I use a pinnacle moviebox dv to digitise video and render it for burning to dvd however cannot get much onto a disc. what I want to do is render the movie as a mpeg, convert to vob and then shrink using dvdshrink, Is this possible? and if so how? or am I on the completely wrong track. Regards
I think you are on the wrong track. If you have to convert your captured files to MPEG-2, just choose a bit rate that gives you the file size you want. For instance, a DVD can contain about one hour and half at 6000 kbps. Of course you need a MPEG encoder to do so.
- QuEnc (free)
- TMPGEnc DVD Source Creator (40 $)
- TMPGEnc Plus (50 $)
- CCE Basic (60 $)
Then use a DVD authoring tool to convert the MPEG files to VOB:
- DVDAUthorGui (free)
- DVD Styler (free)
- TMPGEnc DVD Author (70 $)
- DVD-Lab (100 $)
If you capture directly to MPEG-2, adjust the bit rate in the capturing soft.
If I adjust the bit rate will that not adjust the quality of the footage?
By creating in MPEG at the maximum bit rate I maintain quality and then if I can convert to a VOB and compress I will maintain the excellent quality, or will I?, Thanks in advance for your help
Quote:By creating in MPEG at the maximum bit rate I maintain quality and then if I can convert to a VOB and compress I will maintain the excellent quality, or will I?
No. The final size will determine the quality. Shrinking to fit will lower the bitrate and quality. You will usually get better results if your original material is encoded to the correct bitrate to fit on your blank, as opposed to having a program like DVD Shrinktranscode it to fit. The reason a program like CCE produces better compressed vid quality is that it will actually re-encode to the appropriate bitrate.
Perhaps I could approach my problem from an entirely different perspective.
I have a complete TV series on Video tape (23 episodes) which is approx 16 hours of material. I can transfer this analouge video onto the pc and into digital via pinnacle moviebox dv, however, I wish to get the series onto about 4 dvd discs not 8-10. A studio would increase storage by dual layering discs. I can take a dual layer disc run it through DVD Shrink and fit it onto a single layered disc. which was how I thought I would solve my problem - hence qns above.
How would you go about it??
Regards
Indeed with DVD Shrink you can compress a dual-layer DVD to a single-layer disc. But that doesn't come for free. You lose quality when you compress. Full stop.
If you want to put 4 hours of video on a single-layer disc, you'll end up with poor quality. As the video comes originaly from a VHS tape, this might not be an issue, because you can't get great quality anyway.
The bottom line is that you should encode your video files to the right size directly (by adjusting the bit rate). Creating great quality first and then shrinking it afterwards is a non-sense to me.
Thanks for your comments, you obviously know a lot on the subject
I was under the illusion that the quality was almost the same after a dvd was backed up on DVD Shrink, perhaps that just shows the quality of the tv I watch it on
Thanks again
Indeed it's hard to see any difference between the original and the "shrunk" movie if the compression ratio is not less than 85%.
On a single-layer disc you can put about 2 hours of DVD-like-quality image. Thus the compression ratio should be 50% if you want to put 4 hours. And then you'll see the difference (unless you need glasses and you don't wear them).
Edited: But as Minion suggested in your other thread (http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/83907) you could try the half-D1 resolution. For instance TMPGEnc and CCE Basic encoders can output such MPEG files.
