Well I think I'm losing the plot with this dvd ripping ,ripping a simple 1hr 40 minute film down to 2 dvd's How come Ive seen LOTR 2 TOWERS on one dvd with full dolby digital soundtrack thats a minute under 3 hours , so who's got the tricks up their sleeves ?
The only and really the only thing is the bitrate -- you can fit 10hrs of video to one DVD if you want, but you need to use lower bitrate, which obviously results worse picture quality. http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/bitrate.cfm
There is "perfect quality" and "perfect quality". LOTR on one DVD-5 disc would be considered by many to be "perfect quality", while some of us are happy only to see it split over two DVD-9s (taking 14gigs only for the movie, without extras). And still, DVD-Video is not even close to what can be considered as a perfect quality. The next generation of "DVD" which will use blue-laser discs and way much higher bitrates will be something around 2 to 5 times better in terms of bitrate/resolution combination -- and we're still far off from the original movie quality.
I'm pleased to read that picture quality is still improving, it will compensate for my failing eyesight !!! HomerJ
