i have downloaded a 8.5Gb Mkv file and need to burn it to
a 4.7Gb 'normal' DVD disc,not dual layer.

i have tried convertx to dvd and also Dvdshrink.
none work.

any clues to how i can compress and burn.

i do have nero on my pc but not tried it yet.

Well give Nero a try, whats the worst that can happen?

And when you say convertx didnt work, what do you mean, what did it say?

convertxto dvd didnt display any error messages
just it doesnt play back in very good quality.
very pixlelated and picture jumps around
all through the film.

convertxto dvd did take over 3 hours to convert and burn!!!!

I have used handbrake and it will let you shrink the movie so I don't know if you have used it before but i am not great at thing like this but handbrake was not to hard

Are you sure that wasnt just some kind of mess up by convertx, i mean you could try again.

TERRA is right you might try it again I have used convertx before and it worked fine

on that can you take out all of the extras that you do not want is that the problem

thanks both for the replies
i will try later and let it
convert/burn over night,just
to make really sure nowt is
screwed about with

burnt another copy of it using convertx and the same
happened again.

i made sure there was nothing else running etc etc

cant be bothered with it anymore!!!!
thanks for the replies and advice

I don't think you're going to get 8 GB on a 4 GB disk. If you could split the movie into 2 or 3 parts it might retain the quality.

Ok .. i wasn't going to say anything.. but I will :) and I am not an expert in this area...

off the top of my head ... your mkv file is a container (named after the Russian dolls that stack inside each other) than holds the movie and other goodies (eg subtitles etc). The movie (or avi) is a container that holds your video and audio. Usually mkv's use the h264 (or x264) codec for video, and are usually a much higher resolution (eg 1280×544 instead of 640x272 <-- example Iron Man 2) - that's an increase in this particular example of 400% area - i.e twice the height, twice the width = 4 times the area.

So if you have a 8.5Gb mkv - and you downsample it to fit on a single layer, then the quality will always be crap, because you aren't changing the resolution to keep the bitrate high. Not to mention re-encoding from another encode.

I suggest you either find an XviD (that's h263 or x263 or xvid codec) or as suggested, maybe you can split the movie, or if your dvd allows you to, use a dual-layer re-writeable (go buy one - will come in handy in the future), or use software such as Super to re-encode to a smaller resolution (which defeats the purpose of having grabbed a high res mkv in the first place).

I assume you are only doing this because you wish to play the movie on your TV using your DVD player. And that you plan on keeping the 8.5Gb monsta as part of your archive? Does your DVD player have a USB slot, do you have a USB stick, do you have a Playstation 3, etc .. a LCD TV .. etc .. there are lots of ways to get media onto your TV. We'd need more info on these aspects to give you a better choice.

This might not be the answer you are looking for, but you could always buy the DVD of the film you want , alternatively, and its just a suggestion because i have never tried it, you could use Convertx to convert the file into the VOB files you need change the target DVD size to 8.5, this should retain the quality, the files will be stored in your documents folder somewhere, and then DON'T burn to disc. If you do not burn to disc the files should stay in that folder.

The use DVD Fab or DVD shrink to reduce the file size to fit on a single layer disc.

Like i say i have not tried it, but it might work however encoding and re-encoding in anyway shape or form will have a detrimental effect on the quality.

you downloaded an mkv file which stores multiple streams of audio, and subtitles.
if you want to fix that you must use vdubmod to remove the garbage you dont want.
this is typically audio streams (a lot of dvd's of that size have many language tracks).

you have to demux that source and rebuild it into a pure avi for convertx2dvd. pm me if you need help.
its a process ive had to do with anime (i like my anime jap subbed) and i know how to do it.