I am making multiple DVD's of roughly 50 hours of footage on DVD Studio pro with 4 separate menus for 4 different 'parts' or series if you will. 50 hours - 20 episodes - 4 parts of 5 episodes each. What are my options in terms of burning these parts on to

Question

I am making multiple DVD's of roughly 50 hours of footage on DVD Studio pro with 4 separate menus for 4 different 'parts' or series if you will. 50 hours - 20 episodes - 4 parts of 5 episodes each. What are my options in terms of burning these parts on to separate DVD's, what is the process, what size DVD RW should I buy, what bitrate should I use, and what quality I should expect for the burn. Any advice or insight is welcome.

Answer 1

>>What are my options in terms of burning these parts on to separate DVD's<<
20 episodes totaling 50 hours equals about 2.5 hours per episode assuming all episodes have the same duration.  Fitting 2.5 hours onto one single layer DVD would require a low bit rate which means quality wouldn't be anywhere near best, but that's a judgement call you'll have to make based on several factors.  For example; if there is not much motion in the video (talking heads, etc), you can get by with a lower bit rate and may not notice any quality difference.
>>what is the process>>
The process is essentially the same as it is when authoring a regular DVD with 2 hours or less of content.  However, with as many discs as you'd need to complete this "set," you'll need to create a separate DVD Studio Project for each disc.  Basically, you'd use one of Compressor's DVD Presets (or customize a preset) to create an MPEG--2 video file (.m2v) and a Dolby Digital audio file (.AC3).  Import both of those assets into your DVD Studio Pro project for authoring and burning.
If you want to keep one episode per disc, DVD Studio Pro does have a 150 minute preset or you could use dual-layer discs with a higher bit rate for better quality.  Again; your call.
>>what size DVD RW should I buy<<
Size?  12cm.  Capacity?  Single layer, single sided DVD discs (DVD-5) have a rated capacity of 4.7Gb (4.37Gb actual), including menus.  If you use single layer discs and want to keep the quality reasonably good, you'd need at least 50 discs to complete this "set" with each disc holding roughly 2 hours of footage if you keep the menu on each disc simple.  Or, you could use dual-layer discs (DVD-9) which have a capacity of about 7.95Gb - almost doubling the recordable capacity.  There are also dual-sided, dual-layer discs available (DVD-18) but they are relatively expensive and have to be manually turned over to continue playback ... but they do have roughly 15.9Gb capacity.
>>what bitrate should I use, and what quality I should expect for the burn<<
Exactly; the quality is dependent on the bit rate chosen, as well as the quality of the compression.  Using compression markers where needed can greatly increase the quality of playback but will most likely increase the file size of the compressed video.  For the best quality, keeping the bit rate  as high as possible allowed under the DVD specification will yield the best quality but some DVD players may choke if the bit rate is too high.  For best quality I typically aim for a bit rate around 7.6 to 8.0Mbps but that will only allow about one hour of footage.
Naturally, if you decrease the bit rate, you can fit more footage onto the disc but quality will be sacraficed.   Here's a chart approximating DVD bit rates and durations for single layer discs (does not include space for menus):
3.5Mbps - 120 minutes
5.0Mbps -   95 minutes
6.0Mbps -   82 minutes
7.6Mbps -   65 minutes
8.0Mbps -   60 minutes
-DH