Grandpa needs help.

[rhaub101]

Geeesh, all I want to do is rent some DVD's for my grandson and then copy them to ONE CD so the little guy can watch them on his dvd player later. I have read nearly every post here, and on other forums. You guys are very smart about this stuff, but I can't find a simple way to do it. I have copied one movie to TWO cd's, with acceptable quality, but when I try to make a ONE CD movie, the resulting mpeg is always way too big to fit on one disk. I have read a guide about how to do it using TMPGEnc, and followed the instructions to a T. The file is always 1,170,314 bytes. Now obviously I am missing something and surely it can be done, but HOW?? Anybody care to help this old fart? My grandson would be forever joyous. Thanks in advance.:confused:

[jggimi]

Most, but not all, standalone dvd players can play a VideoCD. There are several standards, but the most common are VideoCD (VCD), and Super VideoCD (SVCD).

VCD produces a "VHS-like" quality, but it has one advantage: it uses fixed video and audio bitrates, so that a "74 minute" CD will hold 74 minutes of video and audio, and and "80 minute" CD will have 80 minutes.

SVCD can produce a higher quality result -- and the bitrates can vary. But there are still minimum bitrates. A "74" or "80" minute CD will only hold approximately 35-60 minutes of content.

You'll find more information at www.vcdhelp.com/vcd or www.vcdhelp.com/svcd.

If there is a computer at your grandson's house, you will probably be better off with DivX, where you can fit a lot more on a single CD.

[rhaub101]

Thanks for the reply. My dvd player plays vcd's just fine. Most movies I want to convert are 90+ minutes. I'm ok with a small loss of quality, but just getting it on ONE cd has been the problem. This is the guide that supposedly works, but again, all my files are 1,170,314 byets long, no matter what I do.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/84759.php

I'm open to trying Divx. Where do I start?

[jggimi]

DivX is a video codec which is most commonly used with mp3 audio, and combined together in an .avi file. I recommend starting with DivX 5, and the Gordian Knot encoding suite. GKnot is designed to produce files as close to your intended output size as possible. It includes bitrate calculations, compressibility testing (optional but highly, highly recommended), and encoding tools for audio, video, and muxing the final .avi file.

The topmost level Doom9 guide is http://www.doom9.org/divx-encoding.htm, and the DivX 5 guide is listed. There are links to the required software: Gordian Knot, updates, and the DivX 5 software.

Warning: Install Gknot without installing DivX 4, which is included in the base package by default. Then install DivX 5. If you install Gknot with defaults, it will install DivX 4. You want to make sure that DivX 4 is not installed -- or, worse -- installed on top of an already installed DivX 5.

If you elect to install DivX 5 "Pro" -- you will be able to take advantage of bi-directional encoding (B-Frames) -- which will improve compressibility significantly, to the point where single-CD encodings of widescreen films under 2 hours in length may look very DVD-like.

Your grandson's PC would need only the "standard" codec installed, and any .avi player, such as the Windows Media Player included with MS-Windows. The "pro" features are only used during encoding.

There are some "Sticky" threads in Doom9's Gordian Knot forum which I recommend as well, after you've gone through the guide.

[rhaub101]

Thanks again, but am I to understand that by using divx, I can only copy a dvd for viewing on a PC and not on a dvd player? My grandson has no computer (not to mention he is only 3) but has a dvd player that is vcd compatible.

[ArdenDag]

Yes, DivX is for computer use only. VCDs employ an MPEG-1 compression, and you can do this using TMPGenc or several other programs. I prefer TMPGenc because it's fairly user friendly :)

[jggimi]

If there is a computer at your grandson's house... that is pretty much a requirement. There is one DVD player available today that can play some types of DivX .avi files; it is fairly new to the market.

[N_F]

To put it simple. You can't put an 90+ minutes long movie on one CD unless the DVD-player can play non-standard vcd (in that case you could lower the bitrate for the audio or video), but expect the quality to be really bad in that case.

There are two ways you could do what you want, but they both involve a lot of money.

1. There is a relatively new DVD-player, KISS-450 or something I believe, that can play divx. How good this works I don't know and the player isn't cheap.

2. Get a DVD-burner and make a copy of the original DVD. Again this isn't cheap.

I suspect none of these are viable options. Your best shot is probably to use 2 CDs (and perhaps make a SVCD instead to increase quality).

[Abond]

@rhaub101
There is something wrong with bitrate settings, because this file size is for 114 min movie with standart VCD bitrates (A+V). Be aware about the audio, as if you have uncompressed audio, the file will be very big. You can try also KVCD templates for TMPG(search kvcd with google) the people claim to fit up to 120 min watchable video (as VCD) on one CD.
Good luck
P.S. You should check the compatibility for KVCD with DVD player.

[rhaub101]

OK, so now after 2.5 hours of following the divx guide, I am encoding to an AVI file that I can only watch on a PC. Not what I was after but a learning expierence none the less. Now, what about using TMPGEnc to convert the resulting AVS or AVI to a VCD for my grandsons dvd player? Shouldn't the file fit on one CD? And I still don't understand why this: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/84759.php
didn't work! grrrrrrrrrrrrr
Thanks guys for the help. Don't give up on me, I'm learning.
And so one more thing...if I buy a dvd recorder for my pc, I can just make a direct copy of a rented movie and be done with it?

[ArdenDag]

Most, if not all DVDs now are recorded on what they call DVD-9 discs, or DUAL LAYER discs. They have 2 layers of 4.7 gigabytes, and thus cannot be recorded on a regular DVD-R that you can purchase and record on, because those are single layer, DVD-5 discs.

Some movies, though, without all the special features, etc etc, can be stripped down to 4.7 gigabytes and can thus be burned on a regular DVD-R that you can purchase.

It'll be another long learning process for you to learn how to strip DVDs down to get them to fit on 1 DVD-R too :)

With TMPGenc, you should be able to open an .avs file directly into its project wizard, see if you can make a VCD with it by following its project wizard, when you get to the end, lower the final bitrate so it has just enough room to fit on a standard 700 MB CD-R (unless you have access to 800 MB CD-Rs and your grandson's DVD player can play them :) )

[rhaub101]

Thanks Arden, I tried that in TMPGEnc. I used the .AVS file for the video source, but I have no audio source!:confused:

[ArdenDag]

You can get the audio using this 2 step method.

First of all, you can use DVD2AVI to create a .d2v project file from the .VOB files that came after ripping your DVD. Those .vob files also have the audio in them, and running DVD2AVI extracts that audio to .ac3 format.

Ok, now you have the audio, what next? I don't think TMPGenc can import .ac3 audio, so you'll need to convert the audio into something that TMPGenc can handle, there are several methods, one comes with Gordian Knot (an all-in-one DVD -> DivX utility) and is called BeSweet. You can use BeSweet to transcode (encode) this .ac3 file into a usable format, either .wav or .mp3 (I don't know if BeSweet can encode to .mp2, but I think VCDs employ that audio, so you might find a better solution in the DVD2SVCD forum).

There are some GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) for BeSweet, as it is a command line utility. They are available here at www.doom9.org.

Glad to help a newcomer :)

[rhaub101]

OK, after giving up on Divx, I'm back to trying to use Tmpegnc to make the file small enough to fit one cd. I have tried and tried, but no matter what I do, the file is still 1,170,314 bytes even though it says "estimated file size=796M" wtf???? HELP, I'm pulling out what few hairs I have left.! :confused:

[WorldBook]

Provided that the movie is less than 80 minutes in length and that you are using 700 mb cd'r you should be able to burn the 796 mb mpeg-1 file in NERO as a "vcd".

[rhaub101]

Worldbook, You didn't read what I typed.
The file is still 1,170,314 bytes even though it says "estimated file size=796M"

[dani82]

i might be able to help, two month ago, to waste some time, i decide to encode 1 minute of video at a bitrate of 500 and audio at 224, and then multiplex it with tmpgenc.

i figure the size should be half that of a complaint vcd (1 min = 10mb), but it came out to be 10mb; then i wondering WTF, it should be half of that, then i notice it was multiplex as vcd and not as a non-standard vcd (cause the bitrate ain't 1150), so i did it at non-standard and it came out to be about half.


something strange:

even dought i multiplex it as vcd (complaint), nero and adaptec still accepted it as a complaint vcd.

[radman2112]

Hello,

I dont know if this will help but, there is a guide or two on vcdhelp.com that tells you how to fit a movie on one cd. I have tried it and it works well. there is also a guide on how to make you vcd work in most dvd standalones if it doesnt already. on the left side go to the newbie section and scroll down and you will see a guide called the newbies guide to fitting a movie on one cd.(that kinda says it all) I hope this helps as you said your dvd player does play vcd's with no problem. :)

[rhaub101]

radman, you're the guy I've been looking for. I have used that guide from vcdhelp.com 12 times. Over and over. Each time my file is 1,170,314. I don't know what I am doing wrong. :confused:

[radman2112]

Hello,

I will tell you what I did. First I printed a copy of the guide so I could reference it as I went along. I folled it slow step (me going slow, not the process) by slow step. Im not sure but I think you want to pay special close attention to page 11. Here it tells you how to make it the size you need.There are three ways of figuring it out, none better or easier than another. I used the last method and kept it around 95% of disc capacity, just to be safe. Reread the guide and print yourself a copy so you can easily reference it as you go along. if you still have problems maybe you cuold consider buying some 900mb discs from infinit. then you dont have to squeeze the movie as much. but you can only consider this if you have the right burner for them and your software allows overburning, but one thing at a time. try the guid again and let me know how it goes. take care and happy holidays. :)

[angelyote]

@rhaub101: What movie are you trying to encode and which version of tmpgenc are you using? I'd like to try encoding it and seeing if I get the same problem on my system and if I can see where the problem may be. What bitrates have you selected for you audio and video?

You should be able to lower the audio bitrate from 224kbits to something more reasonable like 128kbits if your player is using the newer (1995 I think) vcd 2.0 standard. I know the audiophiles are shaking their head and skipping past the post now but I don't think we're trying to encode the opera for the grandkids. :)

If lowering the audio bitrate doesn't bring you into range for 1CD you can begin lowering the maximum bitrate for the video encoding. This will definately bring down your final file size but also degrades your image similarly.

Keep in mind that some movies have great compressibility, like Ice Age and Matrix and could very well end up much lower than the estimated file size and, by the same token, some movies have garbage compressibility and will inevitably exceed the estimated file size.

Dave

[rhaub101]

Dave, the last two I have tried are E.T. and Panic Room. I lowered the audio to 128 on both, and the video bit rate as low as 500 on both. I have also tried Monsters Inc, as well as Backdraft, and Hurricane. I have followed the vcdhelp guide for fitting a movie on one cd to a "T" (or at least I think so) and I STILL end up with an mpg file too big. (usually 1,170,314) I'm obviously doing something wrong if you guys can make it work, but I don't know what. How frustrating!

If this helps, my starting VOB's for E.T. are:
VOB 0-4 = 1,048,576kb
VOB 5 = 827,864

AC3 wav audio = 1,289,131

Could this have anything to do with anything???

[ArdenDag]

I don't know if you ever resolved this issue, but...

... When letting TMPGenc select your bitrate for the encode, are you sure it isn't picking a bitrate higher than is necessary for your projected file size? TMPGenc can automatically select the bitrate (or average bitrate for VBR encodes) and sometimes it can leave it at another bitrate, which can increase your filesize...

Dunno, thought I'd give it a shot :)