4 hour DVD 9 w/ good quality possible?

[DavidWL]

Hi All!

We recently shot a 4 hour instructional DVD (www.learntodancetango.com). We have been reading and experimenting (a lot), but now need to post to ask a question. Please help.

We edited and saved in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9. Using DVD Architect Studio 4.5

VEGAS STUDIO RENDERING CHOICES
- MainConcept MPEG 2
- DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen Video Stream
- Note: I was hoping for a "custom" option that would let me choose something like 2-pass VBR, but the custom button was grayed out. Note that we can access this if we use MPEG1.
- the video is 15.7 GB ... a bit too big

VEGAS ARCHITECT DVD CHOICES
- video bitrate 8 Mbps
- 16:9 Aspect ratio
- 720*480
- 29.97 frames per second
- progressive: auto

When lowering the bit-rate so that it could fit, the quality does suffer very noticeably. To make it fit, we have to go down to something like 3.5 Mbps ... which made the quality too low.

Is there a way to make this fit on 1 dual layer DVD without the quality suffering too horribly? I was hoping that if we were patient, and did some encoding magic, somehow we could make it fit with ok quailty.

Best,
David

 

[David Jimerson]

As someone who makes a living on instructional DVDs, I wouldn't do 4 hours on a single disc.

 

[KnoxHotch]

Split it into two and call it a double offer! Hah

But seriously... two please

 

[clang]

2 discs (which still fit into one case, so long as you buy the right cases) does seem the best option - an extra blank disc don't cost much, and 'two discs of video instruction' actually sounds better value for the customer than one disc

 

[DavidWL]

Thank you all so much. We had already spent a great deal of time trying to find the answer. You have surely saved us a vast amount more of time and heartache. We'll go with 2 DL dvds.

Best,
David