The 90 minute limit?

[Dennis R. Cohen]

On 7/23/03 at 1:36 PM, KathyMac! <Mac4Music at MusiCareOnline.org>
transmitted the following electronic message:

>Hi all,
>
>I am creating my first DVD. Have a dual 1ghz MDD G4 Tower with 
>SuperDrive and  22" Display.
>
>My first project is to transfer my Columbia House VHS collection of 
>Roseanne TV shows to DVD. Each VHS holds 4 episodes. This comes out to 
>be 5 or 10 minutes over the 90 minute limit of iDVD.
>
>Without editing the shows, is there a way around this yet? I would like 
>to put all 4 episodes on 1 DVD. Not 3 on one disc and 1 on another.
>
>What if I build the file in iDVD....can I then burn it from say DVD 
>Studio Pro instead (which I understand does not have the 90 time 
>limit?) or do I have to actually BUILD it in DVDSP first and skip iDVD 
>altogether?
>
>If I choose to get DVDSP to do my work (and I really don't want to) is 
>there anything special I need to know about creating my file in iMovie 
>3? How is it then exported for burning in DVDSP?
>
>I sure wish that Toast 6 was out about now....but then again, will it 
>also have a 90 minute time limit?
>
>Any help on this 90 minute limit would be appreciated. Work arounds for 
>how to build these files, which programs to use, and so on....
>
>Thanks so much..
>

You're not going to be able to work around it in iDVD. iDVD uses one of
two CBR (Constant BitRate) settings for its encoding. They give 60
minutes and 90 minutes on a DVD-R.

Toast 6, according to the MacCentral report, suggests September
availability. Without seeing the specs on its DVD encoding, I don't know
whether you could get more on a DVD; however, you could encode them to
DVD-compatible MPEG-2 using ffmpegX and burn the resultant MPEG-2 files
to a DVD in Toast 6, and I know you can fit more than 90 minutes worth
on that way. In fact, using ffmpegX to encode, Sizzle to author, and
Toast 5 to burn, I have gotten as much as 168 minutes on a DVD-R (it was
8 cartoons for my girlfriend's granddaughter, done mostly as an
experiment). Not for the faint of heart or those unwilling to use a
somewhat cumbersome interface, but workable.

You can find both ffmpegX and Sizzle on Version Tracker.

-- 
Dennis R. Cohen
Mac Digital Photography (Sept 2003)
iLife Bible
Mac OS X Bible
and other titles