Topic: Adjusting DVD-R Playing Time when authoring problem

[peruvianpisco]

Hi, i wonder why i got warning i can only burn 75 min onto DVD with TMPGEnc or Architect...i have bought DVD-R lasting 2 hours and i can play it, i presume they are using low bitrate but is there a way to know before burning if my standalone DVD player will read it if i render that way?....even when it's old and a lot of specially musical videos freeze all the time the last minutes :twisted:
As usual iīve been seaching first but i found advanced answers

[Sandra]

Have you tried different makes of blank DVDs ?
When you say you can only burn 75 minutes what size of file in mbs or gbs does it actually burn ?
Any bitrate variations would only affect the final size of the film, not the actual running time  :?

There is a 2gb maximum limitation on VOB files so if you are reauthoring and ending up with VOBs that are bigger than that then that could be your problem  :?

[peruvianpisco]

As usual i am confusing because of my bad english.
The problem is the CBR and VBR issue, by default it seems i must burn 6000 CBR (75 min)(this is  recommended i guess), i am not sure how much i can change this to fit, for example, a 2 hours or more movie without causing any play problem in my home DVD player , i read i canīt go higher than 9800 but what about less than 6000? and VBR can be read by any player?
Thanks

[Sandra]

Thanks for clarifying the problem.
I think I understand better now  

I havent done much with bitrates for video and usually leave things at default.
As far as I know the variable rate improves the quality when there are fast moving scenes in a movie, so that may explain the freezing you are getting when using a constant bit rate which may be too slow for those particular scenes.

I think that most stand alone DVD players read bith CBR and VBR without any problems.
Could you try encoding and burning at VBR  :?


I will see if I can find something out for you, now that I understand what the problem is  

I came across this which explains why there are VBR and CBR options.

VBR, variable bit rate, encoding allows higher image quality at a lower average bit rate by using more data to encode those parts of a video sequence which are more complex and do not compress well.

Using CBR, constant bit rate, encoding, the video data rate must be high enough to encode all the video well. For short videos where disc capacity is not an issue CBR, at as high a bit rate as possible, is the better choice.

[Sandra]

According to this, using a CBR of 6000 or less then the quality wont be any good so you really need to use VBR to get the length of movie that you are wanting  

Encode from captured format to DVD-legal MPEG-2.  If video exceeds 60 mins, then you can use variable bit rate (VBR) to typically achieve high quality DVD.  If 60 mins or less, then constant bitrate encoding (CBR) is fine because you don't need to conserve DVD space and CBR can be done in half the 2-pass VBR time.  Time to process: 2 to 10 hours.  If you use one of the direct-to-dvd programs, then it will start encoding in the background while you are capturing, so you are ahead of the game timewise.  A word about video:  One-Pass VBR results in strobing effects during video motion, as does any Constant Bitrate Encoding (CBR) less than 6000-7000 Kbps.  It is my observation that 2 hours of video encoded with 2-Pass VBR (1000 Kbps minimum, 4200 avg, 8000 max) from a high-quality encoder results in the same quality as 8000 Kbps CBR for your typical home video needs. The tradeoff is encoding time versus buying less disks.
 

The full article which you may find useful is here :

http://www.thepeters.org/dvd_authoring.htm

This may be helpful to you too, from the same site :

Encode with TMPGEnc using these tips  video with TMPGENC (2 pass VBR, 4200 Kbps avg, 1000 Kbps min, 8000 Kbps max)  Use the wizard to get the best quality. Set the audio to mpeg less than 128 kbps, set 2 pass VBR, and then tell it to consume 99% of a DVD disk.  This seems to be the shortcut.
 
 Generate Elementary Streams (audio and video in separate files)
 
 I have found that TMPGenc is more reliable if multitasking is off.
 
 If less than 2 hours, optionally calculate your average VBR based on source time using the Bitrate Calculator.  For 2 hours of source video, use about 3600kbps for your average bit rate if using PCM audio or about 4200 for 384kbps Layer II MPEG audio.  
 
 Note that 2-pass VBR takes a very long time.  Two hours of source on my 2.53 GHz machine reading from one hard drive, writing to another, and using a third for temp area, with no filters, it takes over 8 hours to encode.  Add sharpening or other filters will make it longer.
 

I hope that you find this helpful and that it may sort your problem out  

[peruvianpisco]

Hi, maybe i should wait more time, i burned ( i am old, i prefer to say recorded   ) only 3 DVD since the last time, i used VBR like you said  and Nero as usual but no dvd-audio but dvd udf/iso and checking "force to dvd video xbox" or any like that, i read it in Pcworld spanish edition to solve standalone incompatibilities..of course, if i change 2 variables i don`t know for sure who is making work it fine, but it does!!!!
I prefer Vegas, even presets, i rendered last time ( with bitrate calculator) in TMPGenc, 2-pass VBR and i think it looks worse and it took more than 14 hours vs 5 or 6 on vegas with the same movie (really it was because a bad CD-R, not Princo of course, was Imation but who knows what factory it was made!)
Well, i `ll keep you informed of what i got everytime, thinking the search engine can take someone here with this problem...because that`s the way i knew about this site at the first time  
Thank you all, specially Sandra, you are nice, beauty, gentle helping people and very intelligent

[Sandra]

Pleased its working now, even if we are not certain exactly why