best way to get home videos converted to DVD?

[Jonny Throop]

Ok here is my question. I have home videos that I imported into adobe premiere 6.5. At this point I would like to know the best way to get the most amount of video onto 1 DVD. (without suffering too much quality loss) I am converting all of my families home videos to DVD for my Dads birthday. I have 24 VHS tapes (2 hour tapes) full of stuff. Basically I would like to know the best way to export out of premiere, and the best way to burn it to DVD with a basic menu.

thanks!!

[Rob Lohman]

Since you are using Premiere I suggest you take a look at their
Encore authoring product. You can get a demo off the Adobe
site. Basically you need to export to MPEG2 (Premiere should
have DVD profiles for that).

[Jonny Throop]

how many hours of mpeg2 footage should be able to fit onto a DVD?

[Vic Owen]

If you're just doing a copy, why not use a stand alone DVD recorder? There are several, such as the Gateway, for around $300 that do a decent job.

[Jonny Throop]

well I dont really have $300 dollars to spend right now. I have a DVD burner that I just got for my birthday, and I would just like to know the most efficient way of making a DVD with home videos. Does anyone know how many minutes of mpeg2 video I should be able to fit onto a DVD? I figured that a 10 min clip is 320mb. Using simple math a 2 hour clip will be 3.84 gigs.. too big for a DVD.

Can someone please help me with my problem at hand?

thanks!!

[Rob Lohman]

3.84 gigs is no problem for a DVD since it will fit around 4.3 GB.
How much will fit on it depends on what bitrate you are using.
If you are using constant bitrate (not variable bitrate which might
yield better pictures and better space use) I calculate the following
(aiming at 4 GB for a TOTAL movie [thus the bitrate is for the
video *AND* the audio] -> that leaves some overhead):

4 mbps: 2.7 hours
6 mbps: 111 minutes
8 mbps: 83 minutes

[Jonny Throop]

Ok I tried to use adobe encore as well as Sonic my DVD, and I cant seem to keep it under the 4gig mark. On Encore it pushed it to 7gigs... and with my DVD it pushed it over the 4.3gig limit. This mpeg2 file is only 3.84 gigs so I am really confused. there is no way the menu is taking up the rest of that space.

Rob, when you say to use 4 mbps: 2.7 hours, is that for when I am exporting the video from premiere?

thanks for your help!

[David Hurdon]

I use the Main Concept MPEG encoder (version 1.3b) from within Premiere 6.5 to make MPEG-2 files for DVD. Yesterday I burned a 64-minute piece. The file itself is 2.65 GB. MyDVD displayed 2.86 GB during the burn, the difference being authoring overhead I guess. To export the MPEG-2 I used variable bit rate at 6000-4000-1400 (max-med-min bit rate in kbps). I exported a multiplexed file (audio and video together) by selecting DVD on the advanced tab (the last one on the right). Without pulling out my calculator, I could have done 90 minutes or so with these settings. I have burned DVDs which report 4.39 GB of disk space when burning, which is more than the 4.3 I understood to be the limit, so I'm not sure what the high end actually is, but I try to stick with 4.3 or less. The material in this case was converted from hi8 analogue tapes shot by someone who used his camera three times a year, and handed it to others with even less experience - family legacy stuff from the 90s which I had extensively edited. Given the shaky, often blurred and badly lit source material, the playback quality of the DVD was quite acceptable at these data rates.

David Hurdon

[Rob Lohman]

That is for the video and audio together Jonny

[Jonny Throop]

Ok I have tried everything at this point. I exported it from premiere in the 3 ways you have shown as well as the multiplexed file. The size of the mpeg2 after the export is 3.72 GB. So far things seem ok... Then when I import it into Sonic MyDVD on the bottom left it shows that I have exceeded the 4.68GB max. I shortened the video manually with this program to find out the largest this video could be while being able to fit. The video is originally 2 hours and 12 seconds long. It is Barelly able to have 1 hour and 44 minutes of the video that I imported.

What am I doing wrong? 3.72GB is turning into over 4.7GB!

thanks for the help!

[Rob Lohman]

I'm guessing MyDVD is encoding your audio which you did not
do in Premiere. What settings are you using to export the
audio?

If you want more video on the disc you will have to lower the
bitrate. You haven't told us what bitrate you are using to get
the 3.72 GB for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

[Jonny Throop]

I export using the Adobe Mpeg Encorder.

Viedo settings:
videostream type: mpeg2
Frame size: 720x480
frame rate 29.970
aspect ratio 4:3 display
bitrate: variable, avg 4.20, max 6.00

Audio Settings (mpeg)
layer: 2
bitrate 224 kbps
frequency: 44.1 khz
mode: stereo
CRC: off

multiplxer settings:
program stream type: DVD
bitrate: variable, 10.08 Mbps maximum
max file size: off

Ok please make any and every correction to this description. Please tell me what I need to do so that I can have a 2 hour and 12 second video fit onto one dvd...

Rob I appreciate all of your help with this. thanks

[David Hurdon]

I grabbed this months ago from someone whose name I didn't record. I hope he sees it and can allow me to give credit where it's due. Note the comment at the bottom about adding back bits if you use MPEG-2 audio, which isn't supported by the NTSC DVD spec but apparently works in many players:

DVDBITRATE/DURATION CHART:
For, MPEG-2, 4.37 Gig available space, and the best quality audio (PCM or WAV uncompressed) here are the Duration / Video Bitrate combinations that will give best possible quality.


60 min and less -> 8034 kb/sec

75 -> 6574

90 -> 5222

105 -> 4256

120 -> 3532

135 -> 2969

150 -> 2519

165 -> 2150

If you are willing to sacrifice on audio quality, you may use MPEG Layer 2 audio compression. This will allow you to increase the video quality by adding 1312 to all bitrates quoted above.

David Hurdon

[Bryan McCullough]

Thanks David.

That's helpful.

[Julian Luttrell]

Johnny,

I'm not familiar with the tools you are using, but here goes anyway...

Your Adobe mpeg encoder settings look dodgy to me. DVD max bitrate is a little unclear, but I would keep within a max of 9Mbps (not 10.08) for safety. So I would adjust your multiplexer settings just in case that's contributing.

Also DVD uses 48KHz audio, not 44.1.

Regards,

Julian