TV Series on DVD

[PlasticDVDr]

Does anyone know what resolution and bitrate is used when Authoring commercial DVD's for tv series. I ask this because I've just recently read a review on one of the DVD sets for DS9 which stated that the discs were single layered dvd's, but they all held four episodes of ~approv 44min.

I've been trying to figure out the best possible way to author my own recordings which I would like to fit four 44min ep on my disc, and thats when I just happened to find the article.

[vtecwil]

The DS9 and TNG episode discs are not single layer .

They are dual layer discs with a total size of aprox . 8 Gigs .

This works out to around 2 Gigs per episode .

The last disc of the season is usually smaller and contains only two episodes and extras .

[PlasticDVDr]

Hmmm... wierd... Another thing that sparked my interest was the fact that I recorded two episodes of Enterprise, each being around 42min @ 352x480 6mbps vbr. After editing the files with my authering program @ 4250mbps vbr the final file sizes were 861MB and 879MB... The program estimate and my own estimate was 1500MB, enough to put 3 episodes on one disc...

Not that I'm complaining since the final output didn't have any real noticable compression artifacts unless looked at really close on a VGA monitor which would be even harder to spot on my 27" tv...
It's just that i doesn't make any sense to me...

Sure the capture source was off a channel that was a little noisey, would this have anything to do with it? If so I though that more noise meant bigger file sizes....

For anyone who archives TV shows for later viewing, is this normal and when authoring the discs, what bitrate and resolution do you use?