118MB WMV convert to 1.37GB when importing in software

jldelondon wrote on 12/22/2008, 6:38 AM

Hi,

when I drag a 118MB WMV into Movie on DVD, it shows that the the size is 1.37GB.
Is there something I miss ?
Why a file is suddenly increased when imported.
Thanks fo any suggestions.

Comments

ralftaro wrote on 12/22/2008, 8:01 AM

Hi there,

Perfectly normal. No need to worry.

Basically, the disc usage estimation in the video program is calculated based on the length of the movie (in minutes) and the (default) MPEG-2 encoder bit rate setting. That's what is relevant to the encoding of the DVD, which you will probably perform in the end. It doesn't really matter here what your source material is and how highly compressed it is. What really matters is mostly how long that clip is. If you have a WMV, possibly with a low screen resolution and extremely high video compression, it might only take up 118 MB on your hard drive. However, it might still be 25 minutes of movie and will therefore take up considerably more space on your final video DVD.

You could create a data disc with WMV files on it, and thus get a whole lot of video on one single DVD. But that wouldn't be a standard video DVD that can be played on any DVD player. You would need a special multi-media player that can read data DVDs and decode WMV. These are available, though.