HI folks. Thanks for your help so far. Here are some answers and an update and an update of the question:
This project is full of action; the world championships of medeival armored combat. This is the "fyull-fight" version that will have al the action that involved the US team. Therfore, it has to be 2 hours & 58 inutes (2:48 = typo). I trimmed about 20 seconds and the "Create Disk" screen now says it will come in at 11,379 MB (11.38GB).
I want to mass-produce this to sell to fans of the sport. Putitng it on two disks and packaging it in a 2-disk package will double the production cost and time.
I will also be producing a "documentary" version (more focus on interviews, highlights of the action) for the general public and submission to festivals that will be 90-120 minutes. Utlimately folks will be able to buy both that or a 2-disck version with the full-fight edition.
Someone pointed out that DVDs play at 720x480, do I don;t need to make my master at 1280x720. So I went back and produced the full fight version at the lower setting (DVD hq 720 x 480/60i (8Mbps)). It came out at 10.2 GB, total bitrate 8556kbps.
A couple of websites recommended using Handbrake to reduce the size of the video. I downloaded the program and tried re-mastering the video at all the default settings, and came up with a video that was 4.36 GB and total bitrate 3499kbps!
I played that file in my Windows Media Player, and it looked great! No noticable difference from the original!
So I opened a new project in PD13, dropped the smalled file in the library, pulled it onto the timeline, and saved the project. Then I went to "Create Disk" and found...that it still said the resultant file would be 11.39GB.
I even put the 10.2GB file in, did all the same things, and got the same result.
So is there some other program that will take that smaller file and let me create a menu and burn a disk at that smaller file's size? Or am I missing something?
Zorikh