Recording onto a DVD +R Disc

[eastaugh36]

Hi

I am new to recording onto a disc from my dvd recorder and some help would really be appreciated.

I have a long program (3 hours) that I want to put onto disc. I went out and bought a 8.5gb double layer disc as I'm told 3 hours will easily fit onto this.

What does it mean by double layered? Does this mean that I can record on both sides? If so, I didnt do this.

I recorded the program onto disc but only used one side and the picture quality is just average.

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Xtreme]

It's hard to explain, basically your dvd recorder would have decreased the picture quality in order to fit the 3 hour program on to the disc.

On my current hdd/dvd recorder (Panasonic which i've had for 2 years),
59 minutes gives me XP quality (essentially dvd quality) when recording to a standard dvd disc. 1hr 59 minutes gives me XP quality on a dual layer disc. If my program is longer than those times, it will decode the quality in order to be able to fit it on to the disc.

The picture quality goes down to say video tape quality and lower (almost 56k internet video quality) depending on the length of the program i have recorded on to disc. It's why i sometimes chop out more than commercials when i want to put a program to disc (although it varies on the program).

I am safe when it comes to putting recorded AFL games to disc (recording all of the commercials between goals, qtr and half time breaks brings it down to 1hr 40 - 1hr 50 most times).

Dual layer is not double sided, although they could be.... have never seen a blank recordable double sided disc although i have a few proper retail dvds with that feature - eg: Godfather 2, Superman and Lethal Weapon 4. Dual layer is basically double the size of a normal dvd-r disc.