Panasonic VHS/DVD Recorder always creates full discs - but they're not??

[Gibson's Squares]

Hmmm... here's a curious thing.

I've got hold of a Panasonic DMR-EZ48V VHS/DVD Recorder.

I recorded 30min VHS footage in HQ mode. The VOBs come to about 2.7GB and I can physically see on the disc surface it's only been written on by about 2/3rds. But MacOS reports the disc as being a full 4.7GB?? In Toast when I went to dupe the disc it claimed there was only 6MB free.

I looked in the file structure for suspiciously large extra files, but there were none, and like I say I can see physically it's not been fully written to. I used Toast to make a disc image and the resulting file was 4.7GB. When I zipped this file it went down to 2.7GB (I kinda expected this to happen).

When I wrote the disc image to another disc the duplicated disc DID look like it was full (this could just be the dye as it was a different brand of disc).

What's going on??? Why/how is it saying it's full when it's not?

[Gibson's Squares]

I forgot to mention the original disc was a DVD-RW, but I didn't delete anything from the disc or alter it. I just recorded one 30min title and made the DVD Recorder create a top menu. (For some reason it didn't ask/allow me to finalise, I think because it was -RW, not -R)

[jman98]

Could you be recording in VR mode? I know that weird things happen when you do this. I think VR mode uses up extra space on the disc.

You really should get into the habit of finalizing your discs. Well, unless you'd like to be one of the people we get all the time who post here crying when their DVD recorder dies and they have some unfinalized disc that they can't live without and nothing they have will play it or finalize it.

[orsetto]

Its been awhile since I last used a Panasonic, but I believe "creating a top menu" for a DVD-RW in a Panasonic is effectively the same as "finalizing" it. No matter what disc type, once that "top menu/finalize" data is written to the table of contents, the disc reads as "full" or "cannot be recorded to" in most PC applications. If you want to add more videos to this disc, you probably need to remove the top menu or "unfinalize" it using the recorder function options.

A quick test to determine if its "finalized" is to try playing it in another brand DVD player or BluRay player: if it loads and displays a menu, its definitely finalized. For that matter, if it auto-loads into your Mac's DVD Player app and displays a menu, its probably finalized.

[Gibson's Squares]

I tried to finalise it, and the option wasn't there, only to 'create top menu'. I played it in 2 different macs via DVD Player successfully afterwards, so I considered it 'finalised'.

[Cornucopia]

So I'm guessing your Mac apps are "reporting" that discs that are finalized are FULL (whether they are or not). Easy way to tell: put a store-bought disc in and see what it says about size there. If it says "4.7GB" (or similar), it is making those assumptions; if not, something else is going on.

Scott