I am trying to archive a DVD that is almost 9Gbytes. By "archive" I mean that I am trying to put the WHOLE THING onto DVD so I can get it off my Hard Drive. While having it play conveniently on more than one DVD would be nice, it is not necessary.

I know from work that I have done with data disks it is possible to "span" across multiple 3 1/2 inch floppies. Can you do the same thing with DVD's ?

Thanks in advance for any help.

What are we talking about here? A single file... of mulitple. Are we talking text or binary? PKZIP and WinRAR can compress the heck out of text files and do a pretty good job on binary (WinRAR has a huge advantage here). You can preak the data up in 4GB chunks if you have to and then burn them to DVD5.

-- edit --
My bad, a DVD you are trying to backup... Well, is it for viewing or just to archive... I suggest an archive and use a file splitter and compression tool. I'm assuming this is video from your previous post on your reason for purchasing the BenQ in the first place...

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)

yes you can backup the content at 2 dvds i think with the proper DVD or backup software

(in reply to SithTracy)

Well I'll answer truthfully but I don't know what the policy is as far as this goes.

What I am thinking about doing is making 2 kinds of "back-up" copies. One for "playing", so that the "original" won't have to be used, and a second "archive" copy which could be used to make more "playable" copies, if in the event the "playable" copy becomes "unplayable".

So I guess the answer is "both". I am getting pretty good at compressing "playable" DVD videos, but would also like to store the data in an "uncompressed" format, so that I don't have to have it on the Hard Drive taking up space.

(As far as data DVD's go, I am interested but would like to get more comfortable working with video first. Plus, I have a better "intuition" for using Nero to burn data CD's & DVD's. The DVD video is the hard part.

What would

quote:

proper DVD or backup software

be ?

Thanks for any help in advance.

(in reply to emperor)

When you say almost 9Gbytes you mean a double layer disc, am I correct? If it is important ten you can get a couple of DL media in order to do your job in the best way.

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)

If you just want to back up the files so that you can rebuild the video at some later time just split the contents in the VIDEO_TS folder so that both halves will fit onto 2 normal DVD-R and burn as data. When you want to recover the video just copy both discs to a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and burn as a Dual Layer DVD-Video or use one of the many DVD compressing tools to compress it down to a single layer DVD size.

(in reply to Iggy)

quote:

When you say almost 9Gbytes you mean a double layer disc, am I correct? If it is important ten you can get a couple of DL media in order to do your job in the best way.

Yes the original is a Double Layer disk, but I do not want to spend the $7.00 or so on the dual layer media. I would rather simply copy it to multiple single layer media disks.

quote:

If you just want to back up the files so that you can rebuild the video at some later time just split the contents in the VIDEO_TS folder so that both halves will fit onto 2 normal DVD-R and burn as data.

This sounds more like what I want to do. How does one "split" the file ? Do you just "grab" a bunch of files and copy them to one diesk, and then copy the rest to another ?

What about the AUDIO_TX folder ?

Thanks in advance

(in reply to Flash)

If you examine the directory structure of a DVD-Video you will find two folders AUDIO_TS & VIDEO_TS. For a DVD-Video the AUDIO_TS folder is always empty and all the files are contained in the VIDEO_TS folder. All you need to do is select the files up to the capacity of a DVD (4.38gigs or less) and copy them in turn to each of your blank discs as DATA until you have them backed up onto 2 or 3 discs. To reproduce the video intact you just need to copy them back to a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and process as necessary. The final DVD-Video title set just needs to have the same directory structure as the original so you will need to recreate an AUDIO_TS folder (NOTE THE AUDIO_TS & VIDEO_TS folders have to be in uppercase.

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)

@Flash:

Thanks for that. Noticed that there was an"Audio" folder, but also noticed that Nero didn't have any use for it and was wondering why. So you answered a question I hadn't asked yet.

I got the instructions on how to reconstruct the DVD as well. Copy both "archived" Dvds to a \temp directory, run DVD shrink on them and burn from there.

Is this the best method available ? I guess I was hoping for something a little more "sexy". Like burning a "spanned" copy of the DVD and then running that (maybe as an executable) to produce more copies.

Am I asking for too much, too soon ?

(in reply to Flash)

Flash (and anyone else that might know...),

Today as an experiment I "split" a 8.5 GByte DVD into two different directories and then burned the files (using Nero) to 2 different DVD's.

I am in the process of "reassembling" the files into a common directory on the Hard Drive, and intend to try to burn the reassembled data to a playable DVD using DVD Shrink.

The question I have is that it seems that it is taking MUCH longer to read the data from the (data) DVD and write it to the Hard Drive than it did to burn the DVD's to begin with.

(It took 6 minutes to burn the DVD, and it is taking over 15 minutes to read the data back to the Hard Drive.)

Is this normal ?

Thanks in advance.

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)

Depending on your reader and its read speed limitation Yes I would say this is normal. Use the read speed test in DVDInfoPro to check this

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)

quote:

All you need to do is select the files up to the capacity of a DVD (4.38gigs or less) and copy them in turn to each of your blank discs as DATA until you have them backed up onto 2 or 3 discs.

Today I DID notice that Nero wouldn't copy 4.6 GBytes, despite that the DVD's are 4.7. I just "cut & pasted" one of the medium-sized files from the "overfull" 1st disk to the less-full second disk and everything burned fine from there. What is this 4.38 limit and why ?

quote:

To reproduce the video intact you just need to copy them back to a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and process as necessary. The final DVD-Video title set just needs to have the same directory structure as the original so you will need to recreate an AUDIO_TS folder (NOTE THE AUDIO_TS & VIDEO_TS folders have to be in uppercase.

I'm not exactly sure, but I think one of the DVD's I was playing with today didn't have the "AUDIO_TS/VIDEO_TS" format. Anyways, I just burned a playable and compressed Video DVD from a "\temp" directory that didn't have the files in a "\VIDEO_TS" directory. They were in something like "C:\DVD Decrypter\(files.fil) and DVD Decrypter burned them to DVD just fine at 16X.

Is it only Nero that cares about the "VIDEO_TS" directory/format ?

Or am I going to find out how important retaining this format is when I try to play the DVD in a "standalone" DVD Player ?

Also, I don't like the limit on the number of characters for Titling the new DVD. There is a switch that says something about "relaxing" "joliet" or "ISO" "standards", and some other stuff. Is there a way to title the DVD so that it has more than the 15 or so characters ?

Thanks again in advance.

(in reply to Flash)

quote:

What is this 4.38 limit and why ?

4.7GB is a form of marketing deception that hard disc manufacturers have been using for years. They start by rounding down a GB to 1000 MB.

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)

check out this software that is able to compress 2 layer disks into 1 layer size!!!

I love it my self.
http://www.ntius.com/default.asp?p=cdmaker/cdmaker_main

(in reply to Billy_Brethren)