how can i burn a tv show onto dvd smaller?

[sadgoat]

i want to burn an entire season of a tv show onto dvd so i can play it on my dvd player (eg: i dont want to burn it as a data disk.)

so what happens is each tv show episode is 45 min long or so and around 120 mb big. when i select to burn it onto a dvd it comes in as being about 1.7 gb per episode. so how can i get it to burn onto dvd at a smaller size? also when i press to burn it onto a vcd (cd, not dvd) each episode comes up as about 350 mb.

[oracle128]

There's a reason commercial TV on DVD box sets come with so many discs. They don't do it for fun. It's because you can only fit about 3 hours of DVD-quality video on a DVD (10Mbps on a 9.4GB DVD-9). 1.7GB per 45 minute episode is a bit rate of about 5Mbps, which is about mid-low quality for a DVD (DVD video is usually in the range of 3-10Mbps). The VCD version is smaller because...surprise surprise, VCD video format uses a much lower quality, at about 1150Kbps. You're getting about 828Kps, so that's not too bad.

Basically, if you want to fit more video onto a single-sided DVD (4.7GB) then you need to reduce the quality of the video. This can be done in the video encoder of your choice, but the question is, do you want to burn your episodes at half their current quality so you can fit twice as much on?

[sadgoat]

hmmm, i personally dont notice any difference in quality between when i burn it onto a vcd and onto a dvd. so if i reduce the quality down to vcd bitrate (828Kps?) it will look like a vcd? which is fine with me.
ps: any vid encoders you reccomend in particular?

[Billy_Black]

Try ConvertXtoDVD. It's quick and does a nice job. Depending on what size TV you are using and if it's a low action type of show 6 episodes per disc might look OK. It has a free trial.

[Porthos]

i want to burn an entire season of a tv show onto dvd so i can play it on my dvd player (eg: i dont want to burn it as a data disk.)

so what happens is each tv show episode is 45 min long or so and around 120 mb big. when i select to burn it onto a dvd it comes in as being about 1.7 gb per episode. so how can i get it to burn onto dvd at a smaller size? also when i press to burn it onto a vcd (cd, not dvd) each episode comes up as about 350 mb.Where did you get the TV shows?

[sadgoat]

lol why do you ask? i got them off of a friends computer