How much video does a DVD hold???

Question

We have a bunch of VHS and 8 MM tapes. I want to record them to DVD's. I was wondering how long/much (minutes/hours) of video does DVD hold??

Answer 1

Depends on your recording quality and whether you use single layer (about 5 GB) or dual layer DVD.

Good DVD quality is at about 6 Mbit/s
If you use DivX or WMV, you can get pretty good quality at 4 Mbit/s or less. Definitely experiment with your videos and use the best quality possible.

Here is a formula

(Disc space in GB * 1000 * 8)/(bit rate in Mbits/s *3600) in hours

Example, 5 GB using 6 Mbits/s

(5*1000*8)/(6*3600) = 1.85 hours

5 GB at 4 Mbits/s = 2.78 hours

You need to add sound as well (about 128-256 kbits/s), but that gets more important as you go down on bit rate

So, with sound you have 4.256 Mbits/s total rate or 2.6 hours