Shrink to fit DVDs
 

Hello there,
I've been reading through and searching here to get advice on burning video files to dvd. I've taken lots of it, bought Toast6, which blank discs my Apple will burn to (DVD-R), which my DVD player will play (also DVD-R)....
but now I am again stuck....

Roxio tells me that the DVD-R is too small to fit!!!
Is there anything else I need to do get these onto DVDs..

The video files I have are mainly movies, ca. 700 MB large, .avi's mainly, and the DVD-R's are TDK 1-8x 4.7GB single-sided.

Please help!!! Its been days I've been trying....

All the best

Amedeo

Compressing file to fit on one 4.7GB DVD-R
 

Hi there,
I've had a good look through, and so far I have got Roxio Toast, ffmpegX, and 4.7GB DVD-R blank discs....
I'm trying to make DVDs (to play normally tv/dvd) from mainly .avi's, but also mpg's as well.
I cant seem to find an answer to where I'm stuck....
Toast keeps telling me that there is not enough space on the DVD-R to fit the movie!!!
Around I read that what I am trying to do is possible, but I cant seem to progress...

Would appreciate any help out there.... From my searching I figure LOTR seems the person in the know....

Thanks

Amedeo

Did you try burning them as "data" discs instead of "movie" ? I've never heard of that problem before but i use nero and burn it as above. My DVDplayer is able to read divx but if yours isn't then you wont be able to view it on your DVD player.

Have a look at the image in the following link: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...467#post127467 DVD2oneX does a good job. But that's really for working with extracted dvd's. (If you're talking about standalone avi files then if you have the appropriate Quicktime codecs you could edit them with iMovie.)

Remember that using Toast 6 you can also edit out the intro & credits at the end if necessary. Select the track & press edit button. Select video & move 1st or last markers in to choose beginning & ending parts.

It's not wise to recompress movies that have already been compressed b/c each time it loses more quality.

Of course to burn dvd's to play on a set-top player you don't choose data format. Dvd movies need to be in UDF format. For copying dvd's choose udf but for creating movie dvd use video format.

Thanks LOTR,
I was hoping you would be there, as from my reading, you look to be the knowledgeable one....

I am a little confused...
So I drag the .avi into the toast video tab, click the DVD-Video button in the disc options drawer, Standard video quality, put the disk in, click burn, and this is the reply:
"Not enough free space on this disc, 4.9 needed, 4.4 available"
I've cropped out the titles and credits, and still too big!!
The .avi is 701.2MB...

Do you know a way to make the fit to 1 DVD-R, not only for this file, but for the future also??

Thanks for your help

Amedeo

Give us some more details about how you're setting it up with Toast. Open the advanced drawer to the left of Toast (the blue & white button to the top left) & tell us what you have it set to including which options? There's 2 quality options, one standard & one high. And which ones you have ticked.

Are you sure it's a dvd-r & not a cd you're putting in. And you clicked dvd to the bottom far right on the Toast window .. sorry but I need to ask the basics. lol :D ;)

No probs LOTR, just over the moon to have some help!
Ok here goes...
Advanced Drawer:
DVD-Video button on
PAL
Standard Video Quality
No extras checked

Bottom right is set to DVD

Definitely DVD-R... checked for ages before buying them
TDK DVD-R 1-8x 4.7 GB Single sided
Also made sure to get 1x compatible ones as after checking, these are the ones my Superdrive can take

Thanks

I want to trial some things out so I won't have an answer for you today. It'll take a while.

I'm guessing the movie is over 2 hrs. Can you open it in Quicktime & open info about it (apple & i keys) & tell us the length of the video & the dimensions & the frame rate?

No probs...
Format:
Generic MPEG-4, 512x272, Millions
MPEG Layer-3 Audio, Stereo, 48000 hz
Movie FPS:
23.98
Data Size:
691.9 MB
Data Rate:
118.9 K bytes/sec
Duration:
01:41:19:28
Normal Size:
512x272 pixels
Current Size:
512x272 pixels

FYI I also read in a forum, that someone is able to put around a 2 hour movie onto a single 4.7 DVD-r using Toast6 and ffmpegX...
So I got that as well, but was lost in it....
Here is the link by the way:
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

Thanks for the help

Likewise I installed ffmpegx last year but had problems getting it working properly. It's supposed to be very good.

I used to working with full quality videos using dvd studio pro so I'm relatively new at the concept of burning highly compressed videos such as mpeg4, etc. that one gets from over the net. I've fitted up around 3 hrs max on a dvd so far using dvd sp. Not brave enough to fit more on.

Found this: http://www.roxio.com/dvd_forum/faq.jhtml

I put together a dvd using a no. of avi clips including divX clip & the total length was 186 mins. I burnt it with menus & at high quality. No problems. Which astounds me why you can't get yours to work. Yours is only 101 mins.

You could try saving it as a disk image & then burning as an image file. Load the video, then hold apple & D keys. Then after video conversions & image file creation, you would go to Copy tab, select advanced button & select Disk Image. Then load the disk image & burn. Make sure the image file is 4.37 GB or less in size!!!

If you haven't already, update to Toast 6.0.9 there's some bug fixes & an improvement in the video conversion codecs used.
By the way I used to use TDK but found they're not as reliable as Verbatim.

Well now that is strange....
I dont really know how to proceede.... have upgraded to 6.09.
Would love to know step by step how you did it?
What about compression?

Try the technique I suggested.
1. Select video format as you normally would.
2. Put the video in (drag & drop or using the Add button.)
3. Select DVD-Video as output in advanced window. Select Pal or Ntsc as required.
4. Hold down both apple & D keys (or go to file menu & select Save as Disc Image.
5. Then wait for the conversion & disk image creation.
6. Go to finder & look at size of file.
7. In Toast press Copy tab & in advanced window select Image File. Drag & drop or press select to find your image file.
8. Put disk in & press burn button.

Toast makes its own calculations on any necessary conversions from avi to mpeg2 & any settings you've made.

Compression? An avi is generally already compressed. You said your avi is 701.2 MB & runs for 101 mins. That is already highly compressed. Toast will try to make full use of the space on the dvd. So the more you fit onto the dvd the lesser the quality. (If you already have an mpeg 2 file though that's apparently a different kettle of fish.)

Tryin it now.... I'll let you know how i get on....

Thanks for all the help

Amedeo

Well now,
all worked fine until about half way through burn, and I got this message:
The drive reported an error:

Sense Key = ILLEGAL REQUEST
Sense Code = 0x30, 0x05
CANNOT WRITE MEDIUM - INCOMPATIBLE FORMAT

What do you think?

No comprendo...
If the file is too big, it's not gonna fit on one DVD. If you want to compress it, then you'll decrease it's quality. Do you really want that?
How big is the file?
How do you go about it when trying to make a DVD with Roxio?

fai un dvd-rom

I didn't realise you had double-posted. Bad media is the sounds of it. I recently had a bad disk & returned it for a replacement. Everytime I put the same disk in it would refuse to be read by any burner softw. The TOC is unreadable basically. You get bad batches of CD & DVD media. If it's not the media then either your burner is not compatible with the media or your burner needs a firmware update. You didn't actually tell me which brand or model burner you have. Apple have used different brands of Superdrive.

So what size was the disk image by the way. It needs to be 4.37 GB or smaller. Verbatim disks will sometimes fit 4.38 on but TDK won't! Pity you don't have a dvd-rw burner. It might save some disks.

Try to burn your disk image at single speed & don't use any heavy programs during the process. Also set Toast to Buffer Underrun Protection after you press the burn button. As the series of images below show:

Using the process above, Toast converts the video before creating the disk image. Then after image is created you can burn & select advanced options as below (good idea to close & re-open Toast before you do this!) Burn at a slow speed like 1x for guarantees of a reliable burn.