDs are referred to and labelled as "double layer" (not "dual") presumeably to avoid legal complications with the pressed dual layer disks and the DVD forum.

I should have mentioned that I've been burning 'double' layer disks for several months for my own use. No problems burning nor playing back on any of my home dvd players. I've also handed out about a half-dozen DLs, and no playback problems reported.

But, I consider this limited personal experience worthless. Three or four years ago when I first started burning dvds, I didn't have any problem playing them at home, but had a large percentage of "failures" reported by clients. Back then, the manufacture date of the player hardware, brand, and even model # made a difference whether or not a home-burned dvd would play. The disks were good, but those earlier players lacked whatever to play them.

Now that almost everybody has at least one dvd player purchased within the past couple of years -- and maybe because burners & software are better -- I've had virtually no failures reported with single layer disks.

I've read thru various discussions here at DVi and other forums where some report total success with DL and others have tried and quit. (BTW, thanks for that link.) But it's hard to tell just what volume or range of distribution they've had, or even how critical the recipients were. (It seems wedding party people can be super critical of playback issues.)

So, I was hoping to get feedback here from anyone & everyone who recently packaged several copies of their wedding coverage on DL. Was the "failure" rate reported by recipients bad enough to discourage you from using DLs, or was most everyone happy with the product?

So far, based on what you wrote Martin, I might order some more 2-disk cases.

Before I commit to doing dual layer DVDs, rather than two singles, for the next wedding, I'd appreciate comments about what complaints, if any, to expect from the end users.

The disks will be burned, not commercially pressed.

In the past couple of years, I've only had a few requests for replacement of single layer disks because of some problem with the burn. Safer to stick with two singles, or are home-burned DLs working out okay?

Tom, question, how much product (in hours) are you delivering the you require 2 discs for a wedding shoot?

Miguel

Miguel,

For the wedding I'm referring to, they want coverage (not highlights) of the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, photographer's photo shoot (the paid photog is okay with this), full ceremony and the reception plus interviews. Then there's a life story to be included in its entirety.

Except for the ceremony & life story, there's the usual dead space that can be pruned out of everything else, so I'm estimating it'll boil down to two or two and a half hours max.

Miguel,

For the wedding I'm referring to, they want coverage (not highlights) of the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, photographer's photo shoot (the paid photog is okay with this), full ceremony and the reception plus interviews. Then there's a life story to be included in its entirety.

Except for the ceremony & life story, there's the usual dead space that can be pruned out of everything else, so I'm estimating it'll boil down to two or two and a half hours max.

Are you running compression like TMPGenc on your final AVI files before you plop them onto the DVD?

2.5 hours should be ok on 1 disc if you compress it, I typically run between 4 and 5mbs for dvd's that I produce and 2 hours is nothing.

BTW the last DVD that I purchased, I ran a Mb/s checker on it and it was averaged at 5Mb and that's a Hollywood disc.

I have a DL burner, haven't purchased one disc yet, have a shoot this coming weekend that is very similar to yours in the amount of coverage that I need to shoot, tell you what, we should compare notes next week once I'm done and see where we are based on a compressed final output.

ML

No, I'm a Mac guy.

Final Cut Pro -> Compressor -> DVD Pro -> Toast

To make sure an occasional high bit rate doesn't choke someone's player, I usually compress around 6.2 at a constant bit rate (CBR) rather than use a variable bit rate.

I settled on that number more than a year ago since for me it consistently produces a great picture with zero pixilation even during extreme motion.

If this project ends up being around 120 minutes or so, I'll run a test on some of the more critical scenes to see how they look in the 4 to 5 range you use. If okay, I'll let the Mac crunch on the whole thing at that rate, and let you know how it turns out.

No, I'm a Mac guy.

Final Cut Pro -> Compressor -> DVD Pro -> Toast

To make sure an occasional high bit rate doesn't choke someone's player, I usually compress around 6.2 at a constant bit rate (CBR) rather than use a variable bit rate.

I settled on that number more than a year ago since for me it consistently produces a great picture with zero pixilation even during extreme motion.

If this project ends up being around 120 minutes or so, I'll run a test on some of the more critical scenes to see how they look in the 4 to 5 range you use. If okay, I'll let the Mac crunch on the whole thing at that rate, and let you know how it turns out.


Give it a shot, you might find that it works very well in the 5's, again like I said before, I check some studio DVD's from time to time and the last one that I checked was CSI: NY the 1st season and it was in the 5's so I was feeling pretty good that I wasn't too far off with my stuff.

ML

Isnt a typical wedding about 4hrs.

Wow does the raw cut plus, highlights, and reception fit on one disc... or are there more than one I've always wondered??

No, I'm a Mac guy.

Final Cut Pro -> Compressor -> DVD Pro -> Toast

To make sure an occasional high bit rate doesn't choke someone's player, I usually compress around 6.2 at a constant bit rate (CBR) rather than use a variable bit rate.

I settled on that number more than a year ago since for me it consistently produces a great picture with zero pixilation even during extreme motion.

If this project ends up being around 120 minutes or so, I'll run a test on some of the more critical scenes to see how they look in the 4 to 5 range you use. If okay, I'll let the Mac crunch on the whole thing at that rate, and let you know how it turns out.

Tom,

Any mpeg compression engineer will tell you that CBR encoding is, in general, considered inferior in quality to 2-pass VBR (assuming good VBR paramaters/settings).

As long as the combination of compressed audio and peak bitrate doesn't exceed the 9.8 kbps max spec, I think fears about playback issues are overstated. I've cranked out atleast 150 discs in the last 2-3 years with no problems. Only one issue I ever had with was quickly determined to be an early DVD player, and some of those first release DVD players were not fully compliant with the DVD spec - as we all know.

Craig,

No argument from me that 2-pass VBR is better quality than CBR.

And, considering that the $19.99 (after $20 rebate) dvd player I picked up on Black Friday last year breezes right through dvds that sometimes choke the mega-hundred dollar Pioneer player I got about 4 years ago, I agree that past playback issues are now only bad memories as the number of old players still in use shrink to an insignificant percentage of the total.

But when the comments roll in from non-mpeg engineers about how wonderful the video looks and when several recipients don't ask for a replacement disk (or, horrors, request a VHS tape as replacement), it's hard to abandon my past success with CBR. ;-}

Are there printable dvd-r dual layers?

Are there printable dvd-r dual layers?

NOPE -just DVD+R

Craig,

But when the comments roll in from non-mpeg engineers about how wonderful the video looks and when several recipients don't ask for a replacement disk (or, horrors, request a VHS tape as replacement), it's hard to abandon my past success with CBR. ;-}

Tom,

Were just a bit off-subject but it's good discussion... Have you viewed the results of your encodes on a large screen TV? I highly recommend it. An increasing number of my customers have large screen TVs, as do I. If our customers are watching their DVDs on a bigscreen, it only makes sense that we take it upon ourselves to make sure our medium accommodates. I stopped using Compressor after doing test encodes (video with movement, fades, cross-dissolves) at various settings and comparing them with BitVice. I quickly figured out that many of Compressor's test clip's imperfections were not too noticable on my 32" set, while my 53" screen exploited them all. In order to get a satisfactory encode out of Compressor (one that looked acceptable on my 53" set) I had to jack up the average bit rate to 7.5 with a 9.2 ceiling. Test clips in the 4 to 6 range looked aweful in my opinion - they looked very compressed.

Craig,

My wife and I will be going thru GA down I-95 this Thurs. Mind if we stop in at your place and watch some of my disks and some of your disks on your 53" screen? Would it make any difference if we brought beer & pizza? .... I didn't think so. :(

I've tried different versions of the BitVice sampler over the years and read a lot of good stuff about it vis-a'-vis Compressor, but just haven't had the motivation to switch. I imagine seeing pixels spread across 4+ feet of screen could be a motivator.

I guess what I'll have to do is encode a minute or so of the same scene at different rates with Compressor & the latest BitVice sampler, take the disk to one of the big box electronics stores, and watch it on a big screen there.

What I'd really like to know is why I've only had one response to my original question about double sided disks. Does this mean few if any of the wedding videographers who frequent this board use them, or, even tried them?

Craig,

What I'd really like to know is why I've only had one response to my original question about double sided disks. Does this mean few if any of the wedding videographers who frequent this board use them, or, even tried them?

Tom,

Yes, seeing video stretched out on a big screen as many of your customers will, may suprise you. If you try the demo, be sure to uncheck DV Luma correction (checked is default setting). If checked, it washes out the video in my opinion.

I don't use double layer because the single layer discs are so darn inexpensive at about 30 cents each in 100packs. I edit long form and provide 2 discs in a 2 disc case.

I, too, have avoided using the d/l disks so far. The biggest reason would be that they aren't printable, and I like the pro-looks of the covers printed with my Epson R320. Then there's the chance of player incompatibility...I keep the bitrate around the 8mbs mark and haven't had any complaints about settops choking on it, yet. I agree that with BluRay and HDDvd right around the corner, the 8.5gb DL disks might be having a short life span.

I can fit about a half hour of my video on a regular DVD disc and a full hour of video on a dual layer DVD disc

Tommy, you should be able to fit at least an hour of high quality video+audio on a standard dvd. Are you leaving your audio as an aif file? Uncompressed audio can chew up a lot of disk space.

I'm with Tom on this one, Tommy. What astronomical bitrate are you using to only squeeze a half hour into over 4 gigs? Or do you have uncompressed audio on there?
Just curious.

I can use AIFF audio and still get close to 2 hours on a single sided DVD. If I use AAC audio, it's still about 2 hours but I can up the video bit rate considerably.

If you're only fitting a half hour on a DVD then the bit rate is probably so high it simply won't be playable. Even using a high CBR bit rate you should be able to get an hour at very good quality.

I am encoding at a rate of 19.7 megabits per secound. This is a rate of about 10 gigabytes per hour. This fills up a conventional DVD in about half an hour. The mini dv tape can record video and audio up to 26 megabits per secound to allow for uncompressed audio. If this were the case and I was using uncompressed PCM audio my DVD would fill up in 20 minutes.

I am encoding at a rate of 19.7 megabits per secound. This is a rate of about 10 gigabytes per hour. This fills up a conventional DVD in about half an hour. The mini dv tape can record video and audio up to 26 megabits per secound to allow for uncompressed audio. If this were the case and I was using uncompressed PCM audio my DVD would fill up in 20 minutes.


You're confused Tom. It sounds as though you have a big miss-understanding about the whole concept of encoding/compression. MiniDV tape comes in around 25 MB/s with uncompressed audio, yes... but encoding/compression, is the process of slimming down this large bitrate & file size down to something that can be read by a DVD player and something that can fit onto the DVD disc (4.7 gig). Since data/video can only be read by a DVD player at a maximum rate of 9.8 MB/s, encoding software takes this into account and would not let you write that 19.7 MB/s file you describe ...it's not possible with the current DVD standard. In fact, there is no way possible that you could completely fill a DVD disc with just a half hour of DVD compliant video.

One hour of MiniDV video (approx 12 Gig) can be compressed down to a 2 Gig file easily if you encode/compress using 4.5 MB/s average bitrate 2-pass VBR. This would still leave plenty of room on the disc (4.7 gig). You can get approx 2 hours of video on a DVD not problem. (my personal opinion is that Compressor does a horrible job at lower bitrates and that is why I use BitVice).

I do believe there are professional encoders that can hit very high bit rates used in broadcast facilities.

Today I was looking at a VC-1 WMV file encoded at just about 18megabits a second at 1440x1080 (HiDef) and it looked real nice on my 23" Apple Cinema Display.

Some DVD players can't even handle 9.8megabits. I wouldn't set peak past 7.5megabits on a 2 pass VBR encode. I usually set peak to 7megabits.

I recently purchased an LG Dual Layer DVD Burner (GSA-2166D), after doubting the wisdom of doing so, due to fear of early obsolescence of this technology, RE: onset of Hi-DEF Blu-Ray/HD burners. My skepticism was soon relieved once I burned my first (and subsequent) lengthy video project with this burner. Wow, how much better this material looked when compared against the same content burned with my Sony 4.7 DVD burner! Bitrate used with both burners was 7000 kbps, so the noticeable improvement in video/audio quality obtained by the LG Dual Layer burning must be due to the Dual Layer device itself, rather than to any other factor. Editor used for both projects was Canopus Let's Edit2. MPEG2 output from this software, input to TSUNAMI DVD Author PRO (latest release) and burned therefrom.

Conclusion: the LG (GSA-2166D) Dual Layer burner (Fuji 8.5 DL disc) is well worth the price, even should this component eventually become "obsolete", due to introduction of Blu-Ray/HD burner drives.

I should mention that my 8.5 discs play fine on every DVD Player I own (four in total), including my seven-year-old Sony Player (DVP-C670D) which pre-dates release of DVD+R (Plus R) technology. In other words, the Sony Player is designed to play only DVD-R/RW discs; whereas, for unknown reasons, it successfully plays the 8.5 discs created with my LG +R DL burner.

If for no reason than the conspicuous improvement in video/audio quality of the DL output--- this alone justifies one's buying this "interim technology". Then again, I'm not so sure that DL technology will become obsolete with the advent of Hi-Def Blu-Ray/HD drives, as cost of Hi-Def components (burner, discs, software, player, display, etc.) may be unaffordable to average consumers for many years to come.

VM

Yes I agree that conventional Double Layer discs to have some life to them as it is possible to burn an hours worth of high definition content. If they are going to charge 2000 dollars for a Blu-Ray DVD burner I think I'm going to wait for the price to come down.

I've never had anyone complain when I use two discs for a long wedding video, and two single discs is so much cheaper than one DL disc that I see no point in considering the latter so long as there are any indications of reliability issues. Also, I've had my share of Hollywood DVDs where the video goes to heck at a point consistent with a layer change on the disc: if billion-dollar studios can't make it work well why should I try?

Tommy James: are you putting uncompressed HDV files on standard DVDs, and if so how are you advising your customers to play that? You can fit a lot more HD-quality video on a standard disc with similar quality if you use a compressed format like Windows Media and play that on something like the Avel Linkplayer2.