I have a video capture device hooked ot my PC and a good quaility DVD burner. I am trying to turn my bulky VHS collection into DVD format. Here is my problem: I started out with Terminator 2 as my test tape. The capture copied it in Mpeg-2 but the size of the file is 7.764GB and a DVD only holds 4.7GB. Am I missing something? Please advise as I am pulling what little hiar I have left out.
What determines the Size of your Captured Mpeg-2 file is the Length of the Movie and the Bitrate you used to Encode the Movies to Mpeg-2 so if the File you capture is allmost 100% bigger that it should be then it is because the Bitrate you used to Capture this Movie was twice as High as it should be..... In your Capture Software there should be Different Capture Profiles and Hopefully options to Create your Own Capture Profiles so you can Make a Custom Capture Profile useing your own Bitrate settings... The way you Find out what Bitrate you should use while Captureing is to use what is called a "Bitrate Calculator" which will tell you what Bitrate you should use Based on the Length of the Movie so that it fits on a 4.38gb DVD-R... The one I use is Called "PowerBit" which you can Find if you do a Google Search... After you have the Bitrate Calculator you would Run it and at the Top you would Put in the Length of your Movie in Minutes and Beside that you would put in the Number of audio Streams you are useing (One) and the Audio Bitrate you are useing (192kbs is Good) and then you Click the "Calculate" button at the Bottom and it will tell you the Bitrate you should use to Capture a Movie of that Length so it fits on a DVD.... After you Have Calculated the Bitrate you have to use you should go into your Capture Software and Make a Custom Capture Profile and Put in the Bitrate you got from the Bitrate Calculator as your Capture Bitrate and then Capture the Movie.... After you capture the Movie to Mpeg-2 you just load the File into a DVD Authoring Program Like "DVDLab" or "Tmpgenc DVD Author" and add your menu"s and Chapters and Author the DVD..... Thats It!!! Cheers
May be the long way around but what I do is copy the files using my DVD capture software. Put them together using a menu of my own and burning them to the HD as a reg. DVD. I can then open that with DVD Shrink and force it to fit a standard DVD. I've ran into one problem doing this, the files were just to large no matter what and shrink couldn't get them down to size. I saved them and shrank them twice... that worked.
Doing it that way will result in a Lower Quality Picture than if you just used the Correct Bitrate in the First place Pluss it takes longer....
