Too Big For My DVD

[Randy CA Profile Private message]

I put together a show 52 minutes long.

When I go to render it PSG estimates the size as being 4.1GB.
It also says the DVD will only hold 4.095 GB.
When I go ahead and render it and put it on a DVD it is only 3.44 GB and the quality is terrible.

Huh? How can all of this be?

I have DVDs with movies a couple of hours long and with bonus features. And DVDs advertise as holding 4.71 GB.

What am I missing?

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

I think that many Hollywood movies are created using double-layer (8.5 GB - 215 minutes) discs which allows the movie to run at high quality rather than the single layer (4.7 GB - 120 minutes) size.

The capacity of single-layer DVDs depends on the quality of the video (and to a lesser extent, audio) that you actually burn. The 120-minute recording capacity of a single-layer DVD assumes a video bitrate of 5 Mbps (5000 kbps) with an audio bitrate of 192 kbps. However, most Hollywood DVD videos use a Variable Bit Rate with an average video bitrate between 5.5 Mbps (5500 kbps) and 6 Mbps (6000 kbps).

That said you can change the recording value in Proshow from high quality to low quality to increase the recording capacity but playback quality will suffer when you increase the recording time as you know.

I do not know what settings you are using but you might experiment a little by creating a few executable files of your show rather than wasting a bunch of discs to see what the playback quality is at different recording settings

Dan

[Randy CA Profile Private message]

Thanks Dan,

Did not know anything about double layer DVDs. I will look into them. I looked at Blueray disks and thought they might be the answer but YIKES! they are $10 a disk at Office Max. That really adds up when you think of sending everyone in the extended family a copy.

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

One other thing to remember about Blue-Ray, aside from the price of the disc, is that . . . not everyone has a Blue-Ray player.

The double layer DVD's might help solve your capacity problem but I don't think it will improve your quality. They aren't much more expensive than the standard single layer discs but you will need a burner that is capable of handling double layer discs. Here's a link to a 25 pack from SuperMedia: http://www.supermediastore.com/product/ ... d-media-25

Good luck as you continue to investigate your playback quality issue

Dan

[bonalymac Profile Private message]

Pretty sure dual-layer has absolutely northing to do with quality. It just lets you put twice as much data of the same quality on to a disk (Think you also need a writer that will write dual layers).

DVD quality is fixed at 720 x 576 (PAL) or 480 I believe for NTSC.