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How many of ya'll are burning movies? I read on another post that most DVD movies run larger than 4.7GB...

I tried doing a search on it, but I found nothing relating to this topic...

This is a concern for me since, this is the main reason why I ordered the Sony DRU500A drive in the first place...

Regards,

Khanh

Look at dvdxcopy for help on that. It would be better understand the current copyright laws as well. Most DVDs are 6+GB.

Most hollywood DVDs are larger than 4.7 gb but you shouldn't forget once you rip them for making your "backup" it gets smaller. The rip can remove large menus and other promotions which we don't need. Then you can remove the other languages such as french if the dvd had those. Then you can encode it to mpeg2 which will further shorten the size a little bit. Then if it's still large, I would cut the names at the end (trust me the list is long in every movie). And if it still doesn't fit, then buy a double sided disc and burn it on that.
Formats such as blu-ray which promise more storage are not out yet, so we got to work with what we have.

coolestnitish wrote:Then you can encode it to mpeg2 which will further shorten the size a little bit.

Actually, to clarify that, you could re-encode it in mpeg2 with more compression to get the file size down a bit. DVD video is always mpeg2. Sorry, had to nitpick

I guess you should visit Doom9.org for ripping tools.

You can rip the movie with Smart Ripper, with these files:

VTS_00 stuff
VTS_01 stuff
Main Movie (Many Gigs)

If the movie is to big for a 4.7GB disk then you can split it into two disks with IFO Edit.

rulez wrote:I guess you should visit Doom9.org for ripping tools.

Rulez,

I read the tutorial, and it seems to be pretty straight forward. Although, it does not mention anything about taking out extra stuff like commentaries and special edited scenes.

Is it possible to take those out?

You can unselect everything but the main movie PGC and select audio track.

Actually I usually have trouble filling up the DVD when using CCE. I also strip out the unwanted stuff but that seems to be a small part of the size reduction. I do that just because I don't want that material on the DVD. The real reduction comes with the Q factor in CCE. I have made some very tiny movies that still had great quality. The only one that I can remember that suffered quality probems (and it started out as a Beta tape so it already was not DVD quality) was a Super Bowl game that I wanted to convert to DVD for obvious reasons. It started out being 13 gigabit and I put it on a 4.3 gigabit disc. I had to use a Q of 200 in CCE. Yes it did fit and it was viewable but the quality was too poor to accept it as a done deal. That one I am now splitting onto other discs to preserve what quality it has. But regular movies are never an issue with CCE.

I also backed up Pelican Brief (both discs) on one DVD with buttons to select the different parts. Now if you are using Rempeg2 or something like that you may have a problem.