Surely someone here knows the answer to my question.
I’ve never created a dvd to play on a dvd player, but I have a dvd burner and dvd+r blanks that I’ve used for data. So I have some .mpg and .avi videos that I want to burn on a dvd so that I don’t have to watch them on my computer, and I have InterVideo WinDVD Creator that came with my PC’s default software.
I’ve searched around, and I can’t find out how much video I can put on one dvd. Obviously, the more I put, the more it will suffer from compression. I know that one dvd will hold 4.37 Gigs, so does that mean I can put 4 Gigs worth of .mpg and .avi files on it without terrible degradation, even though 4 Gigs of these files is probably around 5 hours of video? Or is it more important to stay within a certain time limit?
I haven’t done it myself, but you might start by burning a DVD of what you have, and seeing how it looks on a regular TV plus how much room is left over.
There are many variables in working with video files. There is codec, compression level, size (# of pixels in the frame) and probably more. A solid answer can’t be given unless you fill in all the variables.
The video files you have will need to be recompressed and transcoded. DVD Video needs to be MPEG-2 format. Your DVD authoring program should handle that process and make sure that the video is in a format (resolution and bitrate) that a DVD player can handle.
Be aware that the process of converting the video to MPEG-2 can take a long time depending on the speed of your computer. Long being measured in hours or partial days.
The DVD needs to be authored with special software. The file format on a DVD is not just a simple single MPG file like you’d play on your computer. The DVD file format is optimized for streaming which makes the processing requirements for the DVD player much more manageable. Processing video files the way computers handle AVI and MPG files would not be feasible on a sub $100 set top DVD player. The DVD authoring program takes care of the special requirements for the file format on a DVD.
Another option is to make a VCD or SVCD. VCDs and SVCDs are authored in a similar way to DVDs. Your DVD authoring program may be able to also make VCDs and SVCDs. Many set top DVD players can also play VCD disks and SVCD disks.