calculating max size with assets

[jriker1]

OK, I know how to determine the size that a mpv file will be based on variable bitrate and average bitrate. Here's my problem. I spend a lot of time encoding AVI to MPV to find out that the final video files are slightly bigger than a DVD or could have had a higher average bitrate due to an extra 50 megs of space on the DVD. I then need to spend hours encoding again to make it slightly smaller or larger

So, say I'm in Scenarist, have created my menu with all it's assets (i.e. ac3 audio for the movies, bmp and jpg files for the menus). OK, so now I have two video files I want to encode and have them fill up with the rest of the DVD. Do I add all the audio, bmp, and jpg file lengths up and subtract that from 4.7GB and that's how much space I have left for the videos? Also keep in mind if it matters that I create scene markers in Scenarist on the videos.

Thanks.

JR

[setarip_old]

I then need to spend hours encoding again to make it slightly smaller or larger
In the instance where you have to make it slightly smaller, you can use DVD Shrink to accomplish this in a matter of minutes...

[jriker1]

Thanks for the reply, however I have invested in some costly software applications for authoring/conversion and would guess that dvd shrink will make a lesser quality picture reducing the video than my existing tools will even though it will probably save me ungodly amounts of time reconverting. Rather get the numbers right the first time. ;)

[GordRocks]

Check out this thread at a different forum:

http://www.mmbforums.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=12964

[jriker1]

Thanks for the info. Tool in that thread looks very cool and promising at first look. At least it's not telling me when I enter 1 minute for the video length that I can only encode at a bitrate of 4500.

[jriker1]

Unless I'm doing something wrong with this program, which is doubtful as the info it asks for allows for easy entry, it's not providing me the right data. I can guess the approximate average birate better manually. Tried the program and it overshot 150 to 200 megs off what it should have been. Guess it's the manual route from now on as these apps do not seem to do it. Here's what I gave it and perhaps someone can see where I went wrong if it's me and not the program:

Total Video: 4 hours 8 minutes 31 sec
Total Audio: 4 hours 8 minutes 31 sec
Audio Encoding 192Kb/s
VTS: 1
Fixed Menus: 16
Safe Margin: 1.0%

Gave me an average bitrate of 2288. The 4 hours is between two videos so in scenarist set both of them to an average of 2288. Came out best I can guess over 150 megs of max disk space available. Even adjusting for menu sizes, my total menus with jpg and bmp files is only 5 megs in size so it's all audio and video. If that can't be calculated by an app right then not sure what can. The 1% safe margin even adjusts the bitrate to allow for 47 megs of extra space and it still overshot.

Another thing I noticed is is has a setting for minimum and maximum bitrates. Although the average drives final size, it for some reason adjusts those settings as well. I always set minimum to 0 and max to 9500 and let Scenarist adjust as needed. Wouldn't imagine this effects final size though as like I said, this is determined by the average bitrate not the max/min.
JR

[MarcN]

My first encodings with CCE turned out to be bigger then expected. I later found out it was because for CEE 1 kbit = 1000 bit and not 1024 bit. So make sure your converting the numbers the right way. ;)