A Dumb Question

[Diplomat]

I've authoring DVDs and VCDs for about 8-9 months now and I got a dumb question, why are dvd-/+r 4.7gig but your movies can only be 4.38gig when you burn them. I heard several diffrent answers but I want to know the real truth about it can anybody answer my question. This is just a something I'd like to know, Thnx

[leebo]

If you're looking for a dumb answer, heres one:

The missing .32 Gigs is there when the disc is made, but after they cut out the doughnut hole in the middle it's only 4.38 gigs.

It's possible there is a less dumb answer already posted on this site 50-100 times before. A search might be called for.

[psx_pirate]

easy .... its 4,700,000 bytes, 1kb=1024 bytes, 1gb = 1024 kb, it all comes down to bytes becoz the number of bytes in a kb is 1024 and not 1000, therefore 4,700,000 bytes = 4.38 gb,

the disk says 4.7gb but its actually 4.700,000 bytes which is 4.38 gb in computer terms due to the multiplication factor is 1024 for computers as opposed to 1000 in normal mathematical calculations

[ebenton]

There are no dumb questions, only inquisitive idiots.

[g_shocker182]

easy .... its 4,700,000 bytes, 1kb=1024 bytes, 1gb = 1024 kb, it all comes down to bytes becoz the number of bytes in a kb is 1024 and not 1000, therefore 4,700,000 bytes = 4.38 gb,

the disk says 4.7gb but its actually 4.700,000 bytes which is 4.38 gb in computer terms due to the multiplication factor is 1024 for computers as opposed to 1000 in normal mathematical calculations

Thus they are 2.4% off.

[Vejita-sama]

Yeah this is one of the oldest 'scams' in computers. The MB vs MB, it use to be MB vs MBits, but that's pretty much over. Just remember that 1024 is the base for everything.

1MB = 1024 x1024 = 1048576 bytes
1GB = 1048576 x 1024 = 1073741824 bytes

Hence 4.38GB really equals = 4.38 x 1073741824 bytes = 470298918912 bytes.

As an aside pretty much every HD is also sold based on 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. So a 120GB HD really only holds ~112GB of data.