I have been able to record 4 hours on a Panasonic dvr on a 4.7 GB discs with high quality in the past. Using the info that you supplied, it looks like that you may be able to produce that 5 hour video with Dolby Digital audio with good quality according to the online bitrate calculator found here: http://silverjuke.net/public/misc/bitrate-calculator.html . See the attached is a screenshot with the relevant info that you supplied along with the explanation in red along the page.

You need to produce the video first using a custom profile created from the Mpeg-2 DVD HQ 720 x 480/60i (8Mbps) setting with the lower video bitrate of say 1700 kbps using dolby digital audio. . Place this new produced file on a timeline and add your chapters. You can go to create disc and choose the HQ 720 setting, Dolby Digital 2 Channels. Choose no menu or a menu that has many many chapter thumbnails if you want. Choose a menu with few thumbnails and you could run out of disc space. It should work.

If the disc space needed is slightly too much then you may want to burn a folder instead and use imgburn(freeware) to see if there is enough space to fit the disc. If not then reduce the video bitrate 10 to 20 % and try again until you can fit it all in.

You may want to burn say the first 1 hour to a disc to compare against the quality of the 5 hour disc to see if there is a small or a large difference in quality to your liking or satisfaction.

Quote I have been able to record 4 hours on a Panasonic dvr on a 4.7 GB discs with high quality in the past. Using the info that you supplied, it looks like that you may be able to produce that 5 hour video with Dolby Digital audio with good quality according to the online bitrate calculator found here: http://silverjuke.net/public/misc/bitrate-calculator.html . See the attached is a screenshot with the relevant info that you supplied along with the explanation in red along the page.

You need to produce the video first using a custom profile created from the Mpeg-2 DVD HQ 720 x 480/60i (8Mbps) setting with the lower video bitrate of say 1700 kbps using dolby digital audio. . Place this new produced file on a timeline and add your chapters. You can go to create disc and choose the HQ 720 setting, Dolby Digital 2 Channels. Choose no menu or a menu that has many many chapter thumbnails if you want. Choose a menu with few thumbnails and you could run out of disc space. It should work.

If the disc space needed is slightly too much then you may want to burn a folder instead and use imgburn(freeware) to see if there is enough space to fit the disc. If not then reduce the video bitrate 10 to 20 % and try again until you can fit it all in.

You may want to burn say the first 1 hour to a disc to compare against the quality of the 5 hour disc to see if there is a small or a large difference in quality to your liking or satisfaction.

Thank you so much. I must admit this is all a little foreign to me but I'll work on your first suggestion this weekend. If I have to move on to the next "burn a folder" I'll be back with more questions!

When I start to burn I'm getting the message that my disc size 8547 is smaller than the estimated production size which is 11015. What should I do now? I do not know how to reduce the video bitrate but did change the quality selections...the only one that would burn is SmartFit...so we'll see. I appreciate any and all suggestions. Thanks.


Update: Authoring process took about 45 minutes...99% done and I get a message "Burning unsuccessful" and an unspecified error code.

Look in the location of your export folder and find the created folder that you named. View the windows folder properties and write down the exact size. It has to be less than about 4.3 GB disc size to fit in one disc. If the size is correct then use imgburn(freeware) to burn that folder to a blank dvd.

Quote Look in the location of your export folder and find the created folder that you named. View the windows folder properties and write down the exact size. It has to be less than about 4.3 GB disc size to fit in one disc. If the size is correct then use imgburn(freeware) to burn that folder to a blank dvd.

I'm using 8.5 GB DVD's and my file is 8.95 GB.....I'll see if I can trim some out to fit on one dvd before splitting in two and putting on two DVD's.