Hello All,

I am brand new at this whole DVD back up thing. I have DVD Studio Pro 2 and am planning on buying the new Plextor 16x DVD reader writer. The main reason I am considering it is A) I heard Plextor makes the best DVD drives AND B) It's a dual layer burner. I am a quality junkie, I like to have the best, without paying the most. Also I have found that the dual layer discs are around $10 a piece. My question is this, how much quality am I losing by compressing my DVD movies to a single layer disc, as opposed to no compression on a dual layer disc. So is there anyone out there that has a good perspective between the two that could give me some advice?

-SetoTitan

That all depends on the size of the original the bigger the size the more compression..
But on a lot of movies you could do movie only and get rid of subtitles\audio etc and you will be left with a movie that requires no compression or at most hardly any and the quality is exellent ..

I'm fairly new to this as well, just recently got my PX712A. Awesome drive by the way, and plextools professional rocks as well. Using DVDdecryptor and DVDshrink I usually burn the main movie with English audio only. In addition DVDshrink allows you to set the beginning and ending frame, so I usually remove the ending credits. If there is a diminished quality... I dont see it. Long movies such as LotR can be split to multiple DVDs to retain quality. That said, if you got the cash... go for the PX-716, but remember the dual layer dvd's are very expensive as well.

Please visit the CDFreaks Plextor hardware forum before buying the PX-716A. Dual layer media is expensive as hell, but you can get a good 16x Dual Layer capable burner for less than a PX-712A... BenQ's DW-1620 and NEC's ND-3500A are great burners that cost less than $70.