Encore - Project Exceeds Disc Capacity - Need Help

[V.Impact]

I am running into an issue with Encore. I am a bit new to Encore so if anyone could point me in the right direction as to why this is happening that would be much appreciated.

Basically I have a project with about 2hrs and 25mins of content and motion menus. I exported from premiere as an MPEG2 and the Audio as an AC3 file. I need to burn this project to a DVD and am using discs that SAY hold 4.7 GBs. The video and audio files together are like 3.83 GBs but still when I try and build, Encore tells me that the project exceeds the disc capacity. I understand that it is advised to stay under 4.4 GBs when using these discs but even then I should have at least half a Gig left. I am not quite sure where this phantom space is being taken up.

And no there is nothing in the DVD-ROM content box.

Any Help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Stan Jones]

Does Encore see your imports as legal, or is it re-transcoding? You find this by looking in the project panel under the DVD Transcode Status column.

How long are the motion menus?

Remember that a "4.7" Gig disk only holds about 4.38 gigs.

[SAFEHARBOR11]

You must have exported at a very low bit rate to come up with that small file size for the very long video. Can we see a shot of Export Settings panel please?

Did you export as MPEG-2 DVD or just MPEG-2? Big difference, as the latter needs to transcode in Encore.

With the "extreme" length of the program, I would forego the motion menus and save every available bit of space to maximize quality of the video content, meaning to use highest possible bit rate.

Look like you could go about 3.8 on the bit rate for 145 minutes, assuming no motion menus used. Use VBR 2-Pass for best results.

Bit rate can be determined by this formula - 560/minutes = bit rate

Or use a bit rate calculator, but you must take care to enter all values correctly - DVD-HQ : Bitrate & GOP calculator

Thanks

Jeff

[V.Impact]

Thanks for both of your replies. The DVD transcode status for both audio and video is Don't Transcode because it was exported as an MPEG-2 DVD. The motion menu is only about 10 seconds long. The other thing is too that when I delete the menu from the project the overall space only decreases from 4.73 to 4.71GB.

I am thoroughly stumped.

[SAFEHARBOR11]

Start a NEW Encore project. Import your video and audio "As Timeline". Immediately go to BUILD page - what does it say? If size is reported correctly, then something is wrong in your project, perhaps an asset is being used twice or something. Or is something to do with the way motion menus are set up.

In any case, since the video is quite long and you want to try and maintain as much quality as you can, you may want to encode MPEG-2 DVD format again at a more optimal bit rate, so that you are not leaving a few hundred mb of unused space on the disc.

Thanks

Jeff

[V.Impact]

In terms of bitrate yeah I am going to re-export the video when if ever I figure out what is wrong.

I just made a new Encore Project and imported them as Timeline. The video is 3.8GB the audio is 398.6MB. Did not do anything else and it says in build that 4.71GB are used.

[Stan Jones · Accepted solution]

Here's the longer version of my comment in Post 1 regarding 4.38 G. This was written for a previous thread, in which the user's file was 3.9 (compared to your 3.8), so my 3.9 below is not referring to your file. But it is so close, it illustrates the point well. Bottom line; your file is probably too big.

Basically, Encore says it is tracking GB in the build panel, but it is really tracking bytes. A DVD that is called "4.7 Gigabytes" is really only 4.38GB - it is 4,706,074,624 bytes. To get to Gigabytes, you divide by 1,073,741,824 (1.024 * 1024 * 1024). Which is about 4.38.

What this means is that if you read your file size as 3.9GB, it is actually 4,187,593,113 bytes. To make this confusing within Encore, Encore reports your file in the project panel as 3.9GB. But when it lists the amount of the disk used and free in the build panel, it is reporting bytes with "GB" after it.

I just did a no menu test with a 1.69GB m2v and 41.5MB ac3. Encore reports 526KB of ROM used (the size of empty rom), used as 1.91GB, and 2.79GB free on a 4.7GB disk. (Remember that these are all bytes.) Built to a folder, Encore reports that it is writing 1.89 GB (really bytes), and the actual output folder size is 1,891,278,848.

My recollection now is that it may have been only bluray that was the subject of comments about Encore padding its predictions of size on disk. What we are seeing here is no padding.

[cvid01]

By going "immediately" to the build page, it's almost certain that most large projects would show as too large for the DVD. It usually takes a few minutes for Encore to "conform" the timeline when it is imported - at least, it does every time I import a new timeline.