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700Mb video turns into 5Gb video in iDVD

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I'm trying to burn a video of mine onto a dvd. the video file itself is only 700mb but when i put it into iDVD the project becomes a 5Gb file and thus will not burn onto my 4.7 Gb dvd's. I have managed to reduce the size to 4.5Gb but the only options for dvd types are 4.2 gb and 10gb dual layer dvd's. I use 4.7gb single layer dvd's but since i have the 4.2gb dvd selected in project info it won't burn to the dvd. why should a 700Mb video become 5Gb in iDVD? is there another way of burning my video to dvd so it is viewable on a television?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Late 2013 rMBP, i7, 750m gpu, OSX versions 10.9.3, 10.10
It's not the size of the file perse, but rather the length of the video. If the video is 1.5-3 hours, you need to find a way to increase the compression ratio to fit it on a single DVD. chances are, iDVD is encoding at a higher bit ratio (ie: 5.0 Mbps average) and is causing the file to be too large, unless it's a very long video.

iDVD is kind of limiting - there may be a way to force higher compression, but I honestly don't know how (xstep knows a lot more about iDVD then I do, and might be able to pipe in as to whether it can be done or not). Other options you have are:

Convert the video file into an mpeg2 file for video and ac3 file for audio yourself using some 3rd party converter that would give you more control over the average bitrate. Depending on the conversion package, you may need to obtain the mpeg2 plugin from Apple.

Use a different authoring program that might offer more options for compression.

Some options you have for authoring:

Roxio Toast (costs money) - not sure how much control there is over average bit rate, I don't use toast for authoring, but many here do.
Burn (free) - once again, not sure how much control there is over average bit rate, I don't use burn for authoring.
Moviegate (costs money, cheaper than toast) - there is a slider control to adjust the average bitrate per video file added to the dvd project.
 

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