Films that you buy are often Recorded on DVD-9 Discs as these have more space available, the extra space is often used for the extra features. Dual Layer Recordable DVD’s are fairly new, and so they are very expensive. But how do you know if your Recorder supports Dual Layer Media ?

When you brought your Drive you may remember whether or not you brought a Dual Layer Recorder, if you don’t remember then have a look at the front of your Drive, if it has the letters DL then it should be Dual Layer Compatible.

• DVD-9 (Dual Layer) has 8.5 GB of storage space per Disc.
• DVD-5 (Single Layer) has 4.7 GB of storage space per Disc.
• Dual Layer Discs have approximately double the amount of space as the Single Layer alternatives.

It is very popular at the moment to copy DVD films, although this isn’t technically illegal there shouldn’t be any problems as long as you actually own the original and you are just making a Back Up. People may start to object if you start Copying DVD’s that you don’t own!

Many of the DVD’s that you buy will be stored on DVD-9 Discs, and many of the writable Discs are DVD-5 this means that everything can’t fit onto a DVD-5 Disc without something changing, either removing features or compressing the Video to make the quality worse.

If you buy DVD-9 Discs then it is possible to make an exact Copy of the original because there is enough space to do so. The source Media should be the same size as the destination Media.

But how can you copy DVD movies to Dual Layer Media ? Well actually it’s unbelievably simple as long as your Recorder supports Dual Layer DVD’s.

1. Run your DVD Copying Software.
2. Select one-to-one Copy or similar option.
3. Select the Media option and change it to DVD-9.
4. Load your Movie and set it as the source.
5. Set your Recorder as the destination.
6. Press go and wait for the recording to be completed.

Copying Dual Layer DVD Movies is just as easy as copying Single Layer Movies, however the Discs are about triple the price. It is much cheaper to buy DVD-5, blank DVD’s, and just compressing the quality, unless you have a huge TV you are unlikely to notice any difference.

Using Software such as DVD decrypter can save you space by removing the unnecessary extras, and also cutting out the credits of the Movie.

When copying DVD Movies to DVD-5 Discs you want to make sure that the Film is compressed as little as possible, Clone DVD has a good way of showing this with Graphical representation. Around 80% compression is normally acceptable, and anything above about 50% will probably be better than any of those old VHS Tapes!

Return from Dual Layer DVD Copying - to - DVD Burning Homepage