DVD writing

I've recently started capturing TV shows on the PC and writing them to DVD. Quality is EXCELLENT, but i seem to have trouble fitting files on the disc.

I make an mpeg of a 1.5 hour TV show - it ends up about 8GB in size. I then use TMPGEnc to make a DVD compliant file (i know this works as the software accepts it when authoring). TMPGEnc has a wizard that allows me to select the file size - I make it 30% of a disc and get a 1.1GB file. So far so good.

But... when I add it to Sonic MyDVD, it says its using 1.6GB. It does this for EACH file (adds 500MB), so when I think I can fit 3 shows on a DVD, it uses an extra 1.5GB.

I tried using ULead DVD factory too and it says file size is 4.3GB, space on disc is 4.7GB, but it won't let me write it due to lack of space. What is this mystery 500MB/file? I've also tried converting audio and video seperatly as mp2 and m2v and together as mpg with the same results.

Actually..... I dont know that much about DVD burning..... But if I had to guess.... it sounds like the extra 500 mb are like a File table..... or index of the movie... something like that... perhaps its something that just have to be there..... what the hell... I dont know!.....=)

Thats kinda what i was thinking. But 500mb seems a hell of a lot for just that.

You mentioned 4.3G and 4.7G, sure its not the good old 1000K or 1024K disk/memory sales pitch? As in 1G of RAM is 1024M whereas 1G of disk is 1000M.

Drive manufacturers have been using this to boost the size of drives for a really long time.

I thought of that, but both were displayed in their long format i.e 4,460,743mb available (not the exact figure!)

Further investigation seems to show that the dvd-compliant file is doubled in size when authoring.