Bitrate too low?

Paulito wrote on 11/5/2010, 2:33 AM
I managed to optimize 6 different videos to fit to disc, and they are each an hour long, but when I prepare it says the video cannot be recompressed because the bit rate is way too low. What will this mean?

The videos at first could not upload onto the DA because of the videos not being the required type. Someone suggested converting them, so I used the Sony Vegas and turned each vid into an avi file, so the picture quality can still be great.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 11/5/2010, 7:23 AM
You're not trying to fit 6 one-hour videos on the same DVD, are you, Paulito? That certainly won't go!

From Vegas, export each video as a DVD-ready MPEG and use that as your source file for DVD Architect. Each one-hour video will fit nicely on a disc. As I say in my book, you shouldn't need any recompression if you don't try to put more than 70 minutes of video on each DVD.
Steve Mann wrote on 11/5/2010, 7:43 AM
"That certainly won't go!"
Well, it can, but it would look like crap.

Most of my DVD productions are around the two-hour mark in length. I did make some in DVD9 (dual-layer), and most in DVD5. The casual user can't see the difference, so if the client won't pay for dual-layer, they get - and are happy - with an average bitrate in the 6- 7-Mbps.
bStro wrote on 11/5/2010, 8:11 AM
Isn't there a minimum acceptable bitrate, 2Mb/sec, I think? If not for the DVD specs, at least one that most DVD players are looking for.

Six hours on a single layer DVD is, I think, about 1.5Mb/sec -- surely that would cause more problems than just looking like crap. (Which it definitely would.) I've gone as much as three or four hours on a DVD just for personal use, but beyond that... Yech.

Rob
Paulito wrote on 11/5/2010, 12:23 PM
Well how many hours CAN I fit on to a disc? Guess I could try to export each file as an mpeg2, but it can take 6 hours a file.
bStro wrote on 11/5/2010, 1:10 PM
Pretty sure Steve and Steve answered that question already. It depends on what bitrate you encode your video at, but you should reasonably expect to put up to about two hours on a single layer DVD. Anything beyond that, and -- because you need to use a lower bitrate to fit more video -- your material is going to start to look like mush.

Rob
Paulito wrote on 11/5/2010, 1:48 PM
OKAY....for experimenting I removed all videos, and I took one of them and exported about a 30 second mpeg2 version of one of the videos, and put into Architect, and still that one warns me bit rate way too low.