So I wanted to give a friend an old series on DVD. I thought since I have the series ISOs I can just burn them to disc. BUT the blank DVDs I have are 4GB DVDs and the ISOs are 8GB each. Now I have some spare BDs but apparently the work involved in migrating DVD ISOs to BD is not worth it. Is there no way I can fix this without having to search for higher capacity DVDs?

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[–] workgood@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago

dont use a dvd use a usb drive

[–] Ioughttamow@fedia.io 4 points 9 hours ago

How necessary are the DVDs? Could share them peer to peer over something like soulseek, or set up an sftp server, or a shared drive accessed via Tailscale?

[–] Davel23@fedia.io 28 points 19 hours ago

There's a utility called DVDShrink which will reencode a video DVD-9 to DVD-5. It's old, but I think it still works.

[–] retro@infosec.pub 43 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

You have two options:

Compress the video using something like Handbrake. It won't look as good but you can give it a test pass to see what it looks like
Buy DVD 9 Double layer discs that will actually fit the contents

Suprise 3rd option: Split the ISO over multiple discs /s

[–] veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 17 hours ago

Suprise 3rd option: Split the ISO over multiple discs

If I have to make myself an unnavigable evil lair, can I hire you?

[–] Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 20 hours ago

Compressing it with handbrake will probably not look worse. MPEG2 used in DVD is notoriously inefficient by today's standards. Depending on the codec selected, it'll be a fraction of the size with no visible differences.

Unless you mean to keep the DVD structure and playability in DVD players (including menus and everything), but I don't think handbrake can do that.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 19 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Normal DVD-R max out at 4.7GB. Wikipedia says there are double layer recordable DVDs with 8.5 GB, I've just never seen one of them. But they're available on Amazon.

Idk. I usually just copy files onto USB thumbdrives these days.

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You need a drive that supports burning those double layer disks

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 hours ago

But they are real! And work!

Source: had appropriate drive/disks in the beforetime

[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 22 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Have you thought about just putting the episodes on a thumb drive instead? Most things that can play DVD/BD can play videos from a USB.

[–] velummortis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I'll have to ask if the home theater system plays USB I guess

[–] shane@feddit.nl 11 points 18 hours ago

A lot of TV have a USB port and can play directly from that.

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 6 points 20 hours ago

You can split them and just have twice as many disks, bit of work though

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Do they need to play on a set top DVD player? If they are going to be played on a computer, you can reencode to a modern codec and burn them as data DVDs.

[–] velummortis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

None of her computers have optical drives unfortunately, she just has the home theater system from 15 years ago

[–] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 3 points 12 hours ago

Connect her computer to the theater system or TV. Give thumb drive.

Alternatively, get am HDMI to rca output adapter if things are real bad for the theater system