Loqutisofborg wrote:
1 - the position of the layer break itself.
2 - the transcode status of the video files, and
3 - the amount of content on the disc.
Both (2) and (3) will affect (1), and you could even add a subset of (3) stating the "sequence or order timelines were added to the project".
Are you saying the order I build my project can determine if a layer break will work? Should I place my long 2 hour movie in the project first and then place all my bonus video and then place all my menus?
My movie timeline takes up 4.3 GBs of space The remaining files take an additional 4 GBs of space
Absolutely!
The way I would do this is as follows - firstly, plan your project out on paper in the first instance. This really helps.
Next import your assets - all of them - but as assets & not timelines (yet).
Create your First Play item next (assuming it is a movie clip & not a menu - if a menu do not worry as menus tend to get written first anyway), followed by your main timeline, and finally the extras. Why? Encore creates the VTS files on the disc in the order they are created by turning each timeline into a VTS in it's abstraction layer.
Your other issue is how much stuff actually fits onto a disc in the real world, and you are sailing very close to the wind here with the content you're adding.
A DVD9 does not - and cannot - hold the 8.5GB it advertises on the wrapper because DVD gigabytes are smaller than computer gigabytes, as shiny disc uses multiples of 1,000 instead of 1024 and this adds up - dramatically.
Best way to work it all out is to bit budget manually.....and at 4.3Gb your layer break will definitely be in the main title.
With video, you can set OTP or PTP for the layers (Opposite Track Path & Parallel Track path) and when a break is in a piece of footage OTP is the only one that makes sense.
OTP plays layer 0 from inside to out, refocusses & goes back the other way for Layer 1. PTP runs from inside to out on both layers.
Some more considerations:
1 - Layer 0 cannot be larger than Layer 1
2 - Layer 0 cannot exceed 4.2Gb - this is really important because Layer 1 must be smaller, so there goes 100Mb right away.
3 - Factor in 4% overhead to allow for navigation & menu elements
4 - Using IMGburn may or may not produce the same Layer Break options as Encore, especially if loading the ISO file as it may not use the same start sector as Encore.
5 - You will get better results with Encore by only feeding it DVD Compliant files, and not letting it transcode anything. This requires bit budgeting though (see below)
Mastering for Replication:
Personally, I would simply not trust Encore to set the LB properly. I know it is difficult to do this automatically especially if the assets are untranscoded and Encore is creating the final M2V and AC3 files as the best it can really do is "guess" at the final file sizes. Even Scenarist only gives you the best guess at this, and that only accepts correctly formatted files, because the real test is in the final multiplexing. There is good news though, and that is a wonderful tool called PGCEdit. I honestly cannot recommend grabbing this highly enough (and please donate at least $15 - it is worth it for the extremely rapid email support, and Roz has done us all a great service with this app) as it is THE swiss army knuife for DVD - you can edit everything. Literally. Setting the Layer Break is as simple as checking a box within the range indicated & to set a legal break there must be a chapter point for it to go on - no chapter point or title start within the range, and it will all fall apart on you. PGCEdit also allows you to correct any navigational issues, menu colours, add/remove buttons, change end actions/routing and basically allows you to edit all parts of the disc. It previews & will also write a disc.
Manual Bit Budgeting.
DVD9 = 8,500,000,000 (bits) x 8 (bits/bytes) / 1,000,000 (bits/megabits)
= 68000 MegaBits available on disc.
Overheads. 68000 x 0.96 (we allow 4% for overheads) = 65280 MegaBits available.
Now for asset calculations.
PCM Audio = Sample Rate x Bit Depth x 60 (seconds per minute) x (minutes run time) x 2 (channels) / 1000 = total space used in MegaBits.
Subtract from first total to get remainder.
AC3 audio = 0.192Mbits (stereo) to 0.448Mbits (maximum allowed for codec), so multiply fixed value by 60 and then by the minutes run time to get result in MegaBits.
Subtitles = 0.08Mits/second
DTS Audio = either as for PCM stereo at full bitrate or half for half bitrate.
Video.
Add up all other stuff, subtract from initial total in megabits to get you the remaining available space.
Work out running time in seconds, and then divide the total megabits remaining by this run time in seconds to get your target encode rate for the MPEG-2.
It sounds complicated but it isn't, really. Once you have done this a few times it gets a lot easier.
Hope this helps, and give me a shout if you need more details?