How Much Time Goes on a DVD?

[johnneumann]

I haven't burned a DVD on my Kron in a couple of years, so I'm a little rusty with this.

I've got two projects, one is 60 mins and the other is 52 mins. I also have a trailer that will be about 30 seconds.

Image quality is normal. Audio mode is uncompressed.

I loaded the trailer and the first project successfully, but the second project gets me the message that I'll probably go over the two hours and the project will only be partially loaded.

Is this common? Shouldn't I get two hours on a DVD?

I don't know if content changes the amount of memory used. This is plain one-camera in the back of the room seminar footage. Not exactly the new Star Wars movie.

What gives here? I need those two projects on the one disc.

1) How do I get both projects on one disc?

2) If I compress the audio, it should work, but will I notice the difference in sound quality? (All spoken word.)

-JOHN

[JPaul]

John, You would have to use a double layered disk to get that amount of time on 1 disk unless you change your audio and/or video quality settings.

[Martyn]

You will not notice a loss in audio quality for speech using compressed audio. Most people wouldn't even notice a loss in audio quality with music on the average TV set up. The project will however take a little longer to author and may not play the soundtrack if you play the DVD back on the Kron.

Martyn
Dalco.uk

[IanPearson]

John
When Arabesk is loading, it gives an estimate of the amount of space available. It cannot know beforehand, since the amount of disc space used depends upon the video movement, i.e. lots of video movement cannot be compressed the same as the more static scenes.

As an average a DVD-R will hold just over 2 hours, but as said this can vary by up to 10mins, either way, so Arabesk gives the most pesimistic estimate.

As you say, the best option is to use the audio compression. I as a rule use the image quality of “Normal” and “Compressed” audio. I have had 2hours 10min using these settings.

I would not worry about the audio quality, I personally cannot tell the difference and unless you have some very quiet music, such as a classical passage, I doubt that most others will either. So your spoken words should be fine.

Mind you my hearing aid does distort sound anyway….. only kidding, it will be fine honest.

Ian

[IanPearson]

Good morning Martyn, your just a bit quicker than me on the key board.

Ian

[chetdavis]

John,

Here is an estimate of what you can expect with DVD technology onto the standard single-layer disk:

Video Quality Normal - Audio Uncompressed 1 hr + 40 mins
Video Quality Normal - Audio Compressed 2 hrs + 7 mins


Video Quality Reduced - Audio Uncompressed 2 hrs + 03 min
Video Quality Reduced - Audio Compressed 2 hrs + 46 mins

(the above chart is provided courtesy of Carroll Lam - http://www.clamcamvideo.com )


I have some customers who swear by Compressed Audio and others who swear by Uncompressed (and other customers who never swear ). The only issue I have found with Compressed is that some of your audience may need to adjust their DVD player settings to allow for successful playback of the compressed audio disk/s.

And, I would suggest sometimes we (as producers) need to re-think our intentions -- would it be better to provide a single disk (even going DL - or Dual Layer with twice the disk capacity) or are we better off in terms of marketing and functionality providing the customer with a double-disk set?

Regards,
Chet

[TimKennelly]

Compressed audio takes longer to render during the Add Film process and you can run into customer service issues from irritated, frustrated clients that call complaining that the DVD does not have any sound.

This is a relatively simple setting issue in the player itself, but it rarely satisfies a customer as an answer over the phone as "All their other DVDs play fine!".

I personally feel a two DVD set is a higher value marketing tool than Double Layer DVDs.

It appears the client is getting "more" (DL DVDs look the same as regular DVDs) and you have less playback compatibility issues with two regular DVDs than a DL DVD as some players have trouble "switching over" to the second layer.

And two regular DVDs cost less than a DL DVD and also allow you greater flexibility on such things as menu and chapter menu settings.

[johnneumann]

Whoa! This has to be the most authoritative set of responses I've ever read on any question on the forum.

Handled the issue ... cut it off at the knees. Thank you, everyone.

This is one for the archives, guys. The question of DVD recording length and quality should probably never need to come up again.



-JOHN

[PaulBusta]

Ah but there is one last question about quality settings. Say you want the best quality DVD recording our system offers, the "Maximum" setting. If you choose this setting a warning comes up saying someting to the effect that some players may not be able to read the DVD using this setting. Has anyone ever used this setting to dupe copy's for clients? And what kind of recording times are we looking at. And using this setting can you see a differance in video quality. OK, I'm done now.

[JohnKleban]

I only use the "High" setting for my DVDs, which gets me around the 70-75 minute mark per disc. A long time back, I compared a disc burned at "Normal" and one at "High" and one at "Max." I saw a HUGE difference in mpeg artifacts, "Normal" being awful, and "High" looking great; as far as "Max" I saw no difference between that and "High", so, I'd rather keep the extra disc space with "High" over "Max"; plus, I've never had any client have an issue with the playback of my discs at the "High" setting.

John