Rewritable DVDs

melbury

Does anyone know if you can buy rewritable dvds that are longer than 2 hours recording time? I can't seem to find any that are more than 4.7mB, they all say that. Obviously lots of films are longer than 2 hours.

Thank you.

superscaper

melbury wrote: »

Does anyone know if you can buy rewritable dvds that are longer than 2 hours recording time? I can't seem to find any that are more than 4.7mB, they all say that. Obviously lots of films are longer than 2 hours.

Thank you.

Aside from dual layer discs (which are more expensive but also require your dvd writer to be compatible/capable of DL writing) what you're asking for is essentially Blu Ray discs. I.e. you need a different technology to fit more capacity onto the same size disc.

Belnahua

Or you could use DVD Shrink to compress the video to fit on a DVD, at the cost of video quality.

superscaper

Belnahua wrote: »

Or you could use DVD Shrink to compress the video to fit on a DVD, at the cost of video quality.

Maybe the OP could give some specifics, i.e. what is it intended for? If for example it's to be played back on a DVD player then any type of compression isn't going to work, only a dual layer or having to split it across discs. Assuming of course that these are legally copied films.

deejaygee_2

convert to divx or xvid (uses less space on disc ,picture quality similar to dvd )
play on tv using toshiba dvdplayer sd-185e from tesco extra ' £24.97 yesterday

Belnahua

superscaper wrote: »

Maybe the OP could give some specifics, i.e. what is it intended for? If for example it's to be played back on a DVD player then any type of compression isn't going to work, only a dual layer or having to split it across discs. Assuming of course that these are legally copied films.

Yes, I wasn't making any assumptions on the usage of the program! I used it to shrink my VHS collection of films; which isn't an illegal action AFAIK, as I still own the original.

superscaper

Belnahua wrote: »

Yes, I wasn't making any assumptions on the usage of the program! I used it to shrink my VHS collection of films; which isn't an illegal action AFAIK, as I still own the original.

Well we're getting off topic but owning the original only entitles you to use the original medium, you can't make copies of anything you own without explicit permission from the copyright holder (when you buy something you don't own the intellectual property, you only own any physical medium associated with it and a license to use the material on the medium). Whether it's for backup or transferring to a different medium type, it's not legal under UK law. So in your example copying VHS videos (one's where you don't hold the copyright) to DVD is actually illegal. There's no allowance in UK law for making backups (the only exemption written into law is computer programs) and there's no such thing as a "fair use" clause which the Americans have (and people seem to confuse American law with UK law).

melbury

superscaper wrote: »

Aside from dual layer discs (which are more expensive but also require your dvd writer to be compatible/capable of DL writing) what you're asking for is essentially Blu Ray discs. I.e. you need a different technology to fit more capacity onto the same size disc.

Thanks for the replies, I just want to record programmes and films off the TV. Have just upgraded to a DVD recorder from Video recorder, but as stated, all the DVD's only seem to record 2 hours which is no good if a film is more than that!

Marty_J

superscaper wrote: »

there's no such thing as a "fair use" clause which the Americans have (and people seem to confuse American law with UK law).

Fair use (or "fair dealing") does exist in UK law, and has done for longer than in US law. Hardly surprising given that US law is based on English Common Law.

However, it doesn't really have very much to do with making personal copies of something.

Marty_J

melbury wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, I just want to record programmes and films off the TV. Have just upgraded to a DVD recorder from Video recorder, but as stated, all the DVD's only seem to record 2 hours which is no good if a film is more than that!

There's no option to increase the recording time in the DVD recorder itself?

superscaper

Marty_J wrote: »

Fair use (or "fair dealing") does exist in UK law, and has done for longer than in US law. Hardly surprising given that US law is based on English Common Law.

However, it doesn't really have very much to do with making personal copies of something.

I know about that and certainly in some of the consumer rights laws there're very subjective terms similar to fair use, but as you mentioned since we're just talking about the copyright act, it doesn't apply. It wasn't a generic statement and was just specifically referring to copyright.