Help fitting large movie onto one disc

[cyberbob25]

OK, I want to start out by saying that I know this may not be possible, but I wanted to ask the experts. I have a wedding video that is recorded in PAL and spread across 4 DVD's. The video is actually only 3 1/2 hours long, just encoded at a very high bitrate (DVD Lab Bitrate viewer shows an average of 8000 Kbs, with very little fluctuation). I am trying to convert it to NTSC, and since 3 1/2 hours of video isn't a long shot for a single disc, I'm trying to do that also.

I followed Xesdeeni's guide on format conversion at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45459, and through his help on a previous movie, I'm using the following script:

loadplugin("c:\windows\system32\dgdecode.dll")
MPEG2Source("d:\wedding.d2v")
undot().deen()
SeparateFields()
Weave()
YV12toYUY2(interlaced=true)
SmoothDeinterlace(doublerate=true)
LanczosResize(720,480)
ConvertFPS(59.94)
SelectEvery(4,0,3)

I added undot().deen() since I've had good results before when having to use a higher compression. I load the .avs file into CCE and set it to multipass VBR. By my calculations (I'm not very good at math, though), I set average bitrate to 2800, minimum to 0, and maximum to 9000. I change it to 4 passes, and leave everything else at default.

The resulting video has a lot of noise, and to my eye is a very poor quality. Is there anything else I can do to help improve the picture? I have seen the results of a backup of LOTR:Return of the King, which is about the same length, using Rebuilder and Undot().deen() which looked crystal clear.

Anybody have any ideas? Are there any other filters or CCE setting which may make this look cleaner?

Sorry for the long winded post.

[cyberbob25]

I know it's only been one day, but seeing as how there aren't replies yet, would a moderator please move this thread into the CCE forum, as it might be more beneficial there?

Thank you very much!

[killingspree]

sure thing... ;)

just a hint/guess: i think that your quality problems come from the conversion method you used. i don't think it is the ideal way of creating NTSC compliant video. i'd probably do it like this: slow down the video to 23.76 fps, then telecide to 29.97 for dvd compliancy, but honestly, i've never done the conversion this way, so i might be overlooking some troublesome issues there! PAL to NTSC is supposedly much harder to do than the other way around...

anyway, moving your thread, hope you have more luck finding an appropriate answer there!

kr
steVe

[RB]

3 1/2 hours of shaky, handmade interlaced full-frame video just won't look good on a single DVD-R no matter what you try. Try resizing to Half-D1 (352x480) as the final step in your AVS anyway.

[cyberbob25]

That was the answer I was expecting to hear. For what it's worth (I know, not much :) ), the original video was actually done very very well, and not at all shaky.

Thanks for the suggestion about half-D1. I shall try this when I get home.