Question on storage space of recordabe DVD media

[§Blood Shrike§]

Hey guys - long time no post!

I've recently taken an interest in looking into purchasing a DVD writer. One thing that seems to be puzzling me is the available storage space on blank DVD media @ 4.7GB - is this correct?

How in the world then would I be able to make backups of my DVDs to protect the originals without going DivX? CladDVD can make a perfect copy of a DVD to your harddrive, but how can one squat 9GB of stuff on a 4.7GB disc - am I missing something important here...I think I am.

I would like to preserve the menus and bonus material (i.e make a perfect copy) since DivX limits me to watching the backups on my computer...and I can only see the movie at a reduced resolution.

Does anyone have the answers I seek - thanx in advance!

[mackerel]

If I understand correctly, many if not all recent DVD films are stored in a dual layer format to get the higher capacity. I don't think that DVD-Rs can do that yet.

[SteveS]

I have no personal experience with DVD-R (yet), but try this site, they seem to cover most things DVD here. (http://www.forum.doom9.net/)

Good luck.

S.

[§Blood Shrike§]

Thanx for the responses guys, and thanx for the link!

[Ian Newson]

Nothing much else to add really the guys have it pretty well covered. Yo might like to look @ www.dvddecrypter.com and www.doom9.org/mpg/ifoedit-basic.htm. If its above 4.8 Gb then you would need to do away with the un-requierd items like the menu and foreign soundtrack etc to reduce the size.