Need to make a Single Layer DVD with Six hours of footage by noon today

Hi,

I shot a one day workshop on Saturday. I shot 7 mini-DV 60-minute tapes (which is only 46 minutes of footage per tape) in standard definition on a Sony PD-150 camera. I need to make a DVD of the seminar by noon.

I've never made a DVD with so much footage before. I broke up the footage from the workshop into 5 sections. When I exported QT movies from FCP they were the following sizes:

Part 1 = 3.4 GB
Part 1 Q and A = 5.3 GB
Part 2 = 3.7 GB
Part 3 = 5.8 GB
Part 4 = 6 GB

I have a G5 running 10.4.11 with FCP 5.0. and iDVD and a single layer DVD burner. I have an old version of DVD Studio Pro, but I've never used it! I have no idea how to use it. How can I fit all that footage on one single-layer DVD? Do I need to export the footage from FCP again? Or, should I compress the QTs in Sorenson Squeeze 4.1. Or, does this need to be done professionally?

Thanks!
Colleen

Trying to cram six hours of footage onto one single-layer DVD gives you less than two megabits per second. That data rate is way too low. You really need to spread this material across multiple discs, with no more than about two hours, max, per disc. That's still only about five megabits per second on average, but that's at least conceivable.

heck, the compression alone could take you until noon...

I think the stock preset for mpeg1-dvd in compressor allows for up to 5 hours. 6 may be unacceptable. Mpeg1 encodes quite fast, but only if the quality is acceptable.



www.strypesinpost.com

Except DVDs are MPEG-2.

>Except DVDs are MPEG-2

Not exactly. The Mpeg-1 also complies to the DVD standard, with a max bitrate of around 1.85 Mbps, and a frame size of 352x288 (PAL) or 352x240 (NTSC). Due to the method of compression used in Mpeg, interlacing is not supported. Basically, you can encode an mpeg-1 in a DVD-video and play it on any DVD player.



www.strypesinpost.com

Wow, you learn something new every day.

I have ? absolutely no idea why one would choose to do that. But it's neat to know you can.

>I have ? absolutely no idea why one would choose to do that.

I did... when i had to send out around 3-5 hours of interviews for translation each week... Mpeg-1 encodes much faster than mpeg-2, since quality isn't an issue here, but playability and hey, everything fits onto 1 DVD...

But i think the limit may be 5 hours, 6 may be pushing it, you can try dropping the bitrate to perhaps 1.2 Mbps and see if it still looks okay. That'll probably be around VHS quality.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yeah you can definitely fit 6 hours onto a single layer disc- quality is going to be sub-VHS but you can do it. Here's a tool for helping to figure out your bitrate:

[www.videohelp.com]

I get about a 1.49 Mbps bitrate with 192 Kbps AC3 audio. That's pretty minimal but it will fit. Going to be tough by noon though. Noon where exactly?

-Noah

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They gave another day. Being that I'm burning the disks in iDVD, and it only takes QT movies I couldn't do any other options mentioned. I ended up making three disks - 2 + hours per disk. Thanks for your help!

Colleen