compressor rookie

The audio file is problably sending you over your size limit. Try moving the slider in the Quality Tab down a little and watch the time limit change near the bottom. Sorry I am on a different computer right now so I can't be more precise.

thanks for the reply :) i forgot to mention, it's the video file itself that is over the limit...

I'll do it for you.

What is the duration of your video?

Also, be sure to use the AC3 (Dolby) audio and not AIFF audio.

--ken

Wow! ken, thank you so much!! the duration is 1:59:50

I used 120 minutes of video and audio.

I get 4.8 average and 7.8 max.

But this might be the issue. I'm not sure that DVD SP defaults to AC3 audio. I don't use DVD SP to do the MPEG 2 and AC3 transcoding, I use Compressor.

Are you using Compressor to encode?

--ken

thank you Ken! and yes sir, im using compressor to encode. i've been using the DVD: Fastest Encode 120 min for the video-but it keeps coming out to around 4.17 gigs every time.

A standard DVD-R can hold 4.3 gigs of content.

--ken

so inside of compressor i click on the inspector > quality and change it to 4.8 average & 7.8 mac? and that should make the content fit onto a dvd??

oops i meant 4.8 average & 7.8 max* ??

ahh ken, you're awesome-thank you so much! :) i appreciate everything.

again, thanks for the help! i have one more question.. in compressor, what's the difference between Average Bit Rate and Maximum Bit Rate?? when i use the slider for the Average Bit Rate it tells me how long the duration is, etc. but i don't see any information when i slide the Max Bit Rate up or down.. just curious what the difference between the two are?
Thanks!

We can apply two different MPEG 2 schemes for encoding for SD DVDs.

The first is CBR, Constant Bit Rate. One bit rate is picked (depending on the duration of the video) and is applied to all of the video.

This is fine for video that is fairly consistent as far as motion goes. For example, a talking head video.

However, we can have video that contains subject matter with little movement (talking head) and then some video with rapid motion, like a sports event.

A constant bit rate does not work well in this case as the sports event will require a higher bit rate to convey all of the rapid motion properly than the talking head portion of the video. So a constant bit rate that is proper for the talking head will not have enough bandwidth for the sports and if the bit rate is set for the sports, then you are wasting space on the DVD encoding the talking head portion which does not need the higher bit rate.

So the second scheme is VBR, Variable Bit Rate. With VBR, when there is not much motion, then one bit rate will be applied (average bit rate) but when there is rapid motion, then the VBR will apply the max bit rate. There is dual pass VBR in which the first pass examines the video looking for rapid motion and then the second pass does the encoding applying bit rates calculated by the first pass.

This is a bit over simplified.

There are some out there who swear by CBR and others who favor VBR. Depends a lot on the video you are encoding, the destination of the video, and the application that actually does the compression, and which method you have had the best results with.

--ken