capturing dvd video in it's original resolution

[buko]

Hello,

I've got some DVDs that I'm trying to reorganize. It's just footage of some meetings that I want to get in chronological order on a set of DVDs. I did not create the originals.
One of the DVDs has five hours of video on it, and I'm pretty sure it's not a double layer DVD. When played in a pc software dvd player, the window comes up at something like 360x240.
I use a matrox capture card and a cyberhome dvd player to capture dvds normally, using a really high compression, low quality setting. however, with this method, I'm still only able to squeeze about 2 hours of video onto a DVD when it gets blown back up to 720x480.
What are my options here? Capture at a smaller resolution? Can you do that with Adobe Premiere pro? Or am I better off ripping the data off the DVD and using another program to compress the hell out of it? Any help on squeezing multiple DVDs onto 1 DVD would be great. I'm playing with DVD Shrink, but was wondering if anyone could point me in the most ideal direction.

Thanks,
Buko

[katzdvd]

One of the DVDs has five hours of video on it, and I'm pretty sure it's not a double layer DVD.

Or am I better off ripping the data off the DVD and using another program to compress the hell out of it? Any help on squeezing multiple DVDs onto 1 DVD would be great. I'm playing with DVD Shrink, but was wondering if anyone could point me in the most ideal direction.

Since I don't use dual layer discs, I have run large ISO's thru shrink multiple times, just to see what the result would be. For my viewing on a 30", I have no noticable problems.

One instance was a concert DVD that I was backing up, & I "shrunk" it 4 times, I believe. It had extras/interviews, etc., that I wanted to include, so there wasn't really anything extra I could strip out. My only option was to compress the heck out of it.

I say, give it a shot & see what you come up with; at worst, you've only lost one DVD in the experiment!

Let us know how it works out!

[olyteddy]

DVD shrink is possibly the right direction. Try 'Re-Authoring' mode to get exact copies of the vid that's already there. Also, with blank Single Layer media so cheap, why not let the disk span multiple volumes?

[shrink0]

@ buko wrote, One of the DVDs has five hours of video on it, and I'm pretty sure it's not a double layer DVD.
put disk in drive and check properties! And ditto for DVD shrink as others suggested....