Fitting a 4.9 GB home movie on a DVD

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gbog2000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Fitting a 4.9 GB home movie on a DVD

So my home movie this year is 2 hours and 45 minutes. I'm trying to get it all on a single DVD. Here is what I've done so far:

1) Put entire movie on Final Cut.

2) Sent to compressor and generated a single audio and video file for Studio Pro.

Now my video/audio file are larger than what is allowed on a DVD.

So is there anything I can do either in Studio Pro or the compressor to make the files smaller so they will fit on the DVD without cutting more content from my movie?

Thanks.

Greg

Final Cut Pro 7, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 8, 2015 10:40 AM

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Answer 1

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Apr 8, 2015 11:18 AM in response to gbog2000

Use a dual layer DVD (8.5 gigs)?

MtD

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Answer 2

gbog2000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 8, 2015 11:21 AM in response to Meg The Dog

Never used a dual layer...don't know how to do that... and you can't just buy 1 at the store. I'm not really wanting to buy a pack of 10.

Any other ideas?

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Answer 3

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Apr 8, 2015 1:31 PM in response to gbog2000

1) Find a logical place to chop the movie in half and issue on two DVDs.

2) Crank up the compression in Compressor by lowering the bitrate until the file will fit on a DVD. This will impact the video quality.

MtD

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Answer 4

gbog2000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 8, 2015 1:49 PM in response to Meg The Dog

1) Cutting not an option.

2) Sounds like i could try that...if only someone explained how to do it.

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Answer 5

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Apr 8, 2015 1:59 PM in response to gbog2000

Which version of compressor are you using?

MtD

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Answer 6

gbog2000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 8, 2015 2:16 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Version 3.5.3...

And its only about 150 MB too big to fit...so it doesn't need much to fit on the 4.7GB DVD...

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Answer 7

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Apr 8, 2015 2:43 PM in response to gbog2000

Haven't used 3.5 in a long while, don't have it loaded on my computer but it when you apply the DVD preset, look on the inspector or settings pane and see if you can adjust down the average and maximum bitrates. You should be able to see what the estimated file size will be as you make these changes. Remember, you are going to be impacting video quality when you start lowering these settings -

this is from Compressor 4:

MtD

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Answer 8

gbog2000 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 8, 2015 2:42 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Thank you Meg.. i'll look into this option.

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Answer 9

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Apr 8, 2015 2:47 PM in response to gbog2000

OK, reduce the bitrate as little as possible - and test the result by looking at a scene with lots of detail and motion in it, that will suffer most by the reduced bitrate.

MtD

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