16.7G to 4.7G DVD - what compression?

[Justin Kuhn]

I don't know much about compression, to be honest. All of my projects up to this point have been short films taking up just a gig or two. Now I have a 16.7G concert file that I need to fit on a regular 4.7G DVD. Does anyone know what settings will give me the best quality 4-1 compression in Compressor?

 

[Demistate]

Use a bitrate calculator do do an h.264 file with AAC audio and you can make it fill up the entire DVD and still have close to original quality.

If the original file has interlaced frames, you might have problems encoding the entire source with free h.264 encoders, but If you shot 24P or 30P you'll be golden. (Unless you don't care about the interlacing, and have the program drop it down to 30P)

Check out my blog for an encoding guide for free mpeg-4 encoding on Windows.