Huge hard disk space requirements!

[earthlybeings]

Hi everybody,

I was trying to do a DVD to DVD conversion. It seems like DVD2SVCD eats up a lot of hard disk space. I had 15 gigs of space available but still ran out of space ("Don't delete any files" was unchecked) and the conversion did not finish. Upon trying to initiate "Recovery" it says muxed file not found although I can see it right in that folder...looks like a bug there.

Is there anyway I can minimize the usage of hard disk space while doing a DVD to DVD conversion other than unchecking "Don't delete any files"?

Also, could you please let me know is there any way I can create a DVD from a muxed mpeg file as I am unable to resume/recover using DVD2SVCD as it won't find the mpeg file.

I would appreciate the feedback.

Thanks,

Kasauli

[dvd_maniac]

are you ripping the whole dvd or just the main movie? Might save a little to only rip the main movie

[manolito]

Also, could you please let me know is there any way I can create a DVD from a muxed mpeg file as I am unable to resume/recover using DVD2SVCD as it won't find the mpeg file.
I assume that you have ticked to use DVDAuthor for authoring. If you did then there should be a file called "DVDAuthor.xml" in your output folder. If so then you can open a command window and type in the following command:
{Path}\DVDAuthor.exe -x {Path}\DVDAuthor.xml

If you do not have the DVDAuthor.xml file then you have to use just any authoring software. There are a couple of free GUIs for DVDAuthor (DVDStyler, DVDAuthorGUI and GUIforDVDAuthor).

Cheers
manolito

[ChickenMan]

It seems like DVD2SVCD eats up a lot of hard disk space. I had 15 gigs of space available but still ran out of space.....
It sure does and 15gb is simply not enough room. The m2v file created is 4.1gb long, if NTSC it them makes a pulldown.m2c also 4.1gb, them mux's in the audio to make an mpg file @ 4.3gb, then authors it to vob set also at 4.3gb. Then there is the extracted audio, etc files.

So you need about 16gb for a PAL conversion and 20gb for an NTSC conversion. HD's are outragiously cheap at the moment, so a larger one (even a 40gb one) would be a wise investment.

[earthlybeings]

dvd_maniac: I am ripping the whole DVD about 7 gigs in all.

Manolito: Yes, I did select DVDAuthor in the settings. Thanks for providing clues on starting the DVDAuthor but I could not start the DVDAuthor from the command line because I don't know how to input large addresses in the command line. I did install some of the utilities that you mentioned but only accepted and started the DVDAuthor xml project file. One failed to open it for unknown reasons and one did not accept it at all. I guess many of the programs require advanced knowledge and are simply not for the beginners. But again, thanks for your help here.

Chickenman: I am running encoding on a laptop and that is why replacing hard drive will be tough and little costly than a regular desktop which you can do yourself as well.

I guess I have to free up a little space or just go with DVD Rebuilder which presumably does the same job albeit may have some other yet unknown issues of its own. It will be nice though if DVD2SVCD authors somehow limit the disk space requirements by routinely deleting the unnecessary files during the encoding process or some other means.

Thanks everybody for the help.

Kasauli.

[Nick]

Firstly, I would imagine Rebuilder will require a similar amount of space.
Secondly, it really shouldn't be a great struggle to recover the project you have.
If you delete unwanted transitional files, leaving just the muxed file and the xml file, you can use the manolito method as follows:

Open the dvd2svcd_log.txt file in Notepad.
Find the DVD Author commandline in the log, highlight it and copy it to the clipboard.

Press the Start button on your taskbar and select Run from the start menu.
Paste the commandline into the box and hit OK.

Voila - one set of DVD files!

[dvd_maniac]

Does your laptop have a firewire or usb port? You can get a hard drive enclosure for under 20 bucks and then buy a cheap drive to put in it and use that drive to rip to. Might even speed up encodes a little...

[earthlybeings]

Nick: I will give your method a shot as it looks more user friendly. The couple of times I used DVD Rebuilder, I felt it required less space but I will check this time more closely this time and post back.

dvd_maniac: My laptop has both firewire as well as USB ports....I guess I will look into this and see if some cheap alternative is available. As I have two computers at home, I guess an always on network hard drive would be ideal but right now, it looks like it is kind of expensive.

Thanks Nick and dvd_maniac for the feedback. I appreciate it.

Kasauli