Compress mpeg2 to fit dvd

[hengy]

I've been recording 3 hour shows, using VideoRedo to pulll out commercials to make them about 2 hours. I'm then compressing them to fit on a standard DVD. Does anyone know of a product that can take the mpeg2 out of VideoRedo and compress it to standard DVD size (4gig).. Currently I have to, remove the commercials with VideoRedo, burn to an image file, then compress the image, then burn to a DVD. I'd love to get rid of step 2 if possible, burn to an image file. Thanks.

[flavius]

Not sure that I understand completely - are you aware of DVDShrink?

[CharlesLinquist]

I have found that Sony DVD Architect does an outstanding job of fitting anything to a DVD. The good part is that it applies only as much compression as necessary to get the video to completely fill the DVD.

One step compress and burn.

[hengy]

Currently I use;

1. VideoRedo to cut commercials. Saves as mpeg2.
2. Ulead Movie Factory 4 (used ver 2 - many audio sync problems) to burn a disk image.
3. DVD Shrink 3.2 to compress image to single layer DVD size.
4. DVD Shrink 3.2 continues burning to DVD using Nero.

I'd like to get rid of step 2. Are there any products out there that will compress a 6 gig mpeg2 file so it fits on a single layer DVD disk?

[jgourd]

Originally Posted by CharlesLinquist

I have found that Sony DVD Architect does an outstanding job of fitting anything to a DVD. The good part is that it applies only as much compression as necessary to get the video to completely fill the DVD.

One step compress and burn.

I concur.

[hengy]

How bout a software solution that costs under $100 US.

[BenH]

It seems simple . You just need to think about it. Videoredo makes a edited mpeg2 . The edited mpeg2 file is still to big. You need to compress a mpeg2 . There is hundreds of tools to compress a mpeg2 . Tempgenc will do it slowly . There is better than Tempgenc . I do not rember . If anything goes fast compressing the mpeg2 it could be doing a bad job if it is high compression .

I think googleing will find answers .

I used rejig once to reduce size of the mpeg2 . I was still 50megs over the dvd spec. I used Nero Recode to compress the DVD in file mode on the hard and it made it exactly to fit DVD . It was so close I had to clean the outer edges of the DVD since it had a burn error over a tiny dirt spot . It was just 50megs less than rejigs .

[Rich A]

I simply parse my mpegs through a program named "Rejig". Fast and easy. Doesn't re-encode. You have control over how much of the original size you want to transcode the new mpeg to.

My technique is as follows:

Edit out commercials with Womble (5 minutes) (program stream now say 6GB)
Demultplex (Womble) 45 seconds
Run rejig at 70 percent final desired size on video stream. (70 percent of 6gb = 4.2 gb) 90 seconds
Use Resized mpeg elementary and original audio streams as assets for DVD-Lab authoring and burn DVD 15 minutes.

From raw BTV mpeg to finished/burned DVD in about 20 minutes total. Of course you can use what ever editor and dvd authoring program you wish. Just use Rejig to re-size.

Run Rejig in file mode to do this. I have "shrunk" mpegs to be as much as 65 percent of their orignal size and saw no difference between the original and shrunk file. However, because this is dropping the video bit rate through out the mpeg, it will work best (most efficient) if that mpeg is a variable bit rate type. Also if you get too aggressive with the percentage drop of the original bit rate (ie final file below 70 percent of the original) then because of the reduced bit rate, you may see some motion artifacts in very high motion areas of the video.

The hardest part of using it is probably having to do a little math to compute the needed percentage the final size has to be.

Use this URL for download (use server #2)

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi...ools/rejig.cfm

By the way. It's free ..

[merrypig]

Wow. All I do is run dvdshrink and set it going. IT automatically figures out the amount it needs to compress to fit a dvd-r.

What's with all this jiggery pokery about getting the right size or being 50 mb other. Sounds rather broken.

To create my dvd structure, I use DVD author - but that's not really the <$100 solution. But it works very nice and doesn't rip out the user packets containing closed captions that most other dvd authoring packages do.

[DonK]

I'm with Merrypig... TMPG DVD Author and either DVD2One or DVDShrink on the resulting files, and that's that.

[hengy]

I wonder if creating different dvd compliant recording profiles might be the way to go. If I know that the final show size will be about 6gig (a little over 2 hours), I can create a profile in BTV to record at a dvd compliant compression small enough to fit on a 4.3gig dvd, maybe 6mps variable?

[Rich A]

I may have confused things a bit by describing my workflow in an attempt to show one way to use Rejig.

Frankly I don't think he wants to do any kind of "decrypting" or ripping and my suggested use of Rejig was best (IMHO) for anyone who just wants to "shrink an mpeg-2 program stream".

Rejig will work fast to do this without needing to do anything else. Just load the mpeg-2 into Rejig, select your wanted file size, push a button and in 90 seconds or so you'll have a new Mpeg-2 that is almost the same quality as the original but at your new size.

I don't know if these ripper / decrypter programs will even work with a native mpeg-2 program stream. Also I've been experimenting with Rejig to shrink High Definition mpeg transport streams without hardly any loss in quality. Like shrinking an mpeg-2 TS file that is 1920x1088 with an average video bit rate of 19 mbps. I don't think the typical decrypting / shrinking software can do that at all.

Here at work, while testing this thing I shrunk a 1.6 GB high def. transport stream down to under 1 GB in around 10 minutes. Important to note this was with an AMD DURON 900 mhz computer. The file was shrunk about 35 percent and the quality was as good as the original. This thing only takes a few minutes to shrink a typical 6 gb file down to under 4 gb on my big computer at home. And it will work with just about "any" mpeg .. VCD, SVCD, DVD, program streams, transport streams and of course DVD VOB files.

In short he just wanted to shrink an mpeg-2 program stream. I gave him a solution that has worked for me for a couple years .. just working directly with mpeg files.

[merrypig]

Originally Posted by hengy

I wonder if creating different dvd compliant recording profiles might be the way to go. If I know that the final show size will be about 6gig (a little over 2 hours), I can create a profile in BTV to record at a dvd compliant compression small enough to fit on a 4.3gig dvd, maybe 6mps variable?

Hengy, you could do this, but it's not optimal, and for a very quick back end pass you can get better results.

The problem is, if you set your limits to ensure a program fits on the dvd you are going to cripple your quality unnecessarily for 90% of your shows. For example, lets take the 6mbps variable.

Presumably you set this figure based on the worst case rate so that it will still fit on the disk. But since your video is normally better (less motion) than this it will use less bits. As such it won't actually fill your dvd either. But, when you have sudden transient portions in the video and you need a high bit rate, you suddenly find yourself crippled by the 6mbps and you'll get blurring or blocking going on.

Even though you may have had another gb of space on the dvd.

Better, is to set the maximum bit rate to the maximum dvd specification. (9.6mbps including audio I believe). Use VBR. You'll still have a lot lower bitrate for 90% of the video that isn't high speed action but you have the headroom to cope with the peaks.

yes, if you have a highly active video, then you will end up with a > 5GB file probably. That's when you use something like rejig, or my preferred choice, dvdshrink .

These tools are different to the other dvd authoring packages. Instead of decoding the frames and then recoding them at a different quality, what dvdshrink and such do is they zip through the bitstream and adjust the encoding so that it can use fewer bits to say the same information. For higher levels of compression they will also adjust the quantisation - but for most cases where you just need to shrink the video to fit the dvd, you will not lose any quality at all even though the file is smaller.

Because it doesn't have to actually conver the bitstream into video images and back, it's real fast to do the recoding. That's why people talk about a minute or so - and that's really down to the disk speed of reading and writing the file back out again.

So.

in a nutshell. I really would keep the bitrate at top notch and use dvdshrink or similar afterwards. That one step and a minute processing makes it worth while to me since I get nice quality dvd's out of it.

The onyl reason to drop the bitrate max in my opinion, is if you want to store the files on the harddrive and have limited space. (you could actually use a shrink program on the mpegs and get the same benefits but that's proably not a realistic use case for online video files - it rather defeats the convenience )

[BenH]

I did not like the math in Rejig . I ended up Authoring the DVD to harddrive . Then using " Nero Recode " from Nero 6 . Nero Record makes the size exactly 4.32gigs and was fast . You should edit before Authoring . I do not edit since it mostly get out of Sync with DVD MovieFactory 2.0 . I do not keep the DVDs either .

[Rich A]

Merrypig is spot on. But on the Rejig thing you don't have to do the calculation thing at all. I'm used to using one of the older orignal versions. (old habits hard to kill heh heh) There is a box where you can specify exactly how big you want it to be. If you want it to be 4.25 GB just fill in the box in MBs 4250 MB.

Last night I did a one hour Hi Def Recording that was 6.4 GB (after editing) and told Rejig to shrink it down to 4.2 GB. Worked great.

It sounds like DVDShrink that Merrypig is talking about works similar to Rejig in the way it reduces size. I'm always looking for the newest technology and such, and I think I'll take a look at DVD-Shrink. (thanks MerryPig) ..