Too much footage for dvd
 

I have a bazillion clips of different things I am trying to squeeze onto a DVD with Encore. Someone said that after 2 hours of footage the quality starts to suffer, and I`ll guess I have over 2. My question is..... I think encore is transcoding all the largest files first and then trying to crush the hell out of the smaller shorter ones to squeeze them on, thus the large ones look great, small ones are getting all blocky. If I set the smaller ones to transcode first, will it then crush the bigger ones more? I don`t care much about the quality of the interviews, its just the director and producer talking, but they eat up probably 50 minutes of the DVD. I`d rather have the videos with motion get the best of the compression and let the longer non moving videos get smooshed as much as possible. Would this technique work?

You should look into using a bitrate calculator. Just search for one on google, there is a site that has a java app built into the site, or you can download it.

Don't use automatic settings, but customize them to fit your needs. You might want to compress the extra features at 4 mbps. So do that first, figure out how much space it takes up, then you can use the bitrate calculator to see how much you can squeeze out of the main content of your dvd.

good luck.

You'll likely run into issues with universal playback but have you considered using Dual Layer DVDs? Nearly twice as much room...

When we started shooting weddings around 4-5 years ago, we were delivering our final product on dual layer DVD's. With every batch, I would always have a bride call me and tell me that the copy she gave <insert older relative here> didn't work. I asked for a few of them back so that I could see if it played for me and they always did. I'm thinking that their players were just older and for that reason didn't read the dual layer media very well. From that point, we switched to single layer and kept everything at 2 hours. If a wedding had a ton of extra footage that we wanted to include, we would make it a two disc set.
FF 5 years. Is dual layer the way to go again? Do you guys ever encounter issues with them? What brands do you like? I have been using Taiyou Yuden (probably butchered that) for a while now and have had no issues with them at all. I would assume they sell a DL version of that same disc.

Thanks!

Taiyo Yuden doesn't seem to make Dual Layer.
Those who do use Dual Layer seem to go overwhelmingly with Verbatim.

The computer drive manufacturers seemed to have gotten the memo about needing to have universal compatibility. The player manufacturers didn't, even if they are often branches of the same company.

I don't think so - Encore will encode EVERYTHING at the exact same bitrate.

My suggestion is to use a much better encoder (CinemaCraft of Procoder) if you have anything more than about 90 minutes. Encore works OK at higher bitrates but when you have a lot of video and the bitrate has to be dropped in order to fit all of it, quality will suffer greatly.

I use AonePLUS+ Fullface Printable DVD+R DL and have had no issues with them.

Speak of the Devil... I'm encountering issues!
I recently burned 40 DL discs (RiData is the brand I think) and I checked 80% of them (maybe a little more). They played fine on my DVD player at the house... even checked the break point... and no issues.

Deliver to client... and she brings 33 of them back to me a week later, saying the DVD is freezing up in the same spot, etc, etc.

So now what? I'm about to head to the house to start checking them out (this'll be fun... about to break open the beer). If they play fine at my house, can I safely assume that everyone else has a crappy player? Mine is a year old, maybe two.

Yes, you can assume they have a crappy player.
Doesn't matter - they will tell you you gave them a crappy disk. After all, store bought movies play just fine!

Not to long ago I ran into this issue. Lots of returns of DL disks. I would stick them in either my DVD player/monitor (less than a year old) or home 5 disk carousel player (6+ years old). They all played just fine in either one.

There are plenty of players that do not have full compatibility for all the disk types out there. The player manufacturers I guess save a few pennies on licensing costs and people not knowing what they are doing or what to look for buy'em because they're cheaper.

Even with single layer disks I would have problems. Make a DVD-R, it plays in my Moms DVD player, but not my Aunt+Uncles. Make a DVD+R disk and the problem would reverse. Switched to Taiyo Yuden media (DVD-R) and the problems went away...so obviously not all brands of media are created equal.

What works for me
 

Single layer DVD+Rs from Sony or TDK, burned with BIT SETTING, aka BOOKTYPE, which tricks all players to interpret the disc as pressed disk.

They are cheap too; I buy them at Costco; they have at least once a year a "buy one, get one free" deal for a week, when I buy several 100 disk spindels.

Not one returned ever!

I don't use Encore or Premiere to encode MPEG-2 files. I'm using Procoder for the job. The output is so much better than Main Concept.

I setup Procoder to encode each video into 5 data rate. So I can mix and match video with different data rate to fit the DVD. For example, I will pick a higher data rate file for the highlights video (as it will be watched more often) and a low data rate file for church ceremony (usually boring stuff people only watch it once. Also, not much motion in ceremony. Lower bit rate will work fine).

If there're still too much footage, I will split the DVD into Main Movie DVD and Bonus DVD. Clients are very happy about it seeing a dual DVD set (more luxury)

If the wedding package include both BluRay and DVD, then I will use DVD-DL. I tried several brands only to find out Vertabim DVD+DL works great. So far, none of my clients told me they have problem viewing the DVD DL disc.