I've discussed this issue before on the Forum, but it still drives me mad crazy. We want the best quality possible for our DVD copies. PD9 will give you a prediction of how big the file is going to be, and it's always totally off base and meaningless.

The advice I got earlier was to use 8.5 gig discs. Fine, I have those. But look at these crazy figures:

--A video is predicted, at highest quality, to be 9652 - too large for the 8.5 disc, so it won't even burn the project.

--Try Smart Fit for the same project - it's predicted to be 7740, that'll fit - but the DVD actually comes out 2.33!--Quality is way too compromised to be usable.

--Standard Quality prediction is 5706, it comes out 2.33, even worse than above.

--I try 4.7 size folder (these are all burning to folder, I'm not foolish enough to burn directly to disc)--Smart fit is predicted to be 4650--sounds perfect, but it comes out 2.13, worst quality of them all.

So - great. I'm not allowed to burn my project in the highest quality possible. Given these predictions and how they're twice as large as the actual result, obviously if I was allowed to go for the HQ quality of supposedly 9652, it would come in way under the capacity of the 8.5 disc, and I could use it. But the program won't allow me to even try it.

Maddening.

For this particular project, I'll need to slice it in two, burn the highest quality I can for the two halves, and then stitch them together using a 3rd party program, and it'll probably fit my 8.5 disc. Crazy that this kind of work around should be needed.

RB