==NOTES ON BURNING DISCS PART I==

The disc equation
Run time x bitrrate = storage
Run time x bitrrate <= storage

Storage is constant. By the time a disc rolls of the assambly line, nothing short of witchcraft/sorcery is going to give it more storage.

This means that run time your files can take is inversly proportional to their quality.

Now, for some ungodly reason, audio CDs (as in, the kind which play in every CD player ever, no questions asked) have a constant bitrrate quality as well, which ALSO makes the time constant. Specifically, audio CDs can only hold 80 minutes of music, period.

By contrast, video DVDs (the kind which play in every DVD player ever) let you pick the bitrate, provided that, when multiplied by the running lenght, it still fits into the 4.3-4.7 GB of storage. This means you can store absolutely ridiculous ammounts of video in a DVD, provided you don't mind a quality comparable to VCD, VHS, or worse. This explains how the official Those Who Hunt Elves DVDs give you 6 episodes per disc as opposed to the 3 usually found elsewhere; they just halved the quality.

A movie is usually 90 minutes. An episode is 22 on the average. I have seen 5 movies stored in a DVD at decent quality, and 13 episodes too (hooray for Peruvian piracy?). This gives me a quality treshold somewhere between 286 and 450 minutes. A lower bound, if you will. For comparison, the guys at the video help forums call 90 minutes good quality, 180 minutes decent quality, and anything else bad quality.

The size the files take up in your computer are ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT to this. You can burn an 2GB file or an 8GB file of a 90 minute movie to a DVD and they will both take up the whole thing and use the same bitrate either way. At most, file sizes provide an upper bound to the end quality (as they say, you can't add quality that doesn't exist/isn't there). So, for example, burning a single five minute video in order to get an awesome bitrrate is not going to do jack shit if the source is a 5 minute cat video downloaded from youtube; all it will do is preserve the compression artifacts with stunning fidelity/in amazing detail.

"Most standard length movies require 5 - 6 GB for full quality, with longer movies needing over 7 GB. It can be done with less, and a 90 minute movie can look good on a single layer disc, but put 2 movies in the space and the quality is noticeably lower."

"You should anticipate the conversion to mpeg-2 from Xvid/Divx avi to require an increase in size of 300 - 400% in order to retain close to the original quality, and 500 - 600 % to retain the original quality." Well, that explains why you are supposed to reserve one whole DVD for a 700 mb avi movie... I think? Or was that convention for data CDs?

For video DVDs, I should just burn at the highest natural grouping below the quality treshold. For example, both Gunsmith Cats (3 episodes) and Gundam 0080 (6 episodes) get 1 DVD each. If I can stomach 6 movies together then all 6 Star Wars episodes go in one disk; if not, then each trilogy gets its own disc. Most movies get one disc each. Death Note gets 3 discs (3 * 13 = 39). Each my Little Pony season gets 2 discs. And so on. While the Peruvian DVDs provide pretty good upper bounds on quality/lower bounds on the number of minutes I can accept per disc, I should experiment.

('Kay, just experimented. First, the 290 minute evangelion DVD is definitely higher quality than the 450 minute movie collection. Second, glasses on-off makes a big difference. I couldn't tell Eva wasn't high def without my glasses on. Okay, so I should watch without glasses, I guess? Wait, I just tried another of the 5 disc movies and it was comparable to Eva, if not better. Maybe it's just that it avoids close-ups? Or that I'm less familiar with it? Well, whatever, I'll just have to experiment some more.)

This also suggests an upper bound on the size of the movies/episodes I download. Since 1 movie per disc is the minimum, 700MB is the maximun size of a movie I should download. Likewise, since 3 episodes in one disc is the minimum, 233MB is the maximun episode size I should ever get.

Data CDs and DVDs are different. You can use the whole disc space, just like a thumb drive or an external hard drive. So you can have e.g. 6 700MB movies on a data DVD with no loss of quality, and several hours of mp3s on a data CD. The downside is that data CDs and DVDs only play in computers, or in special CD/DVD players which have a compatibility feature. CD players usually say "mp3" somewhere if they can play mp3 files straight from a data CD. Data DVD players are Divx/Xvid compatiable.






7.93GB
30-33
http://scenerules.irc.gs/t.html?id=2009_XViD.nfo
http://www.wondershare.com/dvd-tips/dvd5-vs-dvd9.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-R#Speed





==NOTES ON BURNING DISCS PART II==

Let's redo my notes on maximum time. 5 Anime Movies is a standard DVD has 2:02 + 1:16 + 1:12 + 1:28 + 1:26 = 444 minutes. My original estimate was 90*5 = 450 minutes. NOT BAD! Saint Movies has 48 + 1:23 + 46 + 1:14 + 43 = 250 also on a regular DVD.

Cowboy 2 has 5:17 = 317 on a standard DVD. Eva 2 on a normal DVD has 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 13 + 23 + 1:09 = 289 (but it was obviously supposed to be 299; the 13 is an episode that had half of it truncated). My original estimate was 22 * 13 = 286 rounded to 290. Again, not bad.

So, as far as high density pirated media goes, the highest I've seen is 444 and the smallest I've seen is 299 (the goddamn Seiya DVD doesn't count; short anime movies are a format of their own).

Now for legal, commercial media. Those Who Hunt Elves was NOT a normal DVD, but rather a double layer DVD. 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 + 23 = 138. So we can assume the highest level for a commercial normal DVD will be 69. We can test that... actually, no we can't, because both DNA Angel and Chobits were some kind of mutant discs which used 1.5 DVDs or something for 4 episodes. WHAT THE FUCK? On the plus side, I've confirmed that 23 is a MUCH better approximation for episode size than 22. MAYBE 23.5, but that might be pushing it. 90 minutes MIGHT be an overstimate for movies; 85 might be more appropiate. Or 80, actually.

Tremors is 95, Cobra is 86, Army of One is 106 etc... I think I'll stick with the original 90 minute estimate and move from 22 to 23. Short anime movies are estimated at 40.

Also, I was starting to think every non-huge commercial DVD used that weirdo 6 GB stuff, since Tremors also did, but Cobra and Army of One use the normal 4 GB.

So, for commercial, we can handle somewhere between 69 and 106. MAYBE 122, although Spirited Away was clearly a bit on the large side (and is officially apparently 124).

Hokay, so for pirate-quality DVD's we are talking about a 444 limit. That's 4.93 movies, 11.10 short anime movies, or 19.30 episodes. So 5, 11, 19.

For commercial-quality DVD's we are talking about a 106 limit. That's 1.17 movies, 2.65 short anime movies, or 4.61 episodes. IF we adopt the 122 limit, that's 1.36 movies, 3.05 short anime movies, and 5.3 episodes. So we should go with 1, 3, 5 methinks.

For internet pirate comrpomise DVD, we are talking about a 184 limit. That's 2.04 movies, 4.6 short anime movies, or 8 episodes.

These are natural divisions, not mandatory. So...

High density breakdown:
52 episode series are divided into 4 13 episode discs (or 3 with 17-17-18).
26 episode series are divided into 2 13 episode discs.
13 episode series and smaller have their own discs.
Movie decaloies get split into 2 5 movie discs.
Movie octologies get split into 2 4 movie discs.
Movie hexologies get split into 2 3 movie discs.
Movie tretralogies and trilogies get their own discs.
A movie and a sequel or remake gets its own disc.
A lone movie gets its own disc.

Internet Compromise Breakdown:
52 episode series are divided into 13 4 episode discs (or 6 with 9-9-9-9-8-8).
26 episode series are divided into 13 2 episode discs (or 3 with 8-8-9).
13 episode series are divided into 13 1 episode discs (or 2 with 6-7).
6 episode series and smaller have their own discs.
Movie decalodies get split into 5 2 movie discs.
Movie octologies get split into 4 2 movie discs.
Movie hexologies get split into 3 2 movie discs.
Movie tetralogies get split into 2 2 movie discs.
Movie trilogies get split into 1 1 movie discs.
A movie and a sequel or remake gets its own disc.
A lone movie gets its own disc.


Internet Compromise Breakdown 2:
52 episode series are divided into 13 4 episode discs (or 7 with 7-7-7-7-8-8-8).
26 episode series are divided into 13 2 episode discs (or 4 with 6-6-7-7).
13 episode series are divided into 13 1 episode discs (or 2 with 6-7).
6 episode series and smaller have their own discs.
Movie decalodies get split into 5 2 movie discs.
Movie octologies get split into 4 2 movie discs.
Movie hexologies get split into 3 2 movie discs.
Movie tetralogies get split into 2 2 movie discs.
Movie trilogies get split into 1 1 movie discs.
A movie and a sequel or remake gets its own disc.
A lone movie gets its own disc.

High quality breakdown:
52 episode series are divided into 13 4 episode discs (or 11 with 5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-4-4-4).
26 episode series are divided into 13 2 episode discs (or 6 with 5-5-4-4-4-4).
13 episode series are divided into 13 1 episode discs (or 3 with 4-4-5).
12 episode series are divided into 3 4  episode discs.
6 episode series are divided into 2 3 episode discs.
3 episode series have their own disc.
Movies get their own disc no matter what.

You know what? I think this is all going pretty strongly against the minimalist spirit of spending too much time and effort doing shit. Simply downloading goddamn ISOs and buying Pirate discs would be better. And a fucking Sharpie, too. The same approach probably works for games; better to pirate ISOs (do they work without a crack?) and buy old compilations than to pirate game after slow game.

Huh, interestingly, a guy who did the Friendship is magic season 1 split it into 3 DVDs, for 8-9 DVDs per disc, for a maximum of 184 minutes per DVD. I should totally download that one, BTW. Too bad it only has 1 seed.

Okaaaaaaay... it looks like DVD iso's are much, much rarer than ripped DVD movies. As in, unavaible for most movies. This suggests a couple of approaches.

1. Download DVD iso's which ARE availible, and download their ripped version as well. This is a horrible strategy; most movies in ISO are not even ones I want to watch.
2. Download rips, iso's where availible, burn everything into an ISO and YEAH RIGHT.

You know what? FUCK IT. One movie per DVD, including one fucking anime movie; that's fair. More to the point, that's fucking easier. I can develop a set of standard DVD flick settings and apply them to every ISO I make. I only make ISOs as I find them worthwhile.

For series, I will try high density methods first. If they produce an acceptable quality, GREAT. Otherwise, try compromise 2. If THAT produces an acceptable quality, GREAT. If not, try high quality.

Method			3 eps	6 eps	12eps	13 eps	26 eps	52 eps
Density			1	1	1	1	2	3
Compromise 1		1	1	2	2	3	6
Compromise 2		1	1	2	2	4	7
Quality			1	2	3	3	6	11

Method			3 eps	6 eps	12eps	13 eps	26 eps	52 eps
Density			1	1	1	1	2	3
Compromise 2		1	1	2	2	4	7
Quality			1	2	3	3	6	11

Also, I think I found a solution to the Saint's dilemma. Simply lable 1-26, 17-23, or whatver the fuck. It depards from the previously accepted method, but fuck them, that's what I'm doing.

...do I count from the beginning of Hades or fron the sagan? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Just label them as "Saint Hades (/) 1-26" or so. Look at other DVDs to find whether 2 line or 1 line style is more prevalent
Found some mini-cd wallet cases. Plan is to get

Apparently DVD flick doesn't let you put more than 286 minutes or so.

Huh, INTERESTING. Apparently, the Video CD (VCD) standard used 700 mb CDs. We know that CDs use 80 minutes of audio, fixed. A VCD apparently could house 80 minutes; I have no idea if this is fixed or just standard practice. Movies were distributed in 2 or 3 discs.










Okay, fuck this. Firstly, I've seen a standard pirate DVD hold 31 episodes. They looked like shit, but they held. That's 731 minutes, or 8.12 movies.

Second, flick DVD only allows you about 10 episode's worth (230 minutes) of time before requiring a complete screwing around with the settings. That's like 2.5 movies.

Third, I've seen pirate CDs containing a single movie. That's 0.7 GB per movie, or 6.71 movies for a standard DVD.

Fourth, screw it. The great burning project is just gonna piss me off. Buy a DVD which will take a USB drive or a data DVD or something.

On the plus side, Windows 7 comes with a nice ISO burner.

EDIT: DEFINITELY a data CD/DVD. Both play on an xvid/divx compatible dvd player, which is the only thing you should buy. Burn single CDs for movies and small ovas, and DVDs for series (about 26 episodes per DVD). Remember to check with the notebook to see what files play. I think only avi/mpg/mpeg/mp4 do, and nothing else, but its worth a try.