I've spent the last three days reading a lot of guides to help me burn some VCDs, add permanent subtitles and lot of other things. Those guides are really amazing but sometimes I've getlost with so many information. I'm a newbie afterall :-)
Anyway, I'm from Brazil and me and my wife are both a Stargate Atlantis Fans. For some stupid reason they canceled the third season here. So, I have this friend that sent me the whole season in XviD format (AVI - 624X352; 23FPS and Audio 123 kbps). My external DVD Player (Panasonic SA-HT75) doesn't play DivX, XviD or SVCDs but does play VCDs and with the help of some guides I managed to convert the XviD files to MPeg (MPEG-1 624x352 30fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 48000Hz 192kbps) and burn it on a regular CD using Nero Burning Room (as far I remember, Nero re-encoded again the audio before burning but I'm not sure) and it worked like a charm with a regular image (I'm good with that), nice audio, yellow subtitles ( I like more than the whites ones).
The original AVI files are about 350Mb each and when I re-encoded to Mpeg they became like 420Mb each. Ok...so far so good.
Now I realized that the ideal is to burn some of those Mpegs files into a DVD instead of burn a lot of regular CDs (20 episodes). Since each Mpeg file has about 420Mb I thought that 2 DVDs with 10 episodes each will be fine or maybe 3 DVDs...don't know really.
I run into some guides that explained me that I need to re-encode the audio but I noticed that the audio is already encoded in 48000hz. I tried to use DVD-Lab and TMPGEnc DVD Author to do this task but TMPGEnc seems to be more easy-to-use.
The issue that I've found now is that when I add a 420Mb Mpeg file as a track into TMPGEnc it uses 2GB from the DVD which means I can only burn 2 Mpeg files per DVD. Is this correct? Am I doing something wrong. I'm probably doing...lol
Well. You probably noticed my bad english spelling and I'm sorry in advance for that but english isn't my primary language.
Quote:The issue that I've found now is that when I add a 420Mb Mpeg file as a track into TMPGEnc it uses 2GB from the DVD which means I can only burn 2 Mpeg files per DVD. Is this correct? Am I doing something wrong. I'm probably doing...lol
I've found that I can add more files but the quality will decrease. No problem with that since the episodes seems to be recorded from the TV and I have no plans to keep it for a long time.
I have only one more question. Since I have the original XviD files and also the re-encoded ones (Mpeg). Which one from the both should I convert to DVD? The XviD (AVI) or the the Mpegs?
Use the Original XviD files. Those are much better quality than mpeg1!!!
I am assuming Stargate is about 45 minutes long per episode. Here is a rough quality guide for encoding:
Best Quality: 6250kbps video = approx 2 episodes per DVD
Very Good Quality: 4200kbps video = approx 3 episodes per DVD
Good Quality: 3100kbps vid = approx 4 episodes per DVD
OK Quality: 2450kbps video = approx 5 episodes per DVD
sVCD Quality: 2000kbps video = approx 6 episodes per DVD
The first 2 will look about the same as the XviDs. You can probably watch that on a 40" screen and it will look good. The third is probably good for 32" screen. The 4th for 24" screen and the final one for 20" and under.
Based on the number of episodes (20), I would go for 4 episodes per disc. 4 per disc will be 5 discs total. Don't encode more than 6 episodes per disc. That will be hard to watch on TV. Even at 6 per disc you will be pushing. Maybe if you use expert settings on your encoder... You can always encode a few minutes to see the approx quality is at each bitrate.
Also, make sure you KEEP the XviD versions!!! That will be better quality than anything you encode. You can always watch them on a PC and use the TV out if you have one to watch it on your TV screen.
You said the XviDs are recorded from TV. If the quality is bad, on the XviD, then you can go for 7 episodes per disc for 3 discs total.
You will need about 1650kbps video bitrate for that.
Your actual choices are:
2 episodes per disc (only use if the XviD is Perfect/HD Quality)
3 Episodes per Disc (only use if the XviD is Perfect Quality)
4 Episodes per disc (use if XviD is approx DVD Quality)
5 Episodes per disc (use if XviD is approx VHS Quality)
7 episodes per disc (use only if XviD is very bad. Like if recorded by a Good camcorder or EP mode on a VHS/DVD)
10 episodes per disc is NOT and option!!!! You would only use this if the quality of the XviD is utter crap!!! For example, if you record a show with no antenna signal in EP mode then you video tape that with a camcorder with a dirty/damaged lens and re-tape it on a cheap VHS in EP mode again!!!
10 episodes per disc would be 1100kbps. You need about 700kbps to display static text on a black background. Basically, you would get nothing but pixelation even on still scenes.
Notice, 6 episodes per disc is NOT a choice. The reason is because it will yield 4 DVDs the same as if you would put 5 episodes per disc!! You might as well just upgrade to 5 episodes per disc.
7 is an option because you can go 7, 7, 6. The next step down is 10 episodes
