Hi one and all, I haven't had much luck with this. I have a LOT of VHS movies that I have bought over the years that I am putting on DVDs. I am using a AVerMedia DVD EZMaker PCI capture card (720 x 480 res) and their capture software to copy the VHS files to a HD file as DVD Video. The files end up as Nero VOB files (Nero 6.3.xx). I then process them with the latest DVDshrink and burn them to a DVD. The problem is some of these Movies are around 7 gig or larger and compressions end up around 48% so the video is terrible. (Smaller movies with less compression look as good as the original}. I don't mind having a large movie on 2 dvds if the resulting video is improved. Perhaps some one out there would have a clue for a straight forward process to split these large Movies. Thanks 1gig Pentinum III Plextor 708A Rage ATI video 256 meg ram
Your Problem is you are going about this all the wrong way...You ending up getting Much Lower Quality and doing more steps than you have to and you should never have to put a Movie on 2 DVD"s unless the movie is over 3 hours....I also noticed that you have an older Slow PC which effects your Capture quality.... In your Capture Software there Should be settings for setting the Video Bitrate for Captureing to Mpeg... All you have to do is set the Video bitrate to the correct bitrate depending on the length of the Movie you are Captureing...If you use the Correct Bitrate the Captured File will be under 4.7gb and then you can simply use a DVD authoring Program to author the File to DVD (You should not have to use Nero or DVD Shrink to process the Files cuz this can lower the Quality)....If your Capture software doesn"t have a bitrate setting then you should find one that does, I would recomend some (Like WinDVR 3.0) but the ones that I use you need a PC at least twice as fast as yours to capture to Mpeg2 DVD.... To get the Best quality you can Capture to an AVI format and then use a High quality Mpeg encoder to encode the AVI files to Mpeg2 for DVD and then author them to DVD.... So basicly you should be able to capture the Movie and then Author it directly to DVD without useing any programs accept the Capture Software and the DVD Authoring Software.. A good and very simple DVD authoring program is Tmpgenc DVD author and it is free for 30 days and to calculate the Bitrate you need to use to capture your Movies to a file small enough to fit on a DVD you can use a Bitrate Calculator called "PowerBit", To use it you Just put in the Length of the Movie and click "Calculate" and it will tell you the Bitrate you must use so the movie will fit on a DVD....Cheers PS: You might want to upgrade your PC to at least 2.0ghz cuz Mpeg compression sucks up a Lot of CPU Power especially at 720+480 and you will tend to get more dropped frames and lower Quality when useing a Slower PC...You can upgrade your PC to 2.0ghz+ for about $125 if you do it yourself.... I just upgraded my Mothers PC from a 800mhz Intel to a Intel 2.7ghz for $175 Canadian and then installed the 800mhz in my neighbours PC for $140 so it ended up only costing me $30....Just a thought ...Cheers
OK, Thank you Minion, Well I am kind of stuck with what I have since I live on a fixed income. The MOBO will only support up to about 1.4 gig for a processer and I can't afford to build another system right now. The capture software that came with the capture card is pretty basic and won't allow any bit rate changes. I knew all of before hand but had to fly with with what I had. I have all of the old "World at War" series converted to DVD but they are only 52 mins long each so they look as good as the original VHS tapes but the longer tapes pretty well suck. I an pretty sure that this capture card is software based so there are a lot of limitations but for $49 I can't complain. Otherwise the system works well for DVD to DVD-R as I can see no differance between purchased DVDs and Backups. Maybe the lottery will smile on me and I can upgrade everything ;-). thanks for your info...
Minion, I'm having problems along the same lines. I used the settings I saw you posted for a 2 hr. movie (4875 kbs video and 192 audio), and still my image file is coming up as over 4.3 gb and too big for the DVD. I've captured a 1:33 movie to MPEG2, using a WinTV-PVR 250 card, and tried to use Ulead Movie Factory to author to DVD. (I've tried both burning it directly from Movie Factory and also outputting it as an ISO file and burning with DVDecryptor.) I downloaded PowerBit as you suggested, and according to that program, I should've been able to use a 5979 bitrate and still fit. Now, the settings on WinTV 2000 ask you to choose DVD length (standard, long play, extra long play) - can that make a difference even though I'm setting the bitrate to what it should need to be? Hope I'm asking the question clearly enough - I'm VERY new at this! Using a Dell 8300 with Pentium IV 3.0 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB HD, Teac DVD+R/+RW DV-W58E burner Thanks for any/all help..... I sure do need it!
OK..I"m trying to understand your problem but I am a Bit confused.... From what I get is that you have a Place to set the Bitrate when Captureing AND you have some other Place were you can choose the DVD length (standard, long play, extra long play)??? The DVD Length setting would adjust the Bitrate so I don"t know what setting is actually controlling the Bitrate of the File you are Captureing, All I know is that the File you are Captureing has to be captured useing the Specified Bitrate... Maybe set both of the settings so that they are roughly the same?? Or another thing is you can try captureing at the verry highest Bitrate you possibly can and then re-encode the captured files to the Correct Bitrate useing a High quality mpeg encoder, but that way takes to long when you should be able to capture at the right bitrate.... Sorry but I don"t know how your device works and the software settings so i can not give you specific instructions on how to use it.....good luck PS: if you come up with more information I will be more than happy to help out if I can....
Minion, you've got it correctly - there are 2 settings (DVD length and MPEG Advanced Settings) and it's confusing the heck out of me! I just played around with it, and setting the DVD length does change the advanced settings (the actual bitrate number) so I guess I'll try doing it the easy way. What also throws me is the DVD lengths mentioned in the WinTV manual: Standard = 1 hr. 30 min Long Play = 1 hour 50 minutes Extra Long Play = 4 hours Do those lengths make any sense? Thanks again for all your help!
Mongo, I'm remembering VHS lengths being 2, 4 and 6 hours. Of course, I haven't taped anything in a very long time, so I might be wrong.... I'm too busy reading everything I can get my hands on in these forums, trying to figure out what I'm doing!
Well the "Standard" Setting could be a DVD at 720+480. And the "Long Play" could be a DVD at 352+480.... And the "Extra Long Play" could be a DVD at "352+240". So I suggest that you try the "Standard" setting and then adjust the Bitrate to the one that you need to make the Movie fit on a DVD and then see if it works.. Good Luck
It's actually not as confusing as you might think once you get the hang of it. There are two places where bitrate matters - 1) capture, 2) author and/or burn. 1) When you capture using your PVR, you need to use the bitrate calculated by Powerbit (i.e. you said 5979 in your case). This will produce a DVD-MPEG2 that will fit on a 4.73GB DVD-R. However, you then need to burn the DVD. 2) When using Ulead, you'll bring the captured DVD-MPEG2 video in. In the burn settings for DVD you'll see "Standard", "Long", etc, but you should also see "Custom" (i.e. in Ulead Video Studio 7 at least). By choosing "Custom", you will be able to set the bitrate, frame rate, etc. This needs to be set at a level that works for fitting on 1 DVD-R, in your case 5979. [bold]So[/bold], there are two ways to accomplish what you want. A) Capture the video in the highest quality possible (i.e. bitrate of 6,000 or higher and framerate of 29.9 fps), which will generate a file larger than a single DVD5, and then in Ulead during burning choose a bitrate that allows it to fit on 1 DVD (e.g. choosing a lower bitrate will take the high quality capture and reduce it until it fits). B) Capture the video at a bitrate that allows it to fit on 1 DVD5 (i.e. 4.7GB), and then use the same bitrate when burning the project in Ulead. The difference is in (A), you can edit the high quality onto 1 or more DVD's if you choose and retain full quality (i.e. you have choses). In (B), the quality you captured is the best you'll get. Hope this helps.
Oh ya, one more thing, the Ulead settings you're seeing of "Standard", etc. are just program wizard settings (i.e. canned settings) for a specific bitrate and framerate. The custom option should let you set these manully. If not get a newer version of Ulead or Nero.
