How many episodes per DVD

[Sigmar]

I am looking to burn some of my Xvids to DVD. Each episode is about 40-50 mins in length and I was wondering how many I should try to fit on a regular DVD before quality becomes an issue?

My first attempt I used WinAvi to convert 6 of them to fit on one disk and the result wasnt all that bad (but sure wasn't dvd). Unfortunatly WinAvi thought they were 4:3 format and squashed the widescreen images to fit making them look very odd (I have since found where to set aspect ratio manually).

If I use NeroVision it tells me after two episodes I need to use a dual side disk to fit more or it can downgrade quality to "long play" IIRC.

So any suggestions on how many episodes I should try to fit based on personal experience? What seems to be the best comprimise between file size and quality? I will be watching these on a regular TV btw.

I am using WinAvi and NeroVision 3 to make my DVD's. As a side note anyone prefer one or the other as far as encoding is concerned, ie. better quality from WinAvi or Nero ?

Thank you.

[CirTap]

hi,
i guess any answer will be totally subjective, depends on the original quality of your avis, the movies, personal taste, bla bla.

I managed to put 4 episodes of a "regular TV show" (no big action scenes) each ~45 mins. in full PAL (720x576), two 2ch audio tracks (AC3), incl. menus on a DVD-5; easy and good looking by my visual standards :D
M2Vs done with hank315's great HC using the built-in NOTCH matrix (iirc ~KVCD).
you may douple up if you use half-D1 resolution. you won't get ultra "crisp" video, but that's personal taste.

Have fun,
CirTap

[Sigmar]

M2Vs done with hank315's great HC using the built-in NOTCH matrix (iirc ~KVCD).

Sorry lost me here and thanks for the reply. Just started with DVD's so please take it slow ;) . Is that some type of avi converter?

[CirTap]

Is that some type of avi converter? nope, HC is an excellent and free MPEG2 encoder.
If you're willing to pay some money for a *all-in-one-converter* you may look at WinAVI converter (http://www.winavi.com/), which will probably do what you want, otherwise you need a lot of time (reading and learning), a bunch of free tools, and the many guides, stickies, FAQs available here to do this yourself.

Now, before I "push" you over to the guides and FAQ sections of this site, some hints about the basics what you may want to look at to succeed your quest:
Unless you have a DVD player that's capable of playing DivX movies, AVIs won't work, so you need to demultiplex (demux) them into separate video and audio streams and then remux them into DVD compliant files (VOBs).

Using the free tools: From your XviD AVIs you need to create "elementary streams" (ES) for the DVD: MPEG2 for the video, and audio as MPA or AC3 or PCM. Those ES are then muxed (back) into the VOB files you need for the DVD.

In case the audio stream in your AVIs is MP3, it must be transcoded into one of these formats, BeSweet will be your friend in that matter as it may read the AVI strip off the audio and create the appropriate audio stream (file) for your -- you may want to use BeSweet (and the alternative GUI BeLight) for any matter of audo conversion and trascoding :D
AviSynth (for the video) can load all kind of video streams from AVI sources and convert, resize, retouche etc. them, and feed them to HC, the MPEG2 encoder.
The "NOTCH" matrix I was refering to (as a personal choice!) is one encoding matrix that's proofed to create good looking MPEGs at very low bitrates, and you need to go low to put 3-4 eps on a DVD (thats more than 2h actually)
Once you have the M2V (video) and whatever-audio stream, MuxMan will do the job of turning them into a compliant DVD.
That'd be the ideal way, but you may certainly run into the common problems like de-interlacing, frame-size conversion, audio resampling etc.
Now head over to tha main site (http://www.doom9.org/), look at The Basics, FAQs and Guides to find out how to rip your XviD apart and put them back together in a way your DVD player doesn't complain.
If you need to search the forums for a particular subject, I recommend to use Google's advanced search with this URL as a filter.

Have fun,
CirTap

[CWR03]

You also might consider DVD Shrink - author your files with 4 eps based on a dual-layer size and save it as an ISO image, then use DVD shrink to compress it to single-layer size.

[Sigmar]

Thanks for the replys.

I was wondering what I should use to create a menu if I go the DVD shrink route?

NeroVision express 3 has a built in menu fucntion but I can't use dvd shrink if I go that route (least I don't think so).

I was considering converting the xvids (4 episodes per disk) to dvd using WinAvi set for dvd 9 . Then using shrink to put them on a dvd 5.

How would I insert a menu and using which program if I go that way?

Thanks in advance!

[CirTap]

check this sticky: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99306
IMHO not necessarily a "beginner's guide", but it explains how to create menus from scratch.
Also check the IFO/VOB editor forum, which deals a lot with this subject.
Besides, you don't necessarily need a (visual) menu to jump between episodes (although it'd look much nicer of course) as you can use the remote to select the titles by number. Since you author this DVD yourself you won't add PUOs, right? :)

I don't know this Nero-thingy, but you may author a dummy DVD (using 4 mini videos) with this app, then use the menus it created and replace the (dummy) VOBs with your "originals". For that matter, there's another sticky dealing with keeping original menus (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96211) which should give you an idea of the process.

Have fun,
CirTap