I am VERY new to all this technology. I have recorded 12 short films of my son which I want to make into a DVD for my family to send abroad. They have recorded as MPEG files. Each file is about 40 minutes long & when I try to put these on to DVD using my software (SONIC) I can only fit 2 films on each DVD with only 50Mb spare space. Each MPEG I have created is around 450Mb. My question is - Is there any way to shrink or compress these MPEG files so I could maybe fit 6 on a DVD-R?
Oh ye of little faith, that can be done- You need to try TMPGEnc V3, download the trial version here. It is a very easy to use MPEG2 encoder with easily adjustible compression rates. The MPEG2 files it creates are DVD compatible, all you have to do is author the files it produces for you. You should be able to get 4 or 5 hours video with PCM audio easily. With a bit of messing around and a few special tricks I have managed to fit 3 feature films onto one 4.7 GB DVD-R. That is about 7 or 8 hours of video. This involves compressing the video with DivX or Xvid, then encoding to MPEG2, then authoring.
