mpeg4 on data dvd intead of cdr?

[crahak]

I was wondering if someone else was getting to this too.

I get half decent quality spindles (50 units ea) locally (in cdn$) for about:

DVD-R: 67$, 50x4700mb=235000mb, or 3500'ish megs per $ or;
CD-R: 21$, 50x700mb=35000, or 1650'ish megs per $...

Rough (rounded) math - but it tells me it costs me twice as much to burn my mpeg4 files on CDRs intead of DVD-Rs... Also, lots of my movies are onto more than a CD, so you need 2 drives and have to make playlists... (and there's a delay between both for the 2nd drive to spin up) or you can copy before to the HD (which takes time). On a DVDR, One can comfortably fit a few movies (most trilogies as 2CD copies would fit nicely...) Also, all these backups on CDRs take a lot more space than on DVD-Rs (a 200 CD wallet filled with DVD-Rs stores as much data as over 6 of them filled with CDRs). And if I'm not mistaken, the DVD drive reads faster and also makes less noise. Also, burning 6 CDs take a lot more interaction (change CDs and layout every 3 mins or so) then burning the same 6 files on a DVD (so I can do something else meanwhile)

Anyways, everything seems to play in favor of burning to DVD-Rs. I don't know if someone else has the same toughts (or can tell me why not to).

A good portion of the standalone players probably don't like mpeg4 on dvd media, but it doesn't bother me as they seem to have too many issues to be bothered buying one (and they don't seem future-proof at all).

All comments welcome :) Thanks

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by crahak

A good portion of the standalone players probably don't like mpeg4 on dvd media, but it doesn't bother me as they seem to have too many issues to be bothered buying one (and they don't seem future-proof at all).

All comments welcome :) Thanks

Which standalones are you talking about? DVD's or MPEG4 Players, because DVD players won't ever playback your MPEG4 files. Also I would do that, but I don't have a DVD burner...... but christmas is comming :) hopefully early :devil:

[crahak]

I mean mpeg4 players (of course). The DVD burners are coming down in price really fast lately.

[DevilsChild]

You're getting DVD-R's pretty cheap. Most of the DVD-R's I see at Best Buy come out to $2-3 per disk. The CD-R's can be as low as 20-30 cents per disk. I would use DVD-R's if the disks weren't so damn expensive.

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by crahak
[B]
A good portion of the standalone players probably don't like mpeg4 on dvd media, but it doesn't bother me as they seem to have too many issues to be bothered buying one (and they don't seem future-proof at all).
/B]

Not one has problems with that. ;)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by crahak
...DVD-R: 67$, 50x4700mb=235000mb, or 3500'ish megs per $ or; I think you will find that your DVD R's will only allow you to store around 4,470MB not 4,700MB!

So 50 x 4,470MB = 223,500MB. Or approx 3335MB per $!

Cheers

[alexnoe]

You're getting DVD-R's pretty cheap. You mean Princo vampire discs, and even worse stuff?

[unmei]

the discs i buy are around 60-80 cent per CD-R and around 3.5-4 $/euro per DVD+-R. So the price per mb is about the same. Now i nearly eclusively burn videos on DVD, just cos they take less space and i can burn 4.4 GB in one go and at 5.5 mb/s (4x) not at max 3.6mb/s as for CD-R (24x).

However i burn movie that nicely fit on one CD sometimes on CD if i think it a movie i'll take to friends to watch and/or i don't have more at hand that fit the same theme.

Cramming a wide variety of different genre movies on DVD just to fill up the space optimally cannot be the goal (like a docu, princess mononoke and a 16+ rated bloody movie on one disc is crappy to deal with aferwards :)

[alexnoe]

www.amazon.de
-> mitsubishi 4x dvd+r (work 8x) are 1,90 Euro.

If you pay 3 or 4$ for one DVD R, you are clearly too rich

[crahak]

Somehow I tough I had replied to the thread but I msu have clicked preview twice :mad:

Even at 4470mb, it's still roughly twice as cheap (ie, it's not like it makes burning to CDRs cheaper or anything).

I don't just cram anything on them, you have to categorize of course. (meanwhile it does take some HD space but I have enough for it to be little concern).

As for the media, it seems to work pretty good (and it even burns at 4x - woha). We'll see in 20 years if it still works :p (by then chances are it's gonna be converted to blue ray or something even newer, we'll see)

[Neo Neko]

I distinctly remember having a conversation like this elsewhere. But everyone scoffed at me in disbelief when I said that per MB DVD-R could and often were indeed cheaper. That is unless you get 100cdr for 20 bucks and don't mind having several coasters now and several more little over a year later. I got sooooooooooooo burned on no name CD-R once. Nowadays I am all for paying out a bit more to get a name I know. I have just been loving those fuji CD-R. Not a single coaster out of the 300+ I have burned. That belief now extends to DVD±R. I lost more than 4.5Gb on those bad CD-Rs so I am not going to risk it on DVD. So when it comes to name brand media it is true that they are pricing their DVD disc less per MB than CD-R.

[Atamido]

I pay $20 for a 50 pack of TDK and have never had a coaster. (maybe around 300?) Thats about $0.40 per 700MB.

For 4,470MB @ $1.90
2352MB/$1

For 700MB @ 0.40
1750MB/$1

You would clearly get more sheer MB for you money with DVD-r. However, in my case I rarely need to burn anything that is over the size of a CD-R. I also don't care for more than one thing on one disk (except for episodes of a series). So for me they are not very useful.

Its like buying the supersize food package at the store. You get more food per $ you spend, but could you eat all of it before it goes bad? I know I could. :p

[unmei]

If you pay 3 or 4$ for one DVD R, you are clearly too rich

i knew there had to be coming something like this ;). We have at least 20% higher price level in this sector than germany, then these are with movie box (contrary to jewel case), bought in the store just around the corner not some big electronics market and finally, yes, they are not the cheapest even there, but i try to avoid repeating the experience i had with cheap CD-R that die after half a year or so. Searching and re-downloading or reencoding cos i lost the xvid are not among my favorite activities.

[alexnoe]

The discs I spoke about are not the generic cheap crap. Generic cheap crap is about 1 Euro. Mitsubishi discs are among those which you can put into sublight for 1 month without losing data.

About CD-R media: 50 pieces of Mitsubishi or Taiyo Yuden media is also available at around 18 Euro here, while generic cheap crap is not more than 13.

[dimitrius]

I think everyone got slightly stuck on the price issue.

Right now I don't have a dvd burner, but I am hoping that a friend of mine will let me borrow his. What I am doing right now is preparing for the move from cd-r to dvdr (+ or -), however not exactly. This is better explained with examples:

I have just finished burning 5 Nightmare on Elms Street movies. All 5 are currently on my fileserver but as soon as I can I am going to burn them onto one dvd, each movie is at 700meg - 700*5=3500meg. I am doing the same kind of thing with X-Men 1/2, Terminator 1/2/3, MIB 1/2, Bourne Identity (2003/198x), Solaris (2003/1972) and many others.

The sizes of the movies vary but I try to encode for as big a file as I can while keeping it low enough to fit all the movies on dvd (which normally means 1400meg) and also I am keeping the size a multiple of 700 so I can split the files later if I need to.

I will continue to use cd-rs for single movies.

The reason I am going to do this is that although the price will be higher (definitely since I am in UK) I like the convenience. Just one dvd and I get 3 Lord Of the Rings movies with no disk swapping. Yes, of course I am not likely to watch all 3 one after another but this works for cartoons and animé (of which I am an addict and go for 18 hour sessions). Another reason is shelf space. I always use full size cd-cases because I can right the name of the movie on the spine of the case.

[bb]

For me it makes sense to put MPEG-4 video on DVD-R for quality encodes, which you would normally put on 2 or even 3 CD-Rs. Using high-res, high-bitrate MPEG-4 together with an AC3 sound track is very convenient on a single DVD-R, compared to juggling with multiple CD-Rs.

bb

[crahak]

Yes, it's not just price, but also convenience (and shelf space too). If you have lots of movies on 2 or more CDRs, or trilogies (well, 2+ movies) such as Back To The Future (or whatever) it's nice to have it all on the same disc. Lots of times, I'll put say, any 6 decent kids movies on one as well. Also, this puts and end to XCDs (don't have many of them, but I don't like it much).

[ulfschack]

In danger of breaking rule nr one, I dare to ask:

Seeing that mp3-capable DVD stand-alones don't read from DVD-Rs, is there a good reason to believe that mpeg-4 capable players have the same limitations?

(I know you didn't mean to play your disk like that when you posted this thread, but you actually mentioned it ;) )

cheers