I searched around, but this problem is oddly specific, so please show some mercy if this has already been answered A friend of mine burned an entire television series of 85 episodes onto 10 dvds, with roughly 8 or 9 episodes per disc (Judging by the menu template he used ConvertXtoDVD). He let me borrow these DVDs and I ripped JUST the episodes using DVD Decrypter (I planned on burning them in a different order). When the time came to burn the episodes for myself, I fired up Nero Vision and found that I could fit 14 episodes per disc, lowering the total to only 7 DVD+Rs. Needless to say I was perfectly happy with this. The problem came when I acquired a different show of about 100 episodes and decided to burn them for myself. I didn't rip the episodes, so they were all in AVI format. But the problem was, according to Nero Vision I can only fit roughly 8 episodes per disc, which puts me at around 13 DVDs. What floors me is that the AVIs are actually SMALLER than the VOBs that were ripped from before, so how is it that I can't fit 14 episodes per disc anymore? Both shows are only 20 minutes long. So, along with the question above, what I want to know is: Is there any way to shrink the episodes down without noticeable quality loss? Is there a good program for burning many episodes to one standard 4.7 GB DVD? Or would it be in my best interest to convert the files to VOB FIRST and then burn them with Nero Vision? I would prefer not to re-encode purely for time saving purposes, but what must be done...must be done. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity on the matter.
The running time of the video is the usual restriction because a DVD-5 is a nominal two hours of movie video. I recall that Nero vision has different quality settings which allow more running time at the cost of quality. An alternative to Nero for AVI to DVD is to use the freeware FAVC. The encoder tab allows the selection of 'Half D1' - in the case of NTSC, that's 352x480 instead of 720x480. More running time can be placed on the disk and depending on your tolerance - I'm not a videophile - you may not notice on playback. FAVC allows menu creation and uses ImgBurn for burning the disk.
Nero's "Super Long Play' preset is also Half D1. The size of the source files make no difference, only the run time matters when you convert. That sounds about right, 9 x 20 minutes = about 3 hours. Acceptable for low action TV shows. 14 x 20 minutes = nearly 5 hours, not recommended unless you plan on viewing on a very small CRT. CX2D has a slightly unique way of encoding. When you load the 14 CX2D VOBs into Nero Vision and hit Write does it go rather quickly and is Nero's 'Smart Encoding' graphic visible? If you look at the burn side of the CX2D discs does the whole disc appeared burned?
Yeah, the CX2D discs seem to be burned all of the way. As far as when I loaded the VOBs into Nero Vision, the process did appear to be oddly quick and the Smart Encoding icon did appear. It took only about 20 to 25 minutes for a disc to finish, so I was actually able to burn the entire collection in just a few short hours. I popped in one of the discs that I burned to do a quick quality check, and for the most part it seems acceptable. The only tough part is that it's a cartoon series from the early 90's, so judging the quality is a bit tricky. It's very possible had I burned anything live action under these circumstances I would have found the quality below par.
