Is There An ACCURATE Way Of Estimating A DVDs Size?

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Level 7

24,242 points

Is There An ACCURATE Way Of Estimating A DVDs Size?

Yesterday I had to put an FCP project of just under 3 hours on a DVD. I exported it to Compressor and because of its excessive length made my own preset.

This was using a CBR of 2 Mbps which the "guide" said was OK for up to 174 minutes.

So I thought it would just squeeze on nicely.

I was therefore surprised to discover (after nearly 3 hours!) that the encoded file was less than 2.8 GBs so I probably could have encoded at 3 Mbps and had a better quality DVD.

Needless to say I didn't have time to redo it.

Any ideas how I can choose the highest possible bitrate in future without overdoing it and running out of space?

24" 2.8 GHz (Penryn) iMac + LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB HD, Mac OS X (10.5.2), FCE 4 + FCP 6.0.3 etc.

Posted on Sep 13, 2008 3:37 AM

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Answer 1

Drew13

Level 6

12,387 points

Sep 13, 2008 5:14 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

3 Hours with 192 AC3 files comes out at 3.192

And there is always a bit of give in the results, never 100%

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Answer 2

Ian R. Brown Author

Level 7

24,242 points

Sep 13, 2008 7:23 AM in response to Drew13

Thanks Drew13.

I did google for one but for some reason none of the Mac versions would download - they all lead to other sites etc.

Your link worked fine.

I realise that the calculation will have a bit of leeway but Compressor's suggestion which wasted nearly 40% of the DVD was a little too "approximate".

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Answer 3

Drew13

Level 6

12,387 points

Sep 13, 2008 9:54 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Ian R. Brown wrote:

I realise that the calculation will have a bit of leeway but Compressor's suggestion which wasted nearly 40% of the DVD was a little too "approximate".

Yeah that is a bit much 🙂

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Answer 4

Hal MacLean

Level 6

14,833 points

Sep 13, 2008 12:06 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

Some time ago I used Mr Bitbudget. It is no longer supported, and may not even run on some systems, but it is a lovely little bitrate calculator that runs locally as opposed to being online. I kept a copy of it here:

http://homepage.mac.com/halgernon/.Public/Utilities%2C%20apps/mrbitbudget0.5bX.s it

It was shareware, I believe, or even freeware, but it was nearly 5 years ago when I first found it.

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Answer 5

Ian R. Brown Author

Level 7

24,242 points

Sep 13, 2008 12:29 PM in response to Hal MacLean

Thanks Hal. That is a neat little item that appears to work well on my system as does BitRateCalc.

I have just redone yesterday's encoding and it came out at 3.8 GB which is a bit closer the mark.

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