Tweak and Fit problems

[JoReneA]

I am trying to slightly reduce the size of a home video I made using DVD Movie Factory 4. The tweak and fit offers to scale the videos in the DVD folder to 93% in order to fit on a standard DVD and it burns the video. However, when I try to play the video, the last 4-5 (of 16) menu items will not play. I then reduced the size a bit more, thinking the disk was still too full. The DVD then played one more video, but the last 4 still would not play. The menu was there, but when I clicked on the menu item, it hesitated and then went back to playing the music on the menu page. I think there is a problem with this module of DVD MF 4 and wonder if anyone has solved the problem. I did get an earlier DVD to reduce in size and play all the items, but there was a little skipping during the playing of some of the video, as if it wasn't encoded smoothly during the compression.

[DVDDoug]

You may have some other problem (file corruption or something).

You can avoid running out of space by "burning" your project to your hard drive:
On the burning screen, uncheck Record To Disc and check Create DVD Folders.

If the the "DVD" on your hard drive plays all the way through then you're right, you have a size / fit problem.

I've never actually used the Fit To Disc feature, but I've had good luck with DVD Shrink (FREE!!!). You can shrink your DVD-on-hard-drive and burn it to an actual DVD.

[JoReneA]

Thanks for the response. I did first burn the project to my hard disk and it played fine. The problem occurs with the shrinking to fit. I used a DVD-RW, as I always do so I can check to see if there are problems before burning to a regular DVD-R. I tried getting the project to fit first by changing the data rate, but even the lowest rate did not fit it, mostly due to a slide show I'd added at the end. With no transitions or movement of the slides, everything fit. But when I added transitions and movement to the slides, it increased the size considerably. That's when I tried using Tweak and Fit. I'll see about using the other program you mentioned.

[tony c]

JoReneA, beware, DVD-RW does not hold as much DVD information as a regular DVD-R disc. For some reason, it fills up sooner and the last few minutes of your project have nowhere to go and just disappear, even though the blue file size bar says it should fit!

If the size of your HD project or iso image seem correct, ignore the RW and try burning to DVD-R and you may find your missing bits are there after all.

This problem only arises if your project is a full DVD-R size (4.3GB), then it will not fit on a RW. Both RW and R discs are supposed to have the same capacity, but I have never been able to fit a full R's worth on a RW. Anyone know why?

[JoReneA]

While I had some problems playing my first "shrunk" DVD in my DVD player attached to my TV, after redoing it with more compression, it played ok on my TV. However, the files converted by both Tweak & Fit and the other program you recommended did not play using ULead's DVD Player. When opening the DVD folder on the hard drive or on the disk I later burned, the program more or less froze and would not play the menu items or move around the menu. The original folders (those that were too big to fit on one DVD) played ok in ULead, however. Then I tried playing the compressed folders/disk with Intervideo WinDVD and it played fine! I think the ULead player is not the best and will no longer use it as my default player. Ulead should work on this application.