Dual Layer Single-Sided DVD's/Question

[alegator]

I have this 9Gb video file in my hard drive (a Dual Layer DVD image movie file) that I want to burn to DVD media. Here are the questions:
1) How can I burn this movie to a single DVD5? Will I lose quality?
2) Dual Layer burners are affordable (the Sony DRU-700A sells for under $200)...so isn't it better to just upgrade my burner?
3) Are single sided-dual layer DVD's playable in my current home standalone player?
4) Are single sided-dual layer DVD's burners also able to burn DVD5's (both R and RW)?
Thanks.

[Capmaster]

I have this 9Gb video file in my hard drive (a Dual Layer DVD image movie file) that I want to burn to DVD media. Here are the questions:
1) How can I burn this movie to a single DVD5? Will I lose quality?
2) Dual Layer burners are affordable (the Sony DRU-700A sells for under $200)...so isn't it better to just upgrade my burner?
3) Are single sided-dual layer DVD's playable in my current home standalone player?
4) Are single sided-dual layer DVD's burners also able to burn DVD5's (both R and RW)?
Thanks.

1) Use DVDShrink. It's free, and an excellent app for squeezing 8 or 9GB movies onto one DVD-R. You will lose quality but this app does a good job of preserving quality up to a certain point. They only way to know if the quality will be high enough is to try it.
2) Dual-layer media isn't widely available yet and it costs $10 - $15 per disc. Even if the drives are affordable, you'll have to wait for the media to become affordable.
3) yes. Your player already plays single-sided dual layer commercial discs, it'll play recordables too.
4) Read up on the DRU-700 at Sony's site. I believe the drives are compatible with DVD-5, so I would guess they are able to. I didn't read the info too carefully so you'll just have to go to the Sony site yourself and research it.

[Gillies]

like capmaster said, u can lose quality, but with some movies u wont, 'cause some movie companies crank the bitrate up so to fill the disc and limit copying... some discs u can lower the bitrate by half with no noticable differences. so if ur video has bitrates hovering constantly around 9-10mbit, even in scenes where pretty much nothing happens, then this is very likely the case. so dont worry about quality too much... i prefer to use clonedvd cause it lets u keep menus while cutting out the things u dont want, like extras. dvdshrink lets u keep menus, but not cut other things out. it will turn them into a video of stills, which is useless... however, many ppl like dvdshrink better, so try em both and decide. both give similar results

[Nilfennasion]

With a lot of Columbia Tristar discs, the exact opposite happens. The disc itself might be a DVD-9, but once you remove the extras, unnecessary subtitle streams, foreign dubs, and any other piece you could do without, you'll find the film itself fits on a DVD-5 with room to spare. One disc I backed up had about 3.97 gig allocated to the film once you removed the foreign language dubs and about 4 gig of extras were taken care of.

This is, of course, why the Superbit range was invented. Less extras, no unnecessary subtitle or audio tracks, and higher settings for the MPEG compressor make it very hard to preserve the quality when squashing it down to 4.35 gig. This, of course, is why we're waiting with bated breath for DL media to become affordable.

[indolikaa]

This, of course, is why we're waiting with bated breath for DL media to become affordable.

And hoping that the DL discs are reasonably-compatible with existing DVD players...

[freestyler]

some movie companies crank the bitrate up so to fill the disc and limit copying...

I don't buy that. Provide some proof please.

[Nilfennasion]

I once interviewed an employee of Columbia Tristar who told me that they always issue a film on a single-disc format if it makes sense to do so. Off the record, another employee told me that in cases where they have two-disc sets, they always crank the bitrate up as far as they can in order to provide a smoother-looking picture (read: make transcoding onto DVD-5 more problematic).

[karhooi]

What i found is the movie "Fallen" (I used DVDShrink to check) DVD which has exactly duplicated video stream with no audio stream. And the total disc space took up about 7GB+ and the first main movie is only 4GB+ with the exact duplicated main movie 3GB+ (without audio stream). So all together took up 7GB+.
I guess this is the way of piracy prevention of the producer??
I used DVDshrink to turn the duplicated video stream into video of stills so, i can backup the DVD.

[jimmalenko]

some movie companies crank the bitrate up so to fill the disc and limit copying...

I don't buy that. Provide some proof please.

Just about everyone here knows how easy it is to copy a DVD-5. It is as easy as DVDDecrypter ISO Read...ISO Write. That simple. No mucking about, no need to only do the main movie, no need to remove unwanted audio etc etc.

As soon as that spills to a DVD-9 a quarter of the people here run around with their heads cut off about "losing quality". Can you accept the main movie at 70% in DVDShrink ???

Naturally as a manufacturer you are going to take steps to limit the piracy of your product. I'm sure I could find examples of film a and film b, where film a is movie only and is 20 minutes longer than film b, which has the trailer as an extra on it. Film a is on a DVD-5 while film b is a DVD-9.

As a manufacturer, if you had half a brain you would make it as hard as possible to copy your discs.

I would have thought that this seemed pretty logical. Why is there a need for concrete evidence ????

[jimmalenko]

What i found is the movie "Fallen" (I used DVDShrink to check) DVD which has exactly duplicated video stream with no audio stream. And the total disc space took up about 7GB+ and the first main movie is only 4GB+ with the exact duplicated main movie 3GB+ (without audio stream). So all together took up 7GB+.
I guess this is the way of piracy prevention of the producer??
I used DVDshrink to turn the duplicated video stream into video of stills so, i can backup the DVD.

I think you'll find one was widescreen and the other was fullscreen. Pretty common.

[Nilfennasion]

I think you'll find one was widescreen and the other was fullscreen. Pretty common.

What a waste of three gigs.

[flaninacupboard]

my disc of fallen just had a wide transfer, and it was crammed onto a dvd-5. not impressed.
same as blade runner over here, noisy dirty transfer squahed onto a dvd-5.

I backed up mall rats the other day and the disc had all the menus for carlitos' way as unreferenced material.....

[Nilfennasion]

<hides the rat poison from flan...>

[freestyler]

Why is there a need for concrete evidence ????

If you want to limit the copying of your product, you opt for CSS encryption and / or Macrovision, sadly. I've never seen nor heard of a company making an attempt to fill a disc as a copy protection measure. More often than not, it's because of multiple requests from a client to make a scene look better (thus upping the bitrate), a poorly knowledgable person doing the encoding at very high bitrates unknowingly, the use of an encoder that performs poorly at lower bitrates, or an attempt to create a value-added disc packed with more extras, as useless as they may seem to you.

From an authors perspective, I for one have never heard a request such as "fill the disc up so people can't copy it" ever. I'd like to see some evidence like you think you can provide but you've simply made a generalization.

[Cornucopia]

You also should realize that it costs a little (but not a lot--not like 10's, 14's or 18's) more to manufacture a DVD-9 than a DVD-5. This makes it less likely for a producer to go from 5's to 9's without anything more than a "copyright" reason.

Scott

[flaninacupboard]

You also should realize that it costs a little (but not a lot--not like 10's, 14's or 18's) more to manufacture a DVD-9 than a DVD-5. This makes it less likely for a producer to go from 5's to 9's without anything more than a "copyright" reason.

Scott

i think that point is open for debate. so many discs are DL that a SL seems to be abnormal. surely there's a cost involved in shutting down DL operation and setting up for SL discs and then going back to DL?
i believe it was lilo and stitch, came out on a DVD-9 yet had less than 4.3 gigs of data. i'm sure that wouldn't have happened if dvd-5 would have been cheaper....?

[Gillies]

I don't buy that. Provide some proof please.

According to an article at zdnet: http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/hardware/storage/0,39023427,39149250-5,00.htm
"Unless the movie is longer than normal, chances are the publisher used a higher bit rate than necessary to keep the movie from fitting easily on a single disc."
Furthermore, if u look at the bitrates on some dvds with movies which r quite short taking up > 7GB. one notable example i've come across is "the bridge at remagen", it's not even 2 hours long and takes up 7.8GB. that doesnt include the extras which was just a 2 minute tralier. a copy of that made at 59% came up with no noticable differences.

You also should realize that it costs a little (but not a lot--not like 10's, 14's or 18's) more to manufacture a DVD-9 than a DVD-5. This makes it less likely for a producer to go from 5's to 9's without anything more than a "copyright" reason.

Scott

The markup that they put on dvd's covers that cost many times over

[Cornucopia]

You're probably right, I am going by older figures.

One thing that I do know about is that producers usually pick out what they want to include with a title, then maximize their bitbudget for the preferred medium, and re-adjust if necessary. Now, what they pick as their "preferred" medium (and why) may be open to conjecture. I know when I'm acting as producer, I go for DVD-5's unless I specifically need the extra space of DVD-9, either for Superbit stuff (Hi bitrate+Length) or for Extra Features stuff (neither of which I have needed lately).

Scott

[jimmalenko]

If you want to limit the copying of your product, you opt for CSS encryption and / or Macrovision, sadly. I've never seen nor heard of a company making an attempt to fill a disc as a copy protection measure. More often than not, it's because of multiple requests from a client to make a scene look better (thus upping the bitrate), a poorly knowledgable person doing the encoding at very high bitrates unknowingly, the use of an encoder that performs poorly at lower bitrates, or an attempt to create a value-added disc packed with more extras, as useless as they may seem to you.

From an authors perspective, I for one have never heard a request such as "fill the disc up so people can't copy it" ever. I'd like to see some evidence like you think you can provide but you've simply made a generalisation.

OK, so you're one of those. Now it makes sense to me.

I don't work in the industry so I can't prove it.

I have not made any generalisations that this does actually occur. But it could have happened previously at some stage....

[flaninacupboard]

yeah, before shrink and NTFS was in wisespread use purposfully making a disc dual layer may have been effective. but not really, nothing to stop you using smart ripper to demux to an .m2v and an .ac3 for the first ten chapters then again for the second ten and burning on two discs.

don't forget of course any company using a Q based encoder will have different sized movies depending on the content/shooting format.