I went through the howto guid for converting an avi file to mpeg-2 using TMPGEnc, when getting to the bitrate part of the program, at the bottom there's the blue bar stating the ammount of disc used?....i'm being told in the guide to use about 97% of the disc but i can nly get it down to 127.22% !!. The movie info i get is : 720x480 23.976 fps/ 48000 hz stereo / 307 min 52 sec. Before i tried to convert the avi file the file was: File : 699 MB (699 MB), duration: 1:38:12, type: AVI, 1 audio stream(s), quality: 44 %. Does TPMGEnc work on XP?...is there another program i can use to convert if this one doesn't work?.
Don't use the Wizard. There are a lot of guides that teach you how to use TMPGEnc without the Wizard. For a 98 min movie, you should have no trouble fitting that onto a DVD-R. For myself, since I do a lot of custom work, I use a bitrate calculator (such as DV Tool) to calculate the "optimum" bitrate. Most standard DVD's use between 6000-8000 kbps. I just ran your specs through one and it comes out as "5870 kbps". I'd drop it about about 100 kbps if you use CBR. For VBR, just use the average as 5800 kbps.
