Suggestions for archiving HD to DVD-R media

[PartingShot]

Hi all,

I'm basically looking to store some HD transport stream files to single layer DVD-R. Problem is that 1hr of video takes anywhere from 5.5GB to around 8GB, depending on the file's bitrate. Is there any way to write the file to DVD-R so that, if the file exceeds the 4.7GB capacity of the single-layer DVD-R, it could be spanned to 2 disks? Assuming this can be done, then the same utility that created/burned the archived file to DVD-R could re-create the original file from the spanned DVDs, correct?

I googled a bit, and it looks like Winzip can create zip archives that span multiple burnable media discs (CD/DVD), but I figured I'll get a more exhaustive set of options by asking here. I'm sure many VH members routinely archive HD files to DVD+/-R, and have resolved the "file too big to fit on 1 disc" problem already.

Also, I'm looking to do this "on the cheap", so hopefully any solutions out there are freeware - and have no filesize limitations

Thanks for reading, and for any feedback received.

[jman98]

Can you not just re-encode down to single layer size? I've been archiving NBC's The Office from my HD captures for about 4 years now and I only put 2 episodes on each single layer DVD, re-encoding down to get each episode to about 2.1 GB or so.

Your proposal to use Winzip or something similar is bad and here is why. Let's say you need 2 discs for each of your TS files. You now have a single point of failure. If one of the discs in a pair goes bad, the other disc is now also unrecoverable. Better if you must do this to use an editor of some kind like VideoReDo, MEPGVCR, etc. and just split the files in two and burn them to separate discs, each of which contains a valid TS file. At least if one disc of a set of 2 goes bad, the other would still be OK. Better than nothing.