Double Sided DVD R discs? (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

I just received my DVD Writer, as mentioned in another topic, and I am begining to capture material for my first test disc. Heh, I should also save up for a new hard drive, because ten gigabytes won't cut it .
But, a question. I've been reading my instruction booklet and I'll be able to fit 3 hours of stuff on one disc. But, if they made double sided, I'd naturally be able to fit 6 hours instead....
Anyone know if these exist?

 

[Ken Chan]

Verbatim makes double-sided DVD-R and DVD-RAM, although the DVD-R only comes in a 50-pack(!). DV Direct is one place that sells them.
How much you can fit on one side depends on the bitrate. 3 hours is pretty low quality.
//Ken

 

[John_Berger]

{COUGH!!!} {GAG!!!} {SPLUTTER!!!!}
Are they out of their @&*@#$*%@ minds?!!!!
$1,100 for 50 double-sided DVD-Rs?! Holy Mother of God! That's over $20 a piece! Considering that regular DVD-Rs can be found for less than $2 each, what the hell are they thinking?! (Yes, yes, I know. New technology, very rare at this point, blah, blah.)

Screw that! I'd rather pay $5 for two DVD-Rs and put them in a dual-DVD case that costs about $2.50!!
Damn! I have to get myself cleaned up now.

 

[KyleS]

John I understand where you are coming from but it was less then 6 months ago when DVD-R discs were that price or more. It just takes a little bit for mass production to start and the price will come down. Same with the DVD burners they started well over 1K and now they are under $300 (for your computer).

KyleS

 

[Jeff Kleist]

1,100 for 50 double-sided DVD-Rs?! Holy Mother of God! That's over $20 a piece! Considering that regular DVD-Rs can be found for less than $2 each, what the hell are they thinking?! (Yes, yes, I know. New technology, very rare at this point, blah, blah.)

The price will go down

Personally, I would buy yourself an 80GB HD, that will be enough to comfortably do DVDs. 100min is the most I'd do on a single layer

 

[John_Berger]

100min is the most I'd do on a single layer

I get skittish going below a video bit rate of 4,000 but it actually didn't turn out too badly. For my one project I generated a 140 minute DVD at about 3,700 video bit rate (I really do not like disc switching) but created a VHS master DVD at 10,000 -- DVD-RW, of course. Even the 3,700 bit rate DVD looked better than the VHS generated from the 10,000 bit rate master.
It's too bad that the home consumer will probably never see dual-layer DVD writing technology.

 

[DeathStar1]

Personally, I would buy yourself an 80GB HD, that will be enough to comfortably do DVDs. 100min is the most I'd do on a single layer >>

Yep, 7200 RPM Maxtor 80 GB Hard Drive is the final thing on the list. First to be replaced this year was motherboard(due to old one dying), TV Tuner was next, now the CD Writer was upgraded to the DVD Writer just the other day. HD is next on the list.

I'm STILL trying to figure out how I can backup all of my files on the DVD RW disc they sent me properly. Easy enough to do on a CDR, apparently on a DVD R is a bit more complicated...

 

[John_Berger]

I'm STILL trying to figure out how I can backup all of my files on the DVD RW disc they sent me properly. Easy enough to do on a CDR, apparently on a DVD R is a bit more complicated...

Not really. It depends on the software that they send. My Pioneer came with a software package from Prassi (called PrimoDVD, I believe) that acts the same way as Easy CD Creator - drag the files into the list and write. Done.

In fact, you'll find that this is the best way to write DVDs. First, write the ISO directory structure to your hard drive, then write the directory structure to create the DVD. That way you don't have to re-render, demux, blah, blah, more than once becuase the directory is there.

 

[Brian-W]

Double sided DVD-R (9.4GB)
http://dvdr4less.com/cgi-bin/smart_c...ry=dvd%20media
50 pack = $289
Do a search on the web, there are plenty of other dealers that sell double sided DVD-R for less than DV Direct.

 

[John_Berger]

That's still a chunk of change to throw out at once, but it's certainly more reasonable. It still begs the question of which is better at this point since two DVD-Rs are still cheaper than one DS DVD-R.
Do they also supply inner ring labels to identify which side is A and which side is B?

 

[DeathStar1]

Well, I finally figured out how to properly backup files on a DVD. Although, I mucked up on the DVD R they gave me, so I can't try and create my first DVD Video yet. I was using the wrong #$@# program for the Data backup...

 

[John_Berger]

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you use DVD-RW for testing! I have not had a DVD player fail with a DVD-RW that didn't fail with a DVD-R! I can honestly say that I have NEVER made a coaster by testing on DVD-RW first, and compared to CD-Rs, DVD-Rs are expensive coasters.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I get skittish going below a video bit rate of 4,000 but it actually didn't turn out too badly. For my one project I generated a 140 minute DVD at about 3,700 video bit rate (I really do not like disc switching) but created a VHS master DVD at 10,000 -- DVD-RW, of course. Even the 3,700 bit rate DVD looked better than the VHS generated from the 10,000 bit rate master.

When I got my DVD burner my first project was to convert my laserdisc of a certain highly requested not-on-DVD-til-2006 movie from 1977. I captured it to Mini-DV using a Mini-DV deck, then I firewired the Mini-DV into the computer. Then a little bit of editing to put the three laserdisc sides back together before encoding to MPEG. It's not the best approach but it's what I have at my disposal. (I'm not sure if DV's 4:1:1 chroma upsampling can fully capture the color of laserdisc, but encoding 4:2:0 MPEG from 4:1:1 DV results in the worst aspects of both, effectively 4:1:0.) I encoded using TMPGEnc and if I remember correctly my target bit rate was about 4500. The movie is about 125 minutes and I have DVDit PE as well as Dolby Digital encoding software, so the audio was 256 kbps DD 2.0 instead of 1.5 Mbps PCM. The 1.3 Mbps difference gets added to the video bitrate and that helps a lot. I used two-pass encoding so that TMPGEnc would allocate more bits when they are most needed and less bits when they're not. Plus I had TMPGEnc remove 3:2 pulldown and encode progressive frames instead of interlaced. Both of those steps also help wring more quality out of the bits available.

The result was very good. I'm sure if I compared it with the laserdisc I'd notice some things but there's nothing obvious without a comparison. I can see the inherent flaws of analog laserdisc and the flaws of the film (such as unstable colors) but I don't notice any digital flaws.

Anyway, I don't think I'd spend more than twice the price for a double-sided DVD-R. But I don't look for the cheapest DVD-R brand either. I'll pay a little more for a brand I know won't result in a coaster after spending the better part of a week on prepping the video.

 

[John_Berger]

But I don't look for the cheapest DVD-R brand either

Honestly, I've bought nothig but generics, and I have yet to have a problem with either their DVD-Rs or DVD-RWs. Keep in mind that the majority of "brand name" CD/DVD media are manufactured by the same six or seven companies with their name (thus the extra cost) stamped on them.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

DV is 25 megabits and it's more or less the same as MPEG with all I-frames, except for the 4:1:1 subsampling. But not all DV encoders have the same quality. Were you using something with a DV encoder chip or was it depending on a software codec (typically Microsoft's)? A hardware encoder is almost always better than software, one exception is Canopus which has an excellent software DV codec.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Microsoft's DV codec is horrific

Canopus has a superb one, as does Pinnacle. Don't forget, you're more paying for that codec than the hardware

 

[Andy Olivera]

I captured it to Mini-DV using a Mini-DV deck, then I firewired the Mini-DV into the computer. Then a little bit of editing to put the three laserdisc sides back together before encoding to MPEG. It's not the best approach but it's what I have at my disposal.

You'd probably get better results by running the Laserdisc directly into your video card. That way, you wouldn't have two generations of lossy compression.

PS. I've no experience with this, so I don't know how practical it is(space considerations). You said you knew how to edit multiple files together, so you could just rip, say, 15 minutes at a time. It would take longer, but I'm guessing the quality would be greatly improved...

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Like I said, it's what I have at my disposal. I could bring a little Mini-DV deck to my HT, or I could bring my huge laserdisc player to the DV editing station and capture straight to the hard disk. Either way, it had to go to DV because I don't have anything that can capture MPEG-2. And if I did, there's no chance that it could capture in realtime at the target bit rate to fit a two hour movie on a single layer DVD (~4500 Kbps) with the same quality as what TMPGEnc can do with variable bit rate, making two passes, removing 3:2 pulldown, and being allowed to take its sweet time to do the job. There's a definite trade-off between quality and speed.

And I didn't see any obvious digital artifacts despite going through two codecs. The unavoidable single generation of analog video and the general shortcomings of the laserdisc format such as the poor chroma bandwidth are more obvious. I could be wrong but I think the 4:1:1 chroma subsampling of DV is still good enough to capture all of the laserdisc chroma.

 

[Ken Chan]

You wouldn't have to capture in real-time into MPEG-2. You could capture into AVI with a good analog capture card and a lossless codec, then take your time to encode that to MPEG. To do it in one pass, you'd only need a hundred gig or so
//Ken

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

The editing system that's available to me does only DV. Believe me, I didn't overlook any opportunities to gain more quality.