Sonic MyDVD

[Taxious]

When I open a file using sonic MyDVD (it came with my computer and nero doesn't seem to have a dvd compaliation option) it takes up more space than it should.

For instance, I open a movie that is only about 700 MB and the program says it is taking up more than the room alloud for a 4.7gb dvd-r !? When I edit about half the movie out, it says that it is finally to size.. I don't understand what is going on... why it is taking up more space than it says it is.

[red-adair]

What exactly is it your trying to do?? I use MyDVD to capture footage from a dv camcorder and get about 2hrs of footage before 4.7gb is taken up. Nero 5.5 or 6 (which I presume you have) will do dvd compilations so long as the saved files are IFO, VOB, BUP or VIDEO_TS. You say that your movie size is 700mb so I presume ure working with a cd burner as opposed to dvd burner? This may be reason Nero appears to not recognise it as a dvd compilation.

[echooff]

It sounds to me like you are usin a avi as input, Probably encoded as divx or xvid. When encoding to mpeg2 the video will more than double in size even with reduced bitrate. Unless you have the ac3 plugin for Sonic, it will only produce lpcm audio. This means your audio alone will go from around 150 mb to over 1 gig.

My suggestion is to go to the Doom9 (http://www.doom9.og) site and read up on encoding and encoders make a better encoder selection and ditch sonic mydvd.

[Taxious]

What I want to be able to do is take a dvd, copy to hard drive, then burn it onto a dvd-r

I have the copy onto hard drive thing worked out with dvd decrypter, and I'm able to compress with dvd shrink. I just can't get the burning part down.

When I open nero, it has no option to make a dvd-r compilation. It just has normal cd-r stuff. I'm guessing it's pretty old. The new nero has a dvd feature then?

[jggimi]

Yes, it does. But you may be able to update your currently installed version to a more recent release. Version 5 is still supported, for example, and there are updates available for it from www.ahead.de

[red-adair]

Taxious, its your drivers that need updated as nero is not recognising ure burner. use the link suggested by by'jggimi' if no luck then nero 6 is the most up to date version and shouldn't have any problems. If the update drivers options allow nero to recognise ure burner use the nero express option to create 'DVD Video' this will give you an exact duplicate of the film on ure HDD...
By the way you say that you rip then compress films on to your HDD, nothing wrong with the way ure doing it but ever considered DVD Shrink or DVD Clone, there all in one software to rip and compress at same time.???