[phardy]

I have a number of small 1 hour dvds from camcorder recordings and want to put them onto one normal DVD. Is there a simple way of doing this without losing any quality of the recording? Preferably with free software and able to have menus/chapters. e.g. not one big long chapter.

Thanks in advance for any help

[jaymac]

Yes to the amount no to the same quality .You really should not put more than2hours on one dvd unless you go for a Dual layer where you could have 4 hours
DVD shrink will do it its free but you would not be able to retain menus or chapters Though you would be able to jump between Titles .For full menu and chapters that I think you would have to start from scratch and re author and combine the dvds reQuired
Download DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15 - FileHippo.com

[senu]

Originally Posted by jaymac

Yes to the amount no to the same quality .You really should not put more than2hours on one dvd unless you go for a Dual layer where you could have 4 hours
DVD shrink will do it its free but you would not be able to retain menus or chapters Though you would be able to jump between Titles .For full menu and chapters that I think you would have to start from scratch and re author and combine the dvds reQuired
Download DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15 - FileHippo.com

You would need to use DVD shrink in its reathor mode though and that , though not rocket science is not without a bit of a learning curve

All the above advice is sound.. any attempts to squeeze video data into a disc will result from some compression , and ultimately, reduction in quality

It might be worth getting Budget software ( even paid for) like DVDMovie Factory Ulead/Corel as it may take a lot of the dificulty out of what you want to do

[phardy]

Thanks for the replies guys.

The 1 hour DVD's were not full and all the VOB files required are less than 4GB so do I still need to use DVD shrink as I don't want to compromise the quality of the recording? I'm more interested in how to get VOBs to play from a single disk in the easiest way rather than reducing the size, etc. Hope that makes sense.

I have DVD Flick that I use to convert my TZ5 camera movies to a DVD with a menu but it won't do VOB files from my DVD based camcorder for some reason. Ideally I wanted to be able to do all to one DVD (as long as there is space) and select which recording I wanted to watch from a Menu.

I have tried using some free software to convert the VOB to AVI, SVCD, MPEG2 to then use in DVD Flick to create a DVD. But the converted files seem to have lost alot of quality when playing back no matter which type I output too.

[jaymac]

Are these mini dvd's by any chance asG/byte for an hour is below standard dvd quality . Also flick will usually accept vobs

[phardy]

Yes they are the mini DVDs. I'm not sure what the quality is, all I know is once converted its worse. Flick says no thumbnail could be created for the file whilst trying to add the VOB as a title. "This usually means the file is damaged or truncated".

I've now realised I was selecting the wrong VOB file, doh!

However when I add the VOB file in Flick the duration says 3 seconds even though I know its 30 minutes long. I have played them okay through my laptop.

[mmace]

can you get your hands on Nero?
this will create a DVD without re-encoding if the total files are less than 4Gb

[jaymac]

Mini dvd only hold 2G/byte at std quality so looks as if yours are the next step down .So any further compression by trying to put more than one dvd on a normal dvd Ie more than 2 hours would be asking for quality drop .I would bite the bullet and just transfer each one to a full size dvd. Ther would be no quality loss only a matter of ripping to your hard drive and burning either with shrink or nero easisest with Imgburn which is free
Even if you have nero
The Official ImgBurn Website

[phardy]

I have Nero 6.3.1, I'll give that a try.....

[phardy]

Alot of the filenames are the same. I assume I can't just rename them. How can I add them all in nero? I'm a real numpty when it comes to this stuff.