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Burning a 2+ hours DVDs

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[tried using the Search, Google but could not find the answer]

Guys, I need little help over here. I need to create a DVD with more than 2 hours of video. I know it is possible, but iDVD does not let me do this. Please help, cause burning 2 episodes of a TV show per DVD doesn't sound like a good idea )
Thank you!
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Late 2013 rMBP, i7, 750m gpu, OSX versions 10.9.3, 10.10
You will either need to:

1) increase your compression ratio to reduce the size of a given video (and reduce the quality) - iDVD is limited as to how much it will reduce I think - I don't use it normally. You may want to try a different tool to create your mpeg2 video and ac3/pcm/aiff audio for idvd, or try a different dvd authoring package that will give more flexibility on compression

2) Use dual layer dvds roughly doubling your storage capacity (it's not fully double, but it's close enough)

Option 1 will degrade video quality the more you compress it so you'll have to ask yourself how crappy do you want the video to look just so you can fit more per dvd? having your Mac hooked up to the tv might be a better option as then you wouldn't have to burn a crap load of DVDs if you have a lot of episodes (assuming it's not for someone else of course).
 
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antondubai
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Nethfel, thanks for advice.
Can you also suggest some software? freeware preferably...

I'm sure there must be a way to create a DVD with more than two hours of video in board without loosing quality significantly.
Because think this, I bought LOST existing Seasons, and it is like a DVD per season, and they are Single Layer, but there are around 10 episodes per disk, 40mins*10episodes=400mins/60 = around 7 hours of video per DVD in pretty satisfying quality. How did they do it? Because I have here another TV Show, and would like to burn it, so I can watch it on big screen.
and I don't think my iMac can be connected to TV, right?

thanks again for help! ;)
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Late 2013 rMBP, i7, 750m gpu, OSX versions 10.9.3, 10.10
For the LOST season, I doubt they are on single layer. Single sided, yes - single layer, probably not - even so they are heavily compressing the video - they are probably also using a professional service that can tweak the compression in such a way to get the best quality out of each frame with the most compression. Basically doing a job that you or I could probably never do :D

I think your iMac has a mini displayport - if you have an HD TV, you might be able to get a mini displayport -> HDMI cable or at least you can get a mini displayport -> DVI then a DVI -> HDMI cable (unless of course if your tv has a dvi or vga input you can just get the appropriate adapter and plug it straight in.) Or you can do what I did, buy a mac mini and turn it into your HT pc, or you can get an Apple TV unit and make your videos into mp4s, get them into ITunes and sync them to the appletv unit, or you can get a WD HT unit (can't remember the name) and put the videos onto a thumb drive and plug the thumb drive into the WD and play the videos....

In terms of getting it encoded differently - the only option I can think of for Mac, which is unfortunately not free, is ffmpegx - but you can try it out to see if it will work for you (I've used it a few times, takes a bit to get used to the settings). Another option (not free again unfortunately) is moviegate. My favorite converters (mpegstreamclip and handbrake) won't do mpeg2 (dvd video).

Another option:
If you have bootcamp setup, or a vm setup with windows, you can try MediaCoder (mediacoderhq.com) - it is free, and supports outputting to dvd. You can try to run it under darwine but I don't know how well it will work. It's another fairly comprehensive converter, a little complicated - but also really only for windows - although evidently some success has been found using windows emulators like Darwine.
 

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