re: Oversized project -- how to make smaller?

I have a DVD of a DP's reel and we have a lot of media -- dozens of commercials, a dozen music videos, six trailers for features etc. Not being well versed in Compressor, I used the full-quality QuickTime movies on his external drive and linked them to DVD Studio Pro to do the encoding there. Unfortunately, I am now at about 5.1 GB of total media -- around 400MB over the limit.

Is there any way to get this down without having to re-export the files in Compressor? I reduced the bit rate, but it doesn't redo the encoding, and I'm not even sure that does anything to make the media files smaller. And if I had to use Compressor, what settings should I use to compress about 72 minutes worth of media? And is there a way to re-implement the re-compressed media without having to redo all that work done on linking chapter markers, menu buttons etc.?

Item 1. You will NOT get 4.7 gigs worth of media on a DVD, only about 4.17.
Item 2. You need to use Compressor to encode to get seperate video and audio tracks, you can then A.Pack the audio to save about 80%.
72 minutes worth of media is not a problem at all, I just finished a 2 hour 28 minute project that came out fine.
It would help a lot of you included your system version, computer, software versions etc.
Matt Murray
Lineside Productions
Wellington, FL
[www.edgesportfishing.com]
Florida Sailfish videos, pictures and more
My World Video Productions

Actually, 72 minutes at 5.1 Mbps should fit fine in 4.3 GB as long as you convert audio to dolby digital (AC-3).



Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

> 72 minutes worth of media is not a problem at all, I just finished a 2 hour 28
> minute project that came out fine.

That's what I thought...after all, I know I didn't have nearly as much media as a feature film, so the problem was probably the encoding -- not squeezing enough.
My settings are normally set to 8.0 Mbps. What I don't quite get is that, since I'm weened on FCP, I would've thought that if I dumped all the build files (under the Video_TS and MPEG folders), I should be able to reset the Mbps in my Preferences and get smaller files? But last time I tried that, I ended up with the exact same "too much media" message on the exact same number of media files. What am I missing?

> It would help a lot of you included your system version, computer, software
> versions etc.

G5 Dual 2GHz, 512MB memory, running DVD Studio Pro 3.0.2 Academic version. I used Final Cut Pro 4.5 to create/organize the original media, and everything at the first level is DV - NTSC at normal quality.

> Actually, 72 minutes at 5.1 Mbps should fit fine in 4.3 GB as long as you
> convert audio to dolby digital (AC-3)
> Item 2. You need to use Compressor to encode to get seperate video and
> audio tracks, you can then A.Pack the audio to save about 80%.

OK, if I'm doing that to my pre-existing QuickTime movies, would I be able to retain the work I already did to the tracks, menus etc.? Theory tells me that since the real-time length of the tracks should stay the same, I should be able to simply replace the media within each Track and the chapter markers etc. should still fit.

Thanks for the info.

Yes, you can just change the audio files and you'll be ok. Just make sure that you export with the same duration. In fact, this is what you could do: take the AIFF files that Compressor or DVD SP produced, and encode those to AC-3. Bear also in mind that all AC-3 files you use for menus have to be encoded with the same bit rate.



Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

Hi guys,

Thanks for the info. One of those things...I tried teaching myself Compressor several months ago and was completely baffled. Now I'm trying it again, and it's working fine. Must be something I missed last time. I tested one full-quality QuickTime video/audio clip and was able to just replace the clip in its track without messing with chapter markers etc., so I think all of the DVDSP designs will be intact.

Anyway, I might just take this opportunity to re-encode all the video files (90-minute High Quality Encode), just to get experience with the process. Thanks for the help, and I'll definitely come back here if I run into roadblocks!

Hi all.


Derek, here is a good tutorial on using Compressor:

[www.kenstone.net]


I read this once, and it changed my workflow forever. I have stopped encoding within DVDSP and I have never looked back.


Take care.

-DH

Yep, I'm thinking I won't look back, either. DVD Studio Pro's encoding (QuickTime MPEG-2?) didn't give enough control. I think the culprit was a certain article that once told me, for some reason, that DVDs used MPEG-4. Tried it with iDVD and it tanked, so it might have given me Compressor-phobia in the beginning.

yeah - I can understand the quality loss there! If you feed iDVD an MPEG4, I think it tries to convert it to MPEG2 and this results in a big quality drop. DVDSP will do the same if the asset is not DVD compliant... it attempts to convert it to MPEG2 according to your preference settings.

Compressor is a lot more friendly in that you do get more control, but you could also use third party apps such as BitVice to do the encoding and get a better quality result from that which you can then take into DVDSP.

The thing with Quicktime, Compressor and DVDSP is that they all use the same basic encoding engine with different degrees of user control available to each. Using BitVice offers you an alternative encoder and thus more flexibility overall, IMO.

Toast help file says:

DVD discs can hold large amounts of video and data. Currently, the standard size of a DVD disc is defined as 4.7 GB. However, on a 4.7 GB disc you can probably store a maximum of 4.2 GB of computer data.

I'll go with 4.17 GB as a more precise figure.

I believe that the 4.7 GB capacity of a DVD-R is actually 4.7 billions of bits.
There are:

2**10 or 1024 bytes in a KB
1024 KB in a MB
1024 MB in a GB

So...

4,700,000,000 bytes
-------------------------- = 4.377 'real' or 'computer GB
1024 * 1024 * 1024

That would indicate an 'overhead' of 4.377 - 4.17 = 0.207 GB
x 1024 = 212 MB

Do I have that right?








>Author: Matt Murray (---.atlsfl.adelphia.net)
>Date:   06-07-05 03:05

>Item 1. You will NOT get 4.7 gigs worth of media on a DVD, only about 4.17.