Burning a final project

[Guest]

I have been doing a lot of research on burning DVD's and most of the
information I have come across seems quite confusing. My finished projects
will be about 118 minutes long. I have purchased a Iomega DVD burner, and it
comes with Sonic MyDVD software. I have saved my 7 projects (which I hope to
burn onto 1 DVD) as DV-AVI files (which have taken up a lot of space on my
computer). I now need to know if it will be possible to 1. burn them all onto
1 DVD, and as I will be making about 13 copies, 2. the simplest way to burn
this many of them. Any help or links to websites that speak to me in simple,
beginner-comptuer language would be great. Thanks in advance,

 

[Wojo]

Hi Leanne. Thank you, you gave me an idea for the next How-To section to
write up for my website (multiple DVD's).
As far as your question 118 minutes is really pushing it for a single DVD
but you can make it fit and hopefully without too much quality loss, you
simply need to adjust/lower the quality settings in your DVD software until
it will fit. I can't tell you exactly how to do that since I no longer have
Sonic installed on any of my computers and I don't know what version your
using to begin with. I will say though that if you are putting that much
video on one DVD then you really need to limit what you do with the menu as
that will take up space as well. I really would recommend either splitting
your project onto two DVD's or, if your burner can do it, try using a dual
layered DVD. If you try the dual layered DVD make one and test it in your
DVD player before making any more as they are expensive and apparently not
always reliable.

As far as burning multiple copies of a DVD there are a couple options.
One is to wait until you have a day clear with nothing to do and simply do
them one at a time. The first DVD will take longer as that's when the
converting and menu creating will take place. After the first one you should
have an option to make another disk. This and all the remaining disks will
be created and burned much faster since the conversions etc... have already
been done.
The 2nd option is for if you do not have the time to sit there and create
all your DVD's in one sitting. Many of the higher quality DVD authoring
programs give you an option of burning to a DVD or creating an ISO file. An
ISO file is basically a copy of your DVD compressed into one file that the
DVD program is able to read and use to create a DVD. Once your ISO is
created you can open it with your DVD software and create however many DVD's
you have time to do right then and you can always come back later and open
the ISO file again later to make more. As above once the ISO is created
making a DVD doesn't take as long. I hope this helps, give me a week or so
and I will try to get a detailed How-To up on my site.
--
Wojo's Place:
http://wojos-web.tk
Also Please visit.....
http://www.remember-christopher.dostweb.com/christopher/
Dedicated in loving memory of our son Christopher Lee

 

[Guest]

Thanks Wojo,
I have another question now. (I finally figured out that I can search in
this newsgroup, and it has been a big help.) But after this research, I am
now worried about my...hard drive space?? while I try to burn these DVD's. My
computer only has 14GB of free space left (my videos took up 23.9GB just by
themselves - I only have 55.8GB capacity) Is this going to be enough to
convert (?) these files and burn them. I am planning on splitting up the
movie and making 2 DVD's.

 

[Wojo]

No 14GB is not likely to be nearly enough space to convert and create a DVD.
Spending more money may not be something you want to do but hard drives are
really inexpensive these days and a 55GB hard drive simply won't go very far
if your at all serious about video editing. I personally have dual 160GB
drives which is more than sufficient for most people and even overkill for
many. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. you could defrag to free up some
space but that still isn't going to be enough I'm afraid.
--
Wojo's Place:
http://wojos-web.tk
Also Please visit.....
http://www.remember-christopher.dostweb.com/christopher/
Dedicated in loving memory of our son Christopher Lee

 

[Guest]

Hmmm....if Leanne has 7 projects to make up the 118 minutes of video and they
are still available from all the source files.....could she not delete the 23
gig full movie and first replace it with, say, the first 4 projects and
render a 12 gig movie to burn on the first dvd with increased hard drive
space. And then delete that movie, and render the last 3 projects as the
second half of the movie and burn the second dvd.

If you want to keep the movie on your computer, you could then delete the
second half, and pull in your projects to MM2 and save them in high quality
ntsc rather than dv-avi for a much smaller size file..... just an
idea.....make sure you have your projects before you start deleting anything
though.....or you'll learn the hard way!! ha ha ha

 

[Wojo]

Sure she could do that. Although I got a little dizzy just reading it.

 

[Guest]

So let me get this straight...I still have all my source files for my
projects, yes, and my projects are saved as MM files. So, I could delete the
DV-AVI saved movies for the last 3, feeing up space for me to burn the first
4. Then I could go back, delete the DV-AVI files for the first 4, and then
save the last 3 as DV-AVI files and burn those on the second DVD? Do you
think this would give me enough hard drive space to burn all of this?

 

[Guest]

I think so. At the risk of making Wojo get a headache I admit you did a
better job at explaining it than I did! ha ha First open Movie Maker and
see if your projects are the full representation of your movie as you
rendered it. That would show you that you can always recreate your movie.
I figure if your movie in total was about 24 gig that approximately half of
it would be only 12 gigabyte. That means you would then have 26 gig
remaining for disk space (12+14)....that should be enough to author and burn
the 12 gig movie. (handing Wojo an aspirin for this convoluted
description...ha ha)