Movies on DVD 7 - cutting AVI / Mpg

hoopy1888 wrote on 7/21/2009, 10:40 AM

Hi there,

Just got this software and quite impressed by the wealth of options. However, when capturing my old video tapes (comedy shows from the 80s and 90s) I am capturing around 6 episodes in one file. I'm using .mpg as the magix file type is giving audio sync problems.
How do I then split this .mpg file into the 6 episodes and give them seperate names so that they appear as this when I go to burn the DVD.

Also on another topic, is it possible for the software to shrink the files to fit on one disk. I wasn't able to do it and i'm getting confused by it all.

Thanks

Comments

ralftaro wrote on 7/22/2009, 5:05 AM

Well, if you capture several episodes as one consistent MPEG file into the timeline, the first thing you would have to do is break up that long object into several individual ones. This can be done by placing the cursor at the split positions and pressing "T" on the keyboard. (Make sure to work in timeline mode for all of this.) After separating the episodes, open the "Movie" drop-down list underneath the preview monitor and use the "New movie" command or the Control+N shortcut on the keyboard. When you do this for the first time, you will be prompted if you want to close the movie or switch to multi-movie project mode. Choose "Don't close". A new, empty movie will be open, but the first one will remain in the project. Use the "Movie" drop-down list to switch back to the first movie and copy/cut the second object/episode via the Copy/Cut commands in the "Edit" menu or via the usual Winows shortcut (Control+C/Control+X). Switch to the second, empty move again and use the "Paste" function to insert the episode you've just taken out of the first movie. Open another new movie in the project, get the next object/episode from the first movie, switch to the third movie again, paste it into the movie and so on. Keep repeating this for each episode until you've spread out the initial recording over six movies in your project.

If you switch to the DVD authoring now, you will see that every episode/movie is now represented by one entry in the main disc menu. This is what I understand you were looking to do.

As far as compression/shrinking of the video data is concerned, you already compressed the data pretty well when you decided to capture to MPEG-2. They're basically already in DVD format now. However, with the default bitrate you used, the compression level will possibly not be high enough to fit six episodes of a TV show onto one single-layer DVD. (Based on the assumption that each episode is at least 20 to 30 minutes long.) The default bit rate will fit like 90 minutes onto a normal DVD blank. You could consider using a dual-layer DVD blank or you can change the MPEG encoder settings in the final DVD-encoding/burning stage to re-compress the material even more to fit two to three hours onto a single-layer DVD. You might start seeing some quality loss here, though.

I hope this helps!