My vid is 124 min. I'd like high quality, yet discmakers says I can fit 130 min. of excellent quality on a standard DVD. Most say 1 1/2 hours tops for DVD-5. Who's right?

IMO - 1.5 hours is the maximum. I've done as much as 120 minutes but the quality is far less than the 90 minutes on the same dvd.

Depends on the source -- original recording/format, and video contents -- talking heads (interviews, lectures, etc...) might look good (low action). High-speed action and complicated scenes to compress might not look as good. Also depends on your encoder/encoding method. And ultimately, it will be subjective -- you should compress several sections of your video at the required bitrate to fit 124min, and see if it meets your quality standards...

hint: use AC3 audio (instead of LPCM audio) to give yourself a fighting chance...

Regards,
George

DVD-5 is enough for two hours, if you use AC3.

So if I want to compare my MPEG2 DVD to my source material, would the best way be to rip it back off the DVD, render it in my timeline, and compare the two there on the same monitor?

I would burn it to a DVD and play it back from a dvd player connected to a TV that is roughly the average size of the TV's you expect your target audience to be viewing the DVD (yeah, that's the tought part -- who knows what size TV's they have -- I just play it on the largest TV in my house, and if it looks good from a normal viewing distance, I'm good to go...)

Regards,
George

High quality means different things to different people - you need to test for yourself. If I were you, I'd go with two disks.

It also depends on the encoding software (or hardware)... two hours of video encoded with Cinemacraft might just look better than one hour encoded with Encore.

Bryan,
So if I want to compare my MPEG2 DVD to my source material, would the best way be to rip it back off the DVD, render it in my timeline, and compare the two there on the same monitor?No, rendering it in your timeline will again modify the quality somewhat. Plus, what do you expect to learn from it? You already know that the MPEG-2 video will look worse than the source material. Instead, you really want to compare the different encodes for DVD-5 and DVD-9.

So I would do two MPEG-2 encode with two different average bitrates: the one you can afford on a DVD-5 and the one you'd have on a DVD-9. Then take representative samples (the same ones from each encode) and put them on a DVD - I'm not quite sure how, I guess mpegstreamclip could help you. Note that just encoding only the representative samples at the same average bitrates would not have the same result, since the encoder would allocate the bitrate differently for just the subset of material.

Then compare the two DVDs on several different TVs with different DVD players. Can you see a difference? If so, does it justify the extra expense for a DVD-9?

- Martin