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Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:19 am
by Peter Stedman
Sorry to raise the hoary old subject again. A colleague regularly videos Pantomime type shows of about 1 hour in each half. Till now he has recorded each half on Mini DV tapes. I gather these two halves he puts onto the hard drive of a domestic stand-alone DVD recorder. He can then produce a 2 hour DVD for supplying to his clients.

I can understand this as I frequently copy old VHS tapes –some up to 4 hours – onto a standard DVD as my Sony DVD recorder will record up to 6 hours. A big drop in quality of course.

My colleague has now gone onto HiDef recording onto a SD card. Easily getting the whole two hour shows onto the card. I have only just discovered that he doesn't have a video editing computer so he has asked me to edit and put titles and credits etc. and then put it all onto a DVD that he can copy and thus distribute. I know full well that my PC wont record more than the standard 4.7g about an hour.

My question is, how do others, who record long stage shows, put it all onto a standard DVD for customers who don’t have BluRay etc.? Once again I appear to have been lumbered with other peoples problems.

Thanks once again. Pete.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:02 am
by TimStannard
Peter, you can get more than an hour onto a 4.7GB DVD by compressing it more (reduce the bitrate). In my Vegas world this is best done by creating the MPEG2 files in Vegas rather than letting the DVD authoring program do the compression. Your world may differ.
The key thing is to get the maximum bitrate that will fit onto the DVD.

This article https://www.moviestudiozen.com/free-tut ... onto-a-dvd, whilst aimed at Vegas Movie Studio users contains a link to Mark's Bitrate Calculator which is an invaluable aid to doing this.

However and reduction in bitrate is a reduction in quality and you might prefer to use Double Layer DVDs which hold up to 8.5GB.

Hope this helps,

Tim

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 1:36 pm
by Peter Stedman
Thanks Tim,
That sounds like the direction I need to go and I will follow it up. I am using Prem CS6 but hope to be able to follow.
Thanks again.
Pete

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 9:35 am
by Peter Stedman
Tim. From your gen I followed through to find the info about doing the same thing in Premiere CS6 and Encore. By Jove, this will keep my brain occupied for many, many hours. Whether I ever get there who is to know.

I'm surprised that no one has answered with how they put long shows on DVD. There must be many that do this sort of project.
Cheers. Pete

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 11:30 am
by Michael Slowe
If you use a dedicated application for encoding DVD's there should be no problem in setting the correct compression level.

I've used BitVice for many years now and it works a treat. It also incorporates a high quality downscale so that I drag my HD ProRes file into BitVice and it will automatically downscale to SD. I can also set compression levels with sliders and it will indicate how big the file will be, so that knowing the capacity of the discs I will be burning to I can adjust accordingly. I could comfortably manage two hours I think, beyond that the compression may give too poor a picture, but one can only tell by doing it. From BitVice I only get the m2v and ac3 files so they then have to be merged into a .img (in Studio Pro), before burning to discs in Toast Titanium.

Actually, seeing that all our lovely HD footage gets such serious compression (DVD's, Vimeo, You Tube), it is amazing that the pictures look so good. I suppose 4K originals will look even better, one hopes so.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 1:08 pm
by Peter Stedman
Hello Michael. Many thanks for all that info. Hope you wont mind me saying, but a lot is right over my aged head. My DVDs are created as follows. Footage edited in Premiere CS6 and then, from within that programme, the project is exported to Premiere Encore to make the disc. All the settings are left as automatic really and the DVD produced. Just a two step process really.

You are suggesting that I use a dedicated programme called BitVice. (Never heard of it) Assuming I had that programme on my machine I would have to learn how to get the project from CS6 into that programme. (Can my brain take all this learning I wonder?) Then, from what I see, that file has to be merged into an .img file by some other programme and THEN the disc made by using another programme I’ve never heard of, called Toast Titanium. Wow. I’m assuming these mentioned programmes cost many £££££££s?

Please don’t think I don’t appreciate you taking the trouble to explain all this. It really is appreciated and you are always so kind in helping folk on this board with valuable advice. It’s just that it seems so mind boggling to take in. I will sit down with a strong coffee and look further into it.

Very many thanks as always. Pete.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2016 12:39 am
by TimStannard
Peter,
What Michael describes is pretty much the same method as I use - except I do all the compression within Vegas and I would assume you could do the same from within Premiere.
Using my method, I need to do the calculations for bitrate myself. It appears Michael's method, uses an intermediate programe with a nice user interface where you can just move sliders to get the compression right.
You don't need Toast (or DVD Architect) , it does a similar job to Encore. But we are both telling you exactly the same thing. You will need to learn something about compressing your footage in order to fit it onto a standard DVD.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2016 8:32 am
by Peter Stedman
Thanks Both. As I have Encore etc. I can see that I will have to do some advanced learning with these programmes. Actually, it is only trying to help a colleague for his latest stage show that all this has come about.. You both have given me the background to what I must do and for that my thanks. What I can't quite see at the moment is whether I have to 'compress' the project within Premiere CS6 itself or if that is done in Adobe Encore.

Anyhow, again I must thank you for all the advice given.

Cheers. Pete.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2016 9:07 am
by TimStannard
Sorry I'm not familiar with Premiere Peter, but looking at a couple of tutorials it seems there are "Transcode Settings" available when exporting. I'd start by typing that into Help.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 6:53 pm
by Michael Slowe
Peter, I'm sorry to have caused you to query your procedures, I was merely describing how I solve the problem of deciding on the level of compression. Actually, your "aged head"is very likely younger than mine! My score is 81, what's yours? Hadn't even switched on a computer when, in 1996, I made the step from 16mm film to digital film making and editing. What I did do is consult a training expert who put me into these weird and wonderful software applications (they are not expensive by the way, they were in 1996 but how things have changed in that regard). Like you, I now am nervous about changing my workflow but with all the new computers and operating systems I'm finding it difficult to avoid change. I'm hoping that I can survive with what I have running now.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 7:25 pm
by Peter Stedman
Hello Michael,
Thanks for interesting and kind words. I had several years as a pro in still photography. B&W then colour etc. Weddings, funerals, portraits and pets and all the rest but no videos until about the late 1980s. Till now I've never even had to think about 'compression', in fact till now I only had a very vague idea what it meant. Even as your posting came up I was in the process of downloading from the Adobe site the info on 'Transcoding' in Adobe Encore. If I last long enough I may even get to grips with it.

I can beat you . . . . I'm 82.

Thank again 'Old Timer'. Ho Ho. Pete.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:08 pm
by Peter Jackson
I have edited several shows using Serif MoviePlus X6 editing software, including two Pantomimes over 2 hours each, and a Dance Studio show of 1 hour 45 minutes. These were recorded on MiniDV, but I have also imported HD video in 1920 x 1080 format. When MoviePlus detects HD video, it automatically creates proxy files which are used for editing. When the video is exported, the program refers to the proxy edit to create the files for the chosen format. The video can be exported in any of 10 formats, including DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube etc. There is no need to use any other programs for authoring a disc with a menu – it is all included.

When you export a video to disc, MoviePlus shows a green bar indicating the Space required for the project on your chosen disc type, and a blue bar indicating the quality, up to 100%. If the required space exceeds the disc capacity, it alerts the user by extending the Space bar in red instead of green. All you need to do is to tick a box labelled “Fit to Disc”, and the bitrate is adjusted to fit all of the movie on to the disc, and the blue bar shortens to reflect the consequent reduction in quality. You don’t have to enter any values for bitrate or compression – it’s completely automatic. I thought all video editing programs worked this way.

Obviously, there is some quality penalty for a lower bitrate, but I don’t think that the average viewer would notice it. When I had a particular requirement to avoid any reduction in quality, I simply used created a dual layer disc instead of a standard one. Of course, the DVD drive needs to support dual layer discs, but I believe that most drives do.

Re: Long recordings onto DVD

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 9:25 am
by Peter Stedman
Hi Peter. I really must apologise for not acknowledging you posting until now. I see it was posted on January 27th and it was only last evening (Feb.11th) that I got the automated email advising that there had been a new posting. Don't know what happened there.
As it was some ago I started the thread, I think I have better go back and read it all over again and then come back if I have any news.

Thanks again for your input.

Cheers. Pete.