Greetings!

I just did a test on PD9 (build 2930) and used both the 8.5 and 4.7 GB "Disc Preferences" section and the resultant video files were exactly the same size. I don't think this was the intent of your post (which was VERY helpful, BTW!) but it leads me to 2 more questions:

1) Is there a way to make the standard DVD settings any better, quality-wise, within the Disc Prefs menu? (aside from AVCHD, or BR)?

2) What setting would you recommend in "Produce" to make a "standard" DVD but with perhaps, the best quality? (yeah. I know, very subjective)

I'm using AVCHD lite (panasonic) and AVCHD (sony, NEX-5) as source material.

Really appreciate your contributions!

thanks!!

fwf

Hi, Skeeter - I am anything but an expert. I've only had PD for a little while, and I don't have a lot of time to work with it. I know, since I've gotten so much great help here, that there are others who could give you some deeper info.

What my post was trying to say was that at the highest MPEG 2 quality setting for a DVD, projects which are over an hour in length are going to be reported as too large to fit in the 4.7 DVD folder - but that analysis by PD is incorrect.

If such a project is burned to an 8.5 folder at the same highest setting, then the program will allow the burn which was supposedly too big for 4.7 - but the resulting DVD data will be under 4.7 - It should have fit, but PD doesn't let you do it. So you trick the program by selecting an 8.5 folder - you can use the highest quality available for regular DVDs (MPEG 2) and there you'll have your high quality final product.

EDIT: But the data size of the source material can vary so much - What I've been explaining here was what I found when using an AVI file from online which is of lower quality than what a user would get from a nice digital camera. So times I've mentioned, like an hour of video- that's all relative to the quality of the source material.

rbowser

rbowser,
Very good answer.

The size estimate varies on the material on the timeline. Some file formats throw the Disk size estimate way off.
I have seen PD just about double the estimate compared to the actual result.

Selecting 8.5 GB and burning a folder only will most likely get your DVD burned where if you try to burn directly to a disk you will get errors or the video will be so bad because Smart fit lowers the bit rate too much.

Once the folder is created, you can then match your disk size to the size of the Folder.

When creating a DVD, you should never use anything but MPEG-2 HQ.
Remember a DVD is not High Definition, it is SD only.

Now you can copy HD AVCHD files to a DVD, but they will not play in a standard DVD player.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thank you all for the advice, especially you Carl312, its been useful, although the software is somewhat frustrating!

My query
You have indicated that the way around the incorrect disk calculation is to select 8.5Gb, but what if you are trying to make a dual layer disk?

Because of the incorrect calculation I'm making the project larger than required so that (the hope anyway) once the files are created they will use the complete disc (currently a 8.5Gb project 'boils' down to ~7.5Gb), rather than wasting some disk. I'm using PD 10 and creating a HDD folder but it indicates I have insufficient disk space ("The size of the imported files exceeds the amount of available disc space") - there is no option to ignore this warning...

Thanks in advance.
Simon

Quote: Thank you all for the advice, especially you Carl312, its been useful, although the software is somewhat frustrating!

My query
You have indicated that the way around the incorrect disk calculation is to select 8.5Gb, but what if you are trying to make a dual layer disk?

Because of the incorrect calculation I'm making the project larger than required so that (the hope anyway) once the files are created they will use the complete disc (currently a 8.5Gb project 'boils' down to ~7.5Gb), rather than wasting some disk. I'm using PD 10 and creating a HDD folder but it indicates I have insufficient disk space ("The size of the imported files exceeds the amount of available disc space") - there is no option to ignore this warning...

Thanks in advance.
Simon

No, not making a double layer disk, just making it possible for Powerdirector to go ahead and create the Disk folder.
You can check the size of the disk folder after it is created, if it is less than 4.7 GB you can use a single layer disk to burn.

Of course of the disk folder is larger that what fits on a 4.7 GB disk, you use a DL disk.

Powerdirector does not 'fill up' the size selected. But PD sure does not create the disk folder if the estimate will not fit on the size selected.

It is just fooling the program to do what it is supposed to do anyway.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Following up on what Carl said, I use the MPEG 2 HQ setting and 8.5GB disc. Burn to folder, and it si often small enough to fit on a 4.7 disc. If not, I use a third party program to shrink the folder and burn it to a disc. Seems to be more accurate than using the shrink to fit option. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

Thanks for the input guys, although I'm trying to make a 8.5Gb disc (not a 4.7Gb one).

Reading between the lines, it seems that it isn't possible to make a full 8.5Gb disc...

So I'll just have to build another bookcase/DVD rack

umm, I suppose I could output each track/chapter to an avchd file and then use a 3rd party software to generate the DVD... or perhaps PD estimates it better from those files?

S

Quote: Thanks for the input guys, although I'm trying to make a 8.5Gb disc (not a 4.7Gb one).

Reading between the lines, it seems that it isn't possible to make a full 8.5Gb disc...

S

You can get darn close, a 8.5 GB disk is not actually 8.5 GB.

Its actual data content is 8201 Megabytes. Or 8.2 GB. the 8.5 GB comes from the non Intel value of 8,500,000 bytes of recordable space.

It is not uncommon to put 8.1 GB on a Double Layer DVD disk.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Quote: My query
You have indicated that the way around the incorrect disk calculation is to select 8.5Gb, but what if you are trying to make a dual layer disk?

Because of the incorrect calculation I'm making the project larger than required so that (the hope anyway) once the files are created they will use the complete disc (currently a 8.5Gb project 'boils' down to ~7.5Gb), rather than wasting some disk. I'm using PD 10 and creating a HDD folder but it indicates I have insufficient disk space ("The size of the imported files exceeds the amount of available disc space") - there is no option to ignore this warning...

shutterbug, I understand your need, I'm not going to dwell in semantics’ on how much a DL disc actually holds because any reasonable burn utility has a built in factor to minimize writing close to the peripheral of the disc as that's very error prone. If PD will work for you really depends how close your are to fitting on a DL disc. I’m not sure if this will work for you, it depends how many minutes of your video are pics, title boards vs video. It also depends how complex your DVD menu is. Read my post here, http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15/18958.page It shows you how to get around the message you note. Once the DVD folder is created by PD (if successful), it may be larger than what fits on a DL disc so you would have to compress with a 3rd party utility to actually get the large DVD Folder to fit a DL disc but that compression is usually minimal quality loss.

I know the approach is a hack and things should be simpler but the approach may give you the results you desire.

Jeff

Thanks for the info, Jeff.

I suppose i only have myself to blame as my post shouldn't really be on the version 9 forum. It seems PD has gone backwards on version 10 as the burn choice is either disc OR folder. Additionally there is no 'OK, I accept the VOB files might be too big to fit on the final disc" - it just says the estimated disc will be too big, at thats it.

I'll take a look on the version 10 forum, but haven't seen anything so far, that's why I put it on here - hoping that it would be similar.

I understand the concern regarding the outer part of the disc, so perhaps I'll just have to live with this. Perhaps this will also mean I get less errors when playing them in the future

In regards the menu structure - yes this will have some bearing, but appears to be more on the number of files associated with each VOB (such as *.IFO, *.BUP) eg If I have it return to main menu after each chapter/title then it creats a lot more of these files. However, as they are a small size it shouldn't case much of an issue.

Thanks once again, S

Quote: I suppose i only have myself to blame as my post shouldn't really be on the version 9 forum. It seems PD has gone backwards on version 10 as the burn choice is either disc OR folder. Additionally there is no 'OK, I accept the VOB files might be too big to fit on the final disc" - it just says the estimated disc will be too big, at thats it.

My PD10 behavior is exactly the same as PD9 for DVD HQ disc creation concerning the burn choices and selections that I documented. I have actually repeated the exact same on PD10 with the same results. Not sure why your behavior is different.

Space used for 30 chapters (5 menu pages of 6/page) is much different than for 4 (1 menu page).

Jeff