[debit72]

I bought some 4.7 GB single-layer Verbatim DVD-R disks (8x) to burn my first DVD's, because I read that Verbatim made some of the best DVDs on the market.

I created a disk image using Toast; everything well and good -- previews fine. Image is 4.7 GB.

I go to copy the disk image to the DVD-R, select it, mount it ... go to burn ... and Toast tells me that there is not enough room on the DVD. Says there is only 4.4 GB available.

Tried a handful of other disks in the package (got a spindle of 50) and they show the same.

Is this normal???!!! Have I just wasted my $$ on a lot of expensive DVDs that are useless to burn movies? Should I try and contact Verbatim?

[tsantee]

The actual capacity of any brand of single-layer DVD media is 4.38 GB. The 4.7 number comes from 4,700,000,000 bytes on a disc. But computers calculate 1024 bytes to a kilobyte; not 1,000 bytes per kilobyte. It all works out to the difference you're finding. The same is true with how hard drives are advertised.

You could use Roxio's Popcorn or Toast 7 and they will "requantize" the video on that disc image to fit a single-layer disc. If you're going to making other DVDs I strongly recommend Toast 7 over Toast 6 because it has a better-quality MPEG encoder, allows custom bit rate settings for longer movies, and includes AC3 audio encoding so that about 2-1/2 hours of high-quality video will fit a DVD (instead of Toast 6's 90-minute maximum).

[John at Roxio]

Ditto to all of what Tsantee said, and I jsut want to add, yes, thats normal.

[debit72]

OK, thanks both of you. I hadn't thought about upgrading to Toast 7 but I may do that soon.

[debit72]

Success. Gotta love instant download software. See ya in the Toast 7 forum!