DVD Capacity

farss wrote on 10/31/2003, 3:16 PM
After a look of head scratching I just made a significant discovery about DVDA. Out of the box it assumes you are using 3.95 GB media!

Such things did exist but are pretty uncomon these days.

I could never figure out why when Optimise said I was at 98% capacity the burnt disk sure didn't look 98% full. Last night I tried using a bitrate calculator to set my encoding bit rate. Despite going a bit under the bitrate it said I coud use DVDA still says I'm at 117% of capcity of the 3.9GB model. Now perhaps stupidly I'd always thought this 3.9GB model thing was just the old real / marketing kilobyte issue but thne I thought it's not that BIG a difference plus 4.7GB DVDs are really 4.3 GB.

So then I thought to check under Options>Preferences>Burning. I've never been there before, Shock Horror! All along I've been making my DVDs to fit 3.9 GB media when I'm using 4.7 GB.

Now this might just be a bad case of me not RTFM, maybe I'm just going senile but I wonder how many others have been caught out by this?

I did a quick search and found a fair bit of discussion about file sizes BUT no-one seems to have mentioned this small detail.

BTW Sony guys, why set a default to to what is the least likely option for people to be using.

Comments

kameronj wrote on 11/1/2003, 9:19 PM
"I did a quick search and found a fair bit of discussion about file sizes BUT no-one seems to have mentioned this small detail."

I have read posts that brought up this particular issue more times than I care to remember. Although I don't think it was the subject of the post (just buried in the posts themselves).

I'm pretty sure it is in the manual, but I'm always anal enough to check all of the settings prior to hitting "create" (or produce...or whatever that button says).

Not reall sure why this pops up as a default - but once you know it is there - you never ever forget.
rebel44 wrote on 11/2/2003, 11:22 PM
I go couth few tinmes and was scrathing my head why the file size reported by properties are 4.3 gig and dvda report 1123%.
Is there enyone using 3.9G media?
farss wrote on 11/3/2003, 12:54 AM
i haven't seen anyone supplying 3.9 GB DVDs for a long time.
Udi wrote on 11/3/2003, 12:50 PM
I think the 3.9GB is used based on 4.3Gb with 10% safety margin.
You need the margin, as the actual files can differ from the calculated size.

Udi
farss wrote on 11/3/2003, 2:46 PM
NO.
The 3.9 GB is for the older 3.95 GB DVDs!
If you change to 4.7GB DVDA correctly calculates capacity for the real 4.3GB size of the DVD. This is the error I was making. I couldn't figure out why when DVDA said I was burning to 96% capacity there was still a lot of the DVD unburnt.
rebel44 wrote on 11/4/2003, 11:22 PM
I made and error when I set 4.7 in DVDA and 3.9 in dvd shrink.Bad move.Wasted good X4 blank.If you are using dvd shrink and burning from DVDA - make shure the dvd shrin and DVDA are set for equal dvd size.
Thjat will save you some money