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.
Try the one from videohelp: http://www.videohelp.com/download/BitrateCalc.zip I believe you have to have the Java Runtime installed.
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.
