Incorrect Space Estimate from EyeTV

[Atlantic]

I have been taking recordings from EyeTV and burning them using Toast 8. When the programme is DVD-compliant in it's original broadcast format, this works really well, even if I have edited it first. The problem came when I started looking at the burned DVDs. They looked really "empty" (they weren't burned to the edge of the disc). I know that when you extract the MPEG files from EyeTV, the actual space used decreases, so I took two files that were just small enough to fit on a DVD burned directly (not through Toast). The space estimate indicator went orange, and if I tried to burn it, it said it needed more space than was available on the blank DVD. So then I burned it to a disc image (which worked fine) and tried to burn that using Toast 8 again. Now it said I was only using 3.5GB on the disc, which is nothing like full. That means the indicator is incorrect, as are the error dialogue boxes and I am wasting space on my discs when I burn them. Has anyone else seen this? Do we know if Roxio is going to fix it to allow us to use all the disc space?

 

Fortunately I don't try to burn dual layer discs. Imaging how frustrating it would be to insert a dual layer disc because Toast says it won't fit on a single layer, and yet it only burns one layer! The larger the disc, if the percentage inaccuracy is correct, the larger the space wasted.

 

I know some space difference comes from the fact that Toast completely ignores the subtitle files (I don't know if it picks up closed captioning in the US, but in Europe, it definitely ignores the files) so that saves some space. It also discards additional audio channels (it only records the one it wants to - you cannot record multiple audio tracks if the file comes from EyeTV) so in some cases that saves more space. Does anyone know what other "space fillers" are in EyeTV files?

[freshburn]

Toast bases the estimation off the Maximum bit rate. What I do is select custom encoding and adjust the maximum bit rate to match the average to see how much I can get on the disc.

 

If the content isn't encode and just multiplexed, this will work fine. If the content is re-encoded, then after you add your content rest the max bit rate and save as a disc image instead.

 

You can fill the disc this way.

[Atlantic]

Thanks for that. It seems like a lot of "fun" to check the average bit rate of all the items I am putting on the DVD, then multiply all the averages by the lengths and get an overall average, then adjust the maximum bit rate in the custom section to match this, and then see if I can burn the DVD?

 

Since my material is only multiplexed, not encoded, if I mix encoded with multiplexed-only, and set the maximum bit rate to be the average of the pre-encoded file, am I not going to mess up the encoding of the remaining files?

 

Is there any easy way to find out the average bit rate of a pre-encoded piece, or is it just taking the length and the file size and dividing it out (though in EyeTV files, the video is mixed with multiple audio tracks so you can't actually see the size of the video track easily)? I can't seem to see the information either in Toast or in EyeTV.

 

Here's an example of five items that fit on if I encode to image then re-encode:

Toast error message for direct encode: There's not enough free space on this disc: 6.23 GB are needed, 4.38 GB are available.

Information in EyeTV:

File 1: 41 minutes 1.2GB

File 2: 41 minutes 1.2GB

File 3: 42 minutes 1.2GB

File 4: 41 minutes 1.2GB

File 5: 41 minutes 1.2GB

 

So Toast seems to use the size of the files from EyeTV, though I know that if I export them from EyeTV to an MPEG programme stream they will be significantly smaller.

 

I just tried adjusting the maximum bit rate on the custom encoding section (and the average bit rate, too) but I still got an identical message. It does look like Toast is looking at the original EyeTV files, not at the parts of the EyeTV files it will actually use during the process (it doesn't notice it will be discarding a lot of it, such as the subtitles?). Has anyone else found a way around this? I don't want to re-encode the video streams since it will lose quality compared to the original MPEG broadcast on digital TV.