# True Capacity of 8.5Gig DVD



## Jamie147 (Dec 27, 2009)

What are the best DVD's to buy that provide 8.5gig capacity as some I've been looking at actually only offer around 7.9Gig of space. I don't mind paying for good quality like Verbatim as I want to ensure they will play on many different types of optical drives but I want to pay the bare minimum. For the project I'm working on I'll only need about 20 and I know thats not many but I'm trying to do it all on a shoe string so want to get a great disk for a reasonable price.


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## Rivendale (Sep 17, 2010)

i use Memorex double layer disks and find them good for the money, about $1 per disk here at our Walmart, less if you buy a large bundle

i get very few "bad disks" and they don't seem to have the issues moving between different types DVD drives like a couple of cheaper off brands i've tried

i know i'm getting about 8GB, can't say exactly


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

"_I want to ensure they will play on many different types of optical drives_".......... 8.5gb DVDs are double layer, so they will only work on DL drives. If you try to use them on standard single layer drives, they won't work at all.

The maximum storage on an 8.5gb DVD is 7.96gb. The advertisers/manufacturers use decimal, so they say gigabyte/gb means 1000 to make the customer think they're getting more for their money, but computers are binary so they use 1024. That's why there's a difference of about 500mb between the advertised capacity and the actual capacity. Single layer 4.7gb DVDs can hold about 4.3gb.


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## Rivendale (Sep 17, 2010)

very good points, i move them only between different DL drives, backup's mostly

and a binary G is bigger than a base 10 G, perhaps they would sell more if they used base 12 number system, he, he... 

cheaper DL disks i've tried will some times be able to wirte on one drive and then not be able to read on the other

i find also that the file table can take up a fair amount of space, not sure if they call that 'data' included in the capacity limits or not


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## Jamie147 (Dec 27, 2009)

Thanks for the advice guys.

The project I'm working on is copying old VHS home videos to my PC and then creating a DVD with Power Producer. Some are 6gig in size so its ideal to use just one 8.5gig DVD but if they go to play it on Christmas Day and its unreadable as they have a single layer DVD drive I'll look daft. Should I stay with Double layer and assume they will have a double layer DVD drive or be safe and start burning a maximum of 4Gig DVD's on single layer? I'm not sure because I don't know how common double layer players are. Are they the standard now in DVD players and optical drives in laptops and desktops?


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

I would stick to standard single layer 4.7gb DVDs for maximum compatibility. You can fit a 3 or 4 hour VHS tape into 4gb easily.

DVD Flick applies the correct amount of compression to the video file to make it fit onto a single layer disc. http://www.dvdflick.net


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## Jamie147 (Dec 27, 2009)

Thanks for the link I'll check the download out. 

I captured the data in MPEG-2 format using EasyCap and Power Producer. I'm sure I could have got a better file size but MPEG-2 was the only option when capturing. The quality is good enough but it equates to 600Meg per every 10 minutes of tape. The largest single file is 2.7Gig and runs for 47 minutes. Compressing them would help but will it affect the quality of the recording and is it preferable to compress the raw files before adding them to the DVD storyboard prior to burning or compress while the DVD is burning?

Are there any advantages in using single layer DVD's that can be recorded on both sides? Does that effectively give a single layer DVD 8Gig of space?


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

If you change the codec and settings, 600mb should give you well over an hour of decent quality video or 30 minutes of high quality video.

I haven't used Power Producer, so I'm not sure what options or settings it gives. You should be able to fit 47 minutes of video into about 500-1000mb, depending on the quality settings you choose. If your 47 minutes is taking up 2.7gb, you need to change the settings or use another program.

DVD Flick will take the video files you've got, whatever size and format they are, and fit them onto a standard DVD that can be played on all computers and standalone DVD players. The whole authoring process takes about 1-2 hours for each video file, and then about 5 minutes to burn each disc, for however many copies you need.

Double sided DVDs work in the same way as standard single layer DVDs. They can store about 4.3gb on each side. You just have to flip it over to record or play the other side (like old tape cassettes or vinyl LPs).


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