Icelyn
Level 1 (9 points)
iLife

Q: Help me understand: movie length vs. GB size

I have spent days compiling home movies to put on 1 DVD, size capability is 120 minutes or 4.7 GB. So, I have four separate movies that equal 119 minutes in length. When I dragged the first two movies to iDVD which equal 94 minutes I was given an error (that I can't remember precisely and I can't duplicate that error) saying my project was too big and to change the encoding settings in Project Info. When I look at Project Info my numers are in the red: Total time: 94 minutes, size: 5.16 GB.  I am at a loss how I am supposed to create movies that will fit when iMovie does not tell me file size length (or I'm too noob to figure out how to learn that while I'm making movies). Any help much appreciated!

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Nov 21, 2015 7:25 AM

by Old Toad,Apple recommended
Old Toad Old Toad
Level 10 (140,881 points)
Photos for Mac
A:

Project size does not matter.  It's total playing time that is important.  iDVD encodes (compresses) the project to fit on the disc.  There are 3 encoding settings the user can use:

 

Best Performance - projects with playing time up to 60 minutes or less, including menus.

High Quality - for projects up to 2 hours of playing time or less, including menus.

Professional Quality - f for projects up to 2 hours of playing time or less, including menus. This setting is a 2 pass setting.  The first pass determines which parts of the project can sustain the most compression without quality loss (still photo slideshows and parts of movies with little movement). The second pass then compresses those areas accordingly.

 

More about that can be found here: iDVD '09 (7.x): About iDVD encoding settings

 

Follow this workflow to help assure the best qualty video DVD:

Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image  menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.

 

To check the encoding mount the disk image, launch DVD Player and play it.  If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding is good.

 

Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality.  Always use top quality media:  Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.

OTsig.png

Posted on Nov 21, 2015 10:39 AM

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Icelyn

Q: Help me understand: movie length vs. GB size

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Old Toad,Apple recommended

    Old Toad Old Toad Nov 21, 2015 10:39 AM in response to Icelyn
    Level 10 (140,881 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Nov 21, 2015 10:39 AM in response to Icelyn

    Project size does not matter.  It's total playing time that is important.  iDVD encodes (compresses) the project to fit on the disc.  There are 3 encoding settings the user can use:

     

    Best Performance - projects with playing time up to 60 minutes or less, including menus.

    High Quality - for projects up to 2 hours of playing time or less, including menus.

    Professional Quality - f for projects up to 2 hours of playing time or less, including menus. This setting is a 2 pass setting.  The first pass determines which parts of the project can sustain the most compression without quality loss (still photo slideshows and parts of movies with little movement). The second pass then compresses those areas accordingly.

     

    More about that can be found here: iDVD '09 (7.x): About iDVD encoding settings

     

    Follow this workflow to help assure the best qualty video DVD:

    Once you have the project as you want it save it as a disk image via the File ➙ Save as Disk Image  menu option. This will separate the encoding process from the burn process.

     

    To check the encoding mount the disk image, launch DVD Player and play it.  If it plays OK with DVD Player the encoding is good.

     

    Then burn to disk with Disk Utility or Toast at the slowest speed available (2x-4x) to assure the best burn quality.  Always use top quality media:  Verbatim, Maxell or Taiyo Yuden DVD-R are the most recommended in these forums.

    OTsig.png

  • by Klaus1,Apple recommended

    Klaus1 Klaus1 Nov 21, 2015 10:42 AM in response to Icelyn
    Level 8 (48,821 points)
    Nov 21, 2015 10:42 AM in response to Icelyn

    Just to add to OT's great advice:

     

    iDVD encoding settings:

     

    Short version:

     

    Best Performance is for videos of up to 60 minutes

     

    Best Quality is for videos of up to 120 minutes

     

    Professional Quality is also for up to 120 minutes but even higher quality (and takes much longer)

     

    That was for single-layer DVDs. Double these numbers for dual-layer DVDs.

     

    Professional Quality: The Professional Quality option uses advanced two-pass technology to encode your video (The first pass determines which parts of the movie can be given greater compresson without quality loss and which parts can’t.  The second pass then encodes those different parts accordingly) , resulting in the best quality of video possible on your burned DVD. You can select this option regardless of your project’s duration (up to 2 hours of video for a single-layer disc and 4 hours for a double-layer disc). Because Professional Quality encoding is time-consuming (requiring about twice as much time to encode a project as the High Quality option, for example) choose it only if you are not concerned about the time taken.

     

    In both cases the maximum length includes titles, transitions and effects etc. Allow about 15 minutes for these.

     

    You can use the amount of video in your project as a rough determination of which method to choose. If your project has an hour or less of video (for a single-layer disc), choose Best Performance. If it has between 1 and 2 hours of video (for a single-layer disc), choose High Quality. If you want the best possible encoding quality for projects that are up to 2 hours (for a single-layer disc), choose Professional Quality. This option takes about twice as long as the High Quality option, so select it only if time is not an issue for you.

    Use the Capacity meter in the Project Info window (choose Project > Project Info) to determine how many minutes of video your project contains.

    NOTE: With the Best Performance setting, you can turn background encoding off by choosing Advanced > “Encode in Background.” The checkmark is removed to show it’s no longer selected. Turning off background encoding can help performance if your system seems sluggish.

     

    And whilst checking these settings in iDVD Preferences, make sure that the settings for NTSC/PAL and DV/DV Widescreen are also what you want.

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1502?viewlocale=en_US

  • by Icelyn,

    Icelyn Icelyn Nov 21, 2015 11:49 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iLife
    Nov 21, 2015 11:49 AM in response to Old Toad

    Thanks so much for the replies. A few questions for clarification:

    Best Performance - projects with playing time up to 60 minutes or less, including menus.

    High Quality - for projects up to 2 hours of playing time or less, including menus.

    What exactly is the difference on these? The material I'm working with is very grainy, old videos from around 2005. At least the technology is older than that. The quality is low, so when I had to choose which quality, I did "best performance" because High Quality didn't seem to apply, and I didn't think it would help (correct assumption?), and clearly it wasn't professional quality. Aspect ratio is 4:3 because it's old technology. Do I still need to make it in widescreen from here forward, simply because all TVs are widescreen now? (ours is) I made some slideshows that look pretty stretched on our flatscreen. I don't know what to do to fix that.

  • by Icelyn,

    Icelyn Icelyn Nov 21, 2015 11:52 AM in response to Klaus1
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iLife
    Nov 21, 2015 11:52 AM in response to Klaus1

    Ok so, preparing to make a new set of home movies to compile into one iDVD project: how do I assure that I won't sacrafice any of the already-poor quality of the videos? Which quality encoding would you recommend? The length of my movies already include titles and transitions so I know the full length of the movie before creating the iDVD project, I realize it's the encoding process I selected that limited my length. But I'm still not sure which quality is "best" since it seems iDVD recommends a 1 hour length for my bad quality videos. Oh and as I also asked OT above: Aspect ratio is 4:3 because it's old technology. Do I still need to make it in widescreen from here forward, simply because all TVs are widescreen now? (ours is) I made some slideshows that look pretty stretched on our flatscreen. I don't know what to do to fix that. Make any sense?? Thanks for help!

  • by Klaus1,

    Klaus1 Klaus1 Nov 21, 2015 3:20 PM in response to Icelyn
    Level 8 (48,821 points)
    Nov 21, 2015 3:20 PM in response to Icelyn

    To maximise what quality is there, I would chose Professional Quality regardless of the length.

     

    Keep the 4:3 aspect ratio - just set your TV to that format when you show them.

  • by Icelyn,

    Icelyn Icelyn Jul 16, 2016 10:40 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iLife
    Jul 16, 2016 10:40 AM in response to Old Toad

    I know I'm resurrecting an old thread and I'm getting the multiplexing error that everyone has been posting about and am attempting to troubleshoot. How do I "mount the disk image" after I've saved it? Thank you.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Jul 16, 2016 3:53 PM in response to Icelyn
    Level 10 (140,881 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 16, 2016 3:53 PM in response to Icelyn

    Double click on the .dmg file so you get this on your Desktop:

    Finder001.jpg

    and the contents look like this:

    Finder002.jpg

     

    Then you can play the project with DVD Player.