How to burn 20 hours of video on a single long-play DVD

Creating your own video DVDs has really become easy in recent time. Most programs ship with all required components so that you only need to use a single one to convert all video files in the appropriate format before the converted data is burned on a disc.

The program that I like to use for the task is the commercial VSO ConvertXtoDVD which is really comfortable to use and supports all major video formats. If you are looking for a free alternative, you can check out programs such as Free Video Converter which supports the burning of DVD video discs among other things.

One feature that the program ships with is the ability to burn long-play DVD movies on a single-layer or dual-layer DVD. What this means is that you can burn up to 20 hours of video on a single-layer DVD, and up to 40 hours of video on a dual-layer DVD.

Doing so impacts the output quality of the video stream, but that may not be that much of an issue depending on where and how you want to view the videos.

While the picture may not look that good on your 40+ inch LCD TV, it is less noticeable if you watch the videos in a (small) window on your computer. It is also not that much of an issue if the source video quality is not that good as well.

Note: Freemake adds two seconds of logo to the end of each converted clip of the DVD. This does not affect the videos that you have burned in any way, but you may not want this to happen. There is unfortunately no way to prevent this from happening unless you purchase the Gold version of the application.

Burn a 20 hour video DVD

To burn a 20 hour or 40 hour video DVD, you need to download and install Freemake's Free Video Converter. The core program is free, and only some feature additions are only available after you make a donation. The long-play video DVD creation is completely free though.

Attention: The program installer ships with several adware and toolbar offers. That's definitely a negative aspect of the program, so make sure you decline, cancel or uncheck any offer that it presents to you (three during installation on my test system) so that you do not end up with these kind of things on your system.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Start the program after you have installed it on your system.
2. Select video at the top, browse to a folder containing video files that you want to burn and select them. Repeat the process until all video files that you want to burn have been added.
3. The program does not display the total playing time of all video files directly, but a click on "to DVD" in the bottom toolbar displays the information. Make sure you are below 20 hours if you want to burn a single-layer DVD, and below 40 hours if you want to burn a dual-layer video DVD.
4. As you can see on the screenshot above, the quality of the video stream is not that good.
5. Select whether you want to create an ISO image first, or burn the converted video files directly to disc.
6. Click convert to start the process.

Tip: It may make sense to test various quality settings to find one that is suitable for you. Just select more or less video files to adjust the video quality until it reaches an acceptable level. You do not need to burn the videos to DVD for testing., just select to create an ISO image and load the video ISO image afterwards in a media player such as VLC or SMPlayer.

Closing Words

Creating long-play video DVDs cannot really get any easier than this. The biggest issue that you will run into is the program's adware offers during installation. Afterwards it is just a matter of loading video files into the program, clicking on convert and inserting the blank DVD into the DVD writer to start the writing process.

Now Read: How to burn a DVD with ImgBurn

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