Following up on this topic... I just got my feet wet with DVDSP4.

Fun, fun!

Well, my project is 2 hours and 38 minutes long.

Oh Lord... 7.2 GB!?!

There's no way to fit that sucker on a DVD!

Is there?

Or am I better off knocking it down to two DVDs?

What kind of project is it? A single movie? A collection of shorts? A documentary? A wedding/event? Depending on what it is, you'd either compress it down or split it to two DVDs. What's the target audience?

It's a dance recital.

I'd split it. You could compress it down to fit a 4.37gb DVD and have an average bitrate of 3.6mbps, but I don't think it'd look too good. That's also taking into account an additional AC3 audio compression of 192kbps as well. You'd likely have much greater quality if you split it into two discs.

Thanks Chris! That's what I'm doing right now as I type this!

I love this site.

If you are on mac read my post in the other forum (DVD capacity - best compression.) this is simple if you are on mac

I've done 2 1/2 hours to 2 3/4 hours on a 4.7G. Using 2 pass variable bit rate encoding w/AC3 audio (I forget the exact encoding rate--either 4.0 or 4.25). It was a tight fit, to be sure, but careful encoding settings can do a lot to preserve quality on over-sized projects. I use Encore on Windows XP--I'm not sure how well DVDSP encodes down. Quality is still pretty good--I didn't see any visual difference on TV viewing between the 4.7G and the 8.5G at a higher variable bit rate (I'm sure an up-close scientific analysis could find differences, but it didn't *look* different to the eye, and that's the important part).

If you have a dance recital, and the camera doesn't move a whole lot, then your frame-to-frame changes will be a lot smaller, and the encoder can do a much better compression job (use 2-pass compression). If my footage was, for example, a football game, or a movie, where there's lots of movement in the background as well as the subjects, I don't think I would want to put more than 2 hours on a 4.7--preferably 90 minutes.

Anyhow, your mileage may vary. Choose your encoding settings with care, and you can fit more in the same space....depending on the footage. ;)

ciao,
Matt

make it shorter, thats a long recital..lol... u need to sacrifice stuff. Unless the 2 hrs are super action packed and need to be there i'd maybe make it a lil shorter, but thats just me.
Like the guys say split it into 2 dvds :D

I have cut every last possible thing there is. It goes from one dance directly to the next.

Of course, there were 48 dances in this show... with each dance lasting at least 2 minutes... some were 4 or more.