Burning DVD Videos

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2010-05-20 at 13:33 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> > I've done it with devede. Not too difficult and it works pretty
> well,
> > but of course the resulting files are much larger than the .avi
> sources.
> > That's why he's out of luck if he wants to get a whole series onto
> one
> > DVD as he said.
> >
> >   
> I don't think he is necessarily out of luck.  While the resulting
> files may be larger there are different techniques for reducing the
> overall size.  I have taken movies, pressed on DL DVD's (9GB) and
> transferred them SL DVD(4.5GB).  Yes, the quality slightly degraded
> and I wouldn't watch it on a screen larger than 26"....but without
> taking the time and effort I would not rule out success. 

Downsizing a commercial DVD from 9GB to 4GB is a common procedure,
though a lot of the saving comes from removing extraneous elements such
as subtitles and extras, which the paranoid in me believes are there in
many cases in order to push the size over 4.5GB and hence make copying
slightly more difficult.

Besides, many .avi files are already highly compressed and have lower
video and audio quality than the originals (while still being acceptable
to the average viewer). Converting them to MPEG doesn't change the
quality, just the size (so older player with weak cpus can decode them
at viewing rate). Compressing them again will lose more quality, but of
course the viewer may still find them acceptable.

A typical 42-minute TV episode (1 hour less commercials) is around 350MB
in .avi format, so you'll get a dozen or so on a single-layer DVD. The
commercial boxed sets of series (at full broadcast quality) get 3 to 4
episodes per *dual-layer* DVD. 

poc