.MPG to DVD?

[Steve52]

I have some VHS tapes I would like to convert to DVD so that I can eliminate my VHS player completely. I see posts that talk about this both here and on the AVS Forum so I know some people do it. Last night I connected my SVHS VCR to my STV HTPC and recorded one of my tapes. A standard VHS tape not SVHS. The tape was 2Hrs and 11 Minutes long. The resulting .mpg file was 12,231,098 KB (12.3 GB). I used the best quality available in STV. I played some of the file and the quality was about as good as the original. Of course neither is great as it is VHS. I am looking for recommendations from someone here that has done this. What software would I need to convert this .mpg file to DVD. Is it even possible to fit it on a DVD without so much compression as to make the quality much worse?

[dvd_maniac]

Some recommendations:

1. try a lower setting and see if the quality remains the same. 4.5mbit/s is the highest you can go on both Audio & Video to fit onto a DVD
4.5*60/8 = 33.75MB/min
33.75MB*131 minutes = 4421.25MB
4421.25\1024 = 4.317GB. 4485MB or 4.38GB is what fits on a standard DVD.
You can go up to about 8.5mbit/s on a Dual Layer DVD.

2. Use an Encoder or a transcoder to shrink the video to fit on a DVD.
Some Encoders:
(CinemaCraft Encoder, TEMPGenc "Better quality, Much Longer Process")
Some Trancoders:
(Nero Recode, DVD2one etc..."Very Fast, quality at same filesize not as good as Encoding")

[Steve52]

Are the .mpg files created by SageTv using a PVR-150 card DVD compliant?

[stanger89]

If you pick one of the "DVD" qualities yes (may be for some of the other presets too).

But you'll still have to "Author" a DVD, which creates the correct disc structure (similar to how you have to burn audio CDs special vs just plopping the wav files, even though cda and wav files are essentially the same).

[Steve52]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If you pick one of the "DVD" qualities yes (may be for some of the other presets too).

But you'll still have to "Author" a DVD, which creates the correct disc structure (similar to how you have to burn audio CDs special vs just plopping the wav files, even though cda and wav files are essentially the same).

I did set STV to one of the DVD quality settings before making the .mpg file. It was 2gb per hour I believe. The resulting .mpg file was around 4.3 GB.

Do you know if I can I use Roxio Easy cd/dvd creater 6 to burn the .mpg file to DVD and then play it in a standard set top DVD player? I have this software, and from what I have read it should work, but I tried it Sunday night and could not get it to burn the DVD. Temp file size may be a problem from what I read, but I wanted to find out if Roxio should work before I spent any more time with it. Roxio must do some kind of simple authoring of its own if it really works.

[stanger89]

I don't "know" but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Just make sure you're making a Video DVD and not a data one. Also try to disable transcoding/recoding if you can, it will save time and maybe free space.

But yes, you will need probably 5GB of free space to hold the DVD image before it's burned.

[Steve52]

After more research I found a post on the BTV forum where someone is trying to do the same thing with BTV that I am trying with STV. They say Roxio is not a good solution because it uses LPCM (wave) audio and not mpeg2 audio like BTV uses. My guess is that STV uses mpeg2 audio as well (Can anyone confirm this?) Thus a Roxio created DVD from a .mpg STV PVR file would be too large due to the wave audio track being created. A short video file say 30 to 45 minutes could be put on a DVD with Roxio but not a two hour plus movie or video.

Many people recommend TMPGenc, but I don't see why this is needed at all. Why reencode? This would be way overkill for just burning a STV created .mpg file onto DVD. There must be some cheap or free software that will do this and do it leaving the compressed audio track alone so that a 4.3 GB .mpg file will not end up too large to fit on a single sided DVD?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Steve52

After more research I found a post on the BTV forum where someone is trying to do the same thing with BTV that I am trying with STV. They say Roxio is not a good solution because it uses LPCM (wave) audio and not mpeg2 audio like BTV uses. My guess is that STV uses mpeg2 audio as well (Can anyone confirm this?)

Actually it's the card that dictates that, but yes, SageTV recordings are MP2 audio.

Many people recommend TMPGenc, but I don't see why this is needed at all. Why reencode?

I think they mean TMPGEnc DVD Author. Re-encoding should be unnecessary if you used a DVD setting when recording.

This would be way overkill for just burning a STV created .mpg file onto DVD. There must be some cheap or free software that will do this and do it leaving the compressed audio track alone so that a 4.3 GB .mpg file will not end up too large to fit on a single sided DVD?

There might be but I don't know them off the top of my head. Try a search here for DVD author and you should get a few hits.