Authoring Works 4.0.2.14 Video size

Hello ...

I created MPG files using mencoder with the following options:
mencoder myfile.avi \
-channels 6 \
-of mpeg \
-oac lavc -ovc lavc \
-lavcopts acodec=ac3:abitrate=384:vcodec=mpeg2video:vbitrate=5000 \
-mpegopts format=dvd -srate 48000 -ofps 30000/1001 \
-o myfile.mpg

When I add these to a new project, it sizes them to 8068 mb, even though the source files are all less than 1 Gig each. The avi files are not HD source.

What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance.

Walter

 

How many minutes is the source?
Generally, any converted file depends on the sources length(time)
rather than it's size (MB or GB).

 

roughly 42 minutes per episode, I'd like to put 4 episodes per disc if possible, but could live with 3 per ... I was able to run dvdauthor under linux to create video_ts and audio_ts, but my athlon xp chokes on some software that is used to make menus and buttons

 

You should be able to do it,
42*4 with audio @ 384, comes to an approximate bitrate of
3275 kbps.

It's a little low, but should be OK, use a 2 pass encode.

Give AVStoDVD or DVD Flick a try. If you want to stick with
Mencoder, make sure you set the bitrate properly.

 

Thanks for the info ... I'd rather stick with command-line linux tools since I have a lot of files to convert.

 

Is there a HOWTO or FAQ somewhere that I can look at to calculate video bitrates in the future?

 

Try the one from videohelp:
http://www.videohelp.com/download/BitrateCalc.zip

I believe you have to have the Java Runtime installed.

 

That worked quite well, and yes it reqired the Java runtime

Thanks again.

 

Well, I re-encoded 3 of my avi files at 3200, and added them to a project, and the size remained at 2 gig per track.

I'm quite baffled at this point and ready to try a different piece of software.

 

Is the encoder not honoring your video bitrate, or something
else going on ? Have you checked the bitrate of the produced
m2v for a possible clue ?

 

I opened one of the resulting .mpg files with bitrateviewer (this site has a link) and it reported my average bitrate was 2484 with a peak of 9894 ... yet when I open the .mpg file with authoring works, it more than doubled its size to over 2 Gb ...

 

Authoring works is not supposed to re-encode it, assuming the
source is DVD compliant.
It's possible that it did though in this case. It might not accept your
source as-is since the max bitrate looks a little too high to me.
"with a peak of 9894"

 

Well I'm giving up on mencoder for now, until I upgrade my machine to an intel processor, when hopefully the linux tools will work. I'll try another encoding tool under xp to see if things change.

Thanks for your efforts.

 

AVStoDVD uses the great HCenc encoder. Excellent bitrate control.