# Fitting 2 hour VHS on 4.7GB DVD



## John Denow (Nov 20, 1999)

Hello again..

I've been working for the last couple of weeks transfering some of my VHS tapes to DVD. The most I've been able to fit on a 4.7 GB DVD is about 1 hour and 10-15 minutes. The image is not as clear as the original VHS when playing thru the TV. The DVD says it will hold "120 minutes of video".

What am I missing in the conversion from analog to MPEG that causes the file to be too large to fit on 1 DVD? Am I correct in using the 720 x 480 DVD MPEG setting? Is that overkill for VHS quality and perhaps causing some of the "pixelation"?

I'm using an ATI all-in-wonder 7500 with a 1.6GHz P-4 processor and a Memorex DVD burner.

The ATI came with U-lead Video Studio 5.0 which works very well for editing.

The Memorex came with PowerDVD, MyDVD, ArcSoft ShowBiz, and Nero. The ShowBiz software is the only program that allows me to transfer the edited MPEG to DVD. No matter what I load into MyDVD, it says the file is too big.

If anyone can help me with suggestions on what settings I could change to get a 2 hour VHS to fit on a 2 hour (4.7BG) DVD, I would appreciate it.

I've done a lot of looking on other sites, but have yet to find the answers.


Thanks in advance for your help...


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I suspect that resolution is overkill for typical VHS tapes, probably why you're not getting the capacity you are looking for. Have you tried other resolutions?


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## John Denow (Nov 20, 1999)

It looks like the default for MPEG is 720 x 480. I've tried rendering and storing lower (3??x ???) for view from my hard drive, and the quality is very poor. I'm not sure if I would gain anything by dropping the frame rate to 25 or sound to mono??

The programs, from what I've found so far, let me change resolution, frame rate, and sound settings when storing to my hard drive, but when exporting to DVD, all the defaults appear to be locked to MPEG...high quality.

If the quality is going to suffer significantly, I'd rather stay with less time on each DVD and use more of them.

It just seems strange that a 2 hour commercial grade DVD movie can be so clear and fit on one disk, along with all the "Extra's", although I think those disks are 6 GB.

I agree I might be over stepping the quality settings needed for VHS. Does any one know what resolution and frames per second they would compare to?? Perhaps I've dropped the resolution too far in my previous attempts of storing to the hard drive.

Has any one used these programs with greater sucess??


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## Rache (Sep 30, 2002)

The commercial dvd's are specially 'layered' to be able to hold much more data. The best us dv'ers can do is use double-sided dvd disc's which each side can hold 4.7gb.

You are capturing analogue thro AIW (which converts to avi?) and rendering to mpeg? You can compress mpeg even more by tweeking, but with each compression the quality gets worse. So, you can get 2 hrs on a disc, using mpeg 1 or 2 but the quality will suffer.


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## John Denow (Nov 20, 1999)

As near as I can tell, I'm capturing Analog thru the ATI card, which converts it to MPEG, before putting it on my hard drive. 

This MPEG is then edited thru ArcSoft ShowBiz, adding title pages/transitions and removing blank portions of tape. I then export to DVD thru this same program. A 1 hour + project takes about 2 hours to render and burn to DVD.

Is it possible that I'm compressing the program twice...once when capturing and another when burning to the disk?? There is some graininess to the finished product.

It appears I'm stuck with 1 + hour DVD's since I'm not satisfied with the quality at lower settings.

Any further suggestions/comments are welcome

Thanks again


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

FWIW, the commercial DVD's are 9.6gigs and are double layer, they actually record on two different levels of the disk. Not sure exactly how they do it, but I've seen writeups on the web about it.


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## John Denow (Nov 20, 1999)

Thanks for the clarification on the commercial grade DVD's....clears up a little bit more of my confusion.


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## Rache (Sep 30, 2002)

If the AIW is capturing in mpeg and you're then rendering to mpeg this is reducing quality twice. See if it can convert analogue to avi, then edit, then render to mpeg.


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## toscar (Sep 23, 2002)

Hi John,
Have a look here for good information on what can/cannot be done in video editing, best settings for conversions, etc.
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/index.html
toscar


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## Weorit (Dec 11, 2002)

You can run your fully converted mpeg through an encodoing codec called divx, you can find their homepage here 
http://www.divx.com/
its how many users are making backup copies of thier dvd's on a single cd. i use flaskmpeg to open the mpeg and then convert it with the divx codec. you can set the audio rate, video size and crop, set the ratio and such. hope this helps.


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## John Denow (Nov 20, 1999)

WOW....a lot on info to sort thru.
I've seen other posts on the DIVX, but am concerned to it's compatabilty when burning DVD's for viewing on a tv top DVD player. Any issues I should be aware of??


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## Weorit (Dec 11, 2002)

not as far as i know, i'll look into it, though, as long as its in mpeg 2,3, or 4 format it should play, however, i'll check it out, i've mostly been playing it on my comp, but i'll check for a ps2 (will play dvd's same as a tv top box) cause that's what i have.


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