While a good rule of thumb is that it takes about two gigabytes to store one hour of average video, the amount of video a DVD can hold depends on the amount of audio and the type of audio/video compression, as well as the associated audio tracks, menu complexity, and additional material. This means that a DVD-5, DVD-R, or DVD+R can hold up to about 120 minutes of video with standard bit-rate and a 48kHz audio stream. However, we have found that to maximize quality, we recommend no more than 85 minutes on a DVD-5. DVD-9s will hold about 4 hours of video (less than 3 at the optimal quality).
| Disc | Capacity (GB) | Capacity (video minutes) |
Sides | Layers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DVD-5 | 4.7 | 120 | 1 | 1 |
| DVD-9 | 8.5 | 240 | 1 | 2 |