[MPlayer-users] size of dvd movies

[Corey Hickey]

christopher j bottaro wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> hello,
> how big is a typical 90 minute, 120 minute, and 180 minute dvd movie?  i'm in 
> the market for a dvd burner and at first i was all excited that i could make 
> divx's with a very high bitrate.  but now i'm thinking, can't i just burn the 
> original dvd somehow so i can just watch the burned copies in normal dvd 
> players?  dvd-r's hold about 4.5 GB...
> 
> thanks for the info,
> -- christopher
> 

I've been messing with re-encoding my DVDs lately, and have -dumpstream
dumps of the main title for several of them. The smallest one is 4.2GB,
and they range up to 8.2GB (don't have enough to say the median or
mean).

If I were you, I'd just make avi with very high quality lavc and the
original AC3 audio. Also bear in mind that a highly tuned lower-bitrate
lavc encode can look better than a higher-bitrate encode with default
settings. I originally ripped my Fellowship of the Ring dvd at a bitrate
of 1000, rather than 800, 'cause I liked it that much. Then I spent a
long time learning about the advanced options of lavc, and now I can
encode at 800 and get better visual quality than I did at 1000.

If anyone's curious, here are the options I've found work well for color
non-animated movies that don't have much graininess (I have a grainy one
that ends up looking kind of "shimmery" with the lavcopts below; any
tips would be welcome).

Anyway, this line is for the DVD I've tested to death:
for i in 1 2 ; do mencoder -dvd 1 -vop scale=720:304,crop=720:359:0:58 \
-sws 1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:vhq:v4mv:trell:\
precmp=3:cmp=3:subcmp=3:vmax_b_frames=1:qpel:vlelim=-2:vcelim=7:\
lumi_mask=0.05:naq:vqcomp=0.7:mbcmp=2:psnr:vpass=$i -oac copy -ofps \
23.976 -o pass$i.avi ; done

I'm sure that can be improved a bunch, but it looks good. ...and takes
forever to encode, so it must be good, right? ;) Again, tips/pointers
are welcome.

I guess I drifted the topic a bit...

-Corey