Putting multiple titles onto 1 DVD

[bmoret]

I will apologize upfront for my ignorance - I'm a true newbie. I bought my first DVD writer for my computer just about a week ago. But I've had a standalone DVD recorder and also a player connected to my tv for awhile.

My Goal:
I have a number of DVD Videos that I've recorded at the highest quality. I fit up to a 1 hour title on a single disc. I want to "recode" them so as to fit 3 or 4 titles on a disc.

The Problem(s)
I can use my standalone DVD player and recorder to put multiple titles on a disc and the quality is fine, but it requires constant monitoring and sometimes I get a disc error. When the error occurs it's typically close to the end of the 3 or 4 hours that I've put into it and I have to start all over again.

This is a major reason that I bought a DVD writer. I also bought Nero. I used Nero to "recode" and burn the video so that I could fit 3 titles on one disc, but the quality was surprisingly poor. When I put the finished disc in my player and watched it on tv, it seemed as if the picture was continuosly going into and out of focus about every one second. It was very annoying.

I also tried using DVD2SVCD with the QuEnc encoder, but I keep getting an "error 103". I see others get the same error, but no one seems to know why.

I downloaded TMPGEnc, but the free trial version I have says I can't save files. Maybe I'm missing something, but if I can't save, I can't burn and then I can't try it out in my standalone player in order to check the quality.

Questions:
1) Can anyone recommend software that will allow me to "recode" DVD Video and not lose too much quality in the process? Or, point me in a direction that might help me learn more/expedite my learning about what I'm trying to accomplish?
2) Am I using the term "recoding" correctly - converting something recorded using a 1-hour mode to a lower quality, say 2-hour mode?
3) The discs from my DVD recorder have VIDEO_RM and VIDEO_TS folders. Is this properly called "DVD Video" format?

Thanks!

[SingSing]

Use DVDshrink. It is a freeware.