Recording length

[homenetman]

New to DVD recording and all is going fairly well, but I'm not quite sure I understand recording length on DVDs. Here's the situation:

Transfered DV tape to computer using Sonic MyDVD. Used "best quality" in transfer process. When I then go to burn that onto a DVD-R (with Sony DRU-500AX), it appears I can only get about 1 hour of tape. Seems strange since I watch plenty of commercial DVDs with 2+ hours. I can use MyDVD's "better" (vs. "best") setting, but I can clearly see the quality hit when playing back a test DVD on my 32" JVC TV.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Morpheus]

Blank/recordable DVDs are Single sided, single layer DVDs which are 4.7GB. The movie DVDs that you buy are generally single sided, double layer which are 9.4 GB which could be up to 8(?) hours of video. ( what I have been told - I think it might be 4 hours since I have seen DVDs with three 1 hour tv episodes + extras per disc ).

If single sided/double layer gives you 8 hours then single sided/single layer will be 4 hours or if single sided/double layer gives you 4 hours then single sided/single layer will be 2 hours.

In either case, you should be able to get at least 2 hours of video on the disc. ( I am sorry that I couldn't be that much help. )

[onlyCOpunk]

What format did you capture your video to? Sorry I can't be of much either, but at www.doom9.org they have many guides on capturing video for DVD use, and how to get the best quality and the most time out of your disc.

[Morpheus]

I went ito Future Shop today and checked out their DVD recordable media. They had Memorex DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW - all 4 were 4.7 GB capacity. The DVD+RW and DVD+R are 2.5x with up to 4 hours of video (ep), DVD-RW is 2.5x and 2 hours of video, and the DVD-R is 2.5x and up to 4 hours of video (ep ) - or 2 hours of regular video. There are other brands like Maxell but I didn't check. They had another version of DVD+RW with a speed of 1x - 4x with the 2 hours / 4 hours of video.

I don't know if that is a standard of having a choice of 2 hours sp or 4 hours of ep. So I guess that answers your question - you should be getting 2/4 hours of video recording on a DVD.