I am using Studio 10 and I am trying to record about 2 hours of video onto a DVD.  What I've been doing is putting the video quality at Best Quality and under the burn options choose "Create Disc content but don't burn."  After I get the Video_TS folder I load it into DVD Shrink and it is only showing about 2.7 GB being filled up on the DVD.  My question is why wouldn't the disc be full?    I would expect the disc to be completely full as a 4.7GB disc will only hold 60 min. at 100% quality.    What settings should I put the Make Movie on to fill up the DVD completely?  I feel like I might be losing quality with the whole DVD not being used.   Thanks for any help you can give!

I suggest that instead of using the 'best' quality setting for the DVD, use 'Automatic' setting. Studio will then use the best quality that will allow the project to fit on the disk, and it probably will be full. Some of the experts have variations on this by setting the bit rate manually, but this is the simplest way to get good results.

Don

I'll agree with Don, the automatic settings works very well for me.

I create lots of video files with Studio, and burn them with Nero. Most of these files are 1.5 to 2 hours long, and play nicely on my TV. As far as filling the disc, the burned surface has very little margin left.  

Hmmmm.  I just tried a disc with Automatic settings and in DVD shrink it still only shows 2.7GB.  The video is 1hr 38 min.  Any other ideas on the settings?

Right click on the video_ts folder that you created with Studio, what is the size of that folder ?

Let us know how it turns out.

I'm keeping an eye on this thread.

One possibility:  This is "normal" behavior for Studio's VBR MPEG2 encoder if you are encoding mostly static images (either *very* clean video with not much motion, or a photo slideshow or some such without much motion).

It uses only as many bits as it "thinks" is required to reproduce any given image, and thus can definitely undershoot by quite a bit if your video is really easy to encode.

BittMann

I tried another DVD with about an 1hr and 30 min and the size of the video_TS folder is 2.26 GB.  I have one simple menu at the front and the rest is video, there are no pictures.  Not sure what the problem is.  I'm trying to burn some old VHS tapes to DVD.

Well, at "best quality", Studio should give you a bit more than 2 hours on a disc, so right off the bat, best-case, you're only filling 3/4 of the disc.

Add in the fact that Studio does seem, even on the "busiest" of video, to seem to undershoot by about 10-12%.  This is likely a cross between size estimation being pessimistic, plus VBR encoding sometimes yielding an overall lower bitrate than that specified if the video is "clean" (not a lot of low-light "sparklies", not a lot of movement, etc.)

Furthermore, if you're doing background rendering to DVD-compatible MPEG2, anything that Studio background-renders during edit may not be re-rendered during make, and may be written out at the background-render bitrate -- which I *believe* is 6000 kbit/sec.  6600 kbit/sec will yield about 180 minutes of video, which would mean that your 90 minutes would only about half-fill a disk (worst-case scenario).

So--another possiblity:  In your case, you should be creating an approx 3.25 GB image, if everything is working optimally.  However, Studio will usually create  an image that is up to 10% smaller than that specified (worst-case scenario), so in your case that would be around 2.9GB.  AND, if you have any background-rendered sequences that have been rendered at 6000 kbit/sec, that would further reduce the size of your disc image.

I could see you legitimately getting down to 2.26GB even when rendering video, if you have quite a bit of background-rendered stuff.

And if that's the case, one way you could test:  Turn off background rendering, delete Auxiliary files, and create another disc image.

And a 3rd possibility:  If you're capturing in native MPEG2 (such as from an MPEG2-capturing Dazzle device), and you're capturing video at the standard "DVD compatible" 6000 kbit/sec, then 90 minutes of DVD video would end up being pretty close to 2.2GB *regardless* of output settings, as long as the target bitrate for your disc is higher than your capture bitrate.  In this case, Studio may "smartrender" the input video directly to the output video without re-encoding (and without further dropping the video quality).  So...that's another way for a disc to not be "filled up", but to still have good quality.

Hey, none of this may be "the" answer, but these are scenarios that MIGHT help make sense out of this observation, anyhow...

BittMann

VHS in native state is about 320x280 at perhaps 3 mbps.  Two hours would be about 2.26 GB or less. 

The question is whether: a) the VHS capture mimicked the native features or "upscaled" it to MPEG2 at 640x440 and pumped up the bitrate, or b) the export to DVD media at "automatic" or "best" quality retains the VHS size or bitrate or balloons it to faux MPEG2 at 720x480 and an inflated bitrate.  Even if morphed into MPEG2, the disc use might still be only 2.26 GB if the bitrate matched the low level in the source VHS.

How much hard drive space did the captured or converted VHS video, which you dragged to a timeline, use on your hard drive? 

feekner:

I tried another DVD with about an 1hr and 30 min and the size of the video_TS folder is 2.26 GB.  I have one simple menu at the front and the rest is video, there are no pictures.  Not sure what the problem is.  I'm trying to burn some old VHS tapes to DVD.

Are you able to preview this Video_TS? Does it play all the way to the end of the project?

feekner:

I tried another DVD with about an 1hr and 30 min and the size of the video_TS folder is 2.26 GB.  

And you got this information from the folder, not from shrink ?