Is DVD authoring possible with a FAT32 file system?

Hi, For all my encodes, I usually capture to segmented AVI files which gets around the FAT32's restriction of a maximum 4 gig single file size. However, during any part of the DVD encoding/authoring process, are there any single files that will exceed 4 gigs if I want to use the full capacity of the disc? I would like to fit 2 hours of video onto a single DVD disc but I'm concerned the converted MPEG-2 file will exceed 4 gigs which would be a problem under FAT32.

well.. you could theoretically create 2 mpg files from a movie instead of a single one if you want to use more than 4gb for the movie. Also.. you have to burn without making an image.. but it's definitely possible. Though a reasonable digital video system definitely uses a filesystem without such restrictions ;)

Catback: I just finished a 110-minute DVD on a W98SE system with the 4GB FAT32 limitation. I used Vegas Video 3, which works beautifully and transparently with FAT32 limitations. The only limitation I found was that any single avi video segment (from fade-to-black to fade-to-black) had to be under 18:30 in length in order to slide under the 4GB DV limit. Such a segment going into CCE or TMPGEnc would then render out as an MPEG2 file roughly 1GB in size. Feeding those files (and the audio mates) into an authoring application was no problem, and the VOB created by the multiplexing would become one "Title" in the project. You link that Title to the next Title in the sequence, and so on. The reason to pick a fade-to-black spot is because a DVD player will typically pause a half-second or so while switching from title to title, and the audience will never notice the lag if already part of a fade (assuming audio is silent, too). One can get around this 18:30 fade-in/fade-out limitation by rendering the avis into MPEG2, and then joining the MPEG2 files together. I think Doom9 would know of some clever utilities that can do this without causing a blip in the video. But you'll have to keep your finished MPEG2 under 4GB. What comes out the other end of the authoring rendering is a collection of files in the VIDEO_TS folder. Most are tiny, and the rest are VOB files of exactly 1GB in length (except for the last one, of course; it's smaller). Since a DVD-R blank can hold 4.37GB, you can't do an "image" of your DVD project, as Doom9 has stated. But you can certainly take your VIDEO_TS folder over to Nero or some similar program and burn from there. Works great.

Doom9/Richard, Thanks for the reply. I was considering making two separate MPEG-2 files, each of 1 hour in length. That way, I won't have to worry about one single MPEG-2 file exceeding 4 gigs in size. However, will the popular DVD authoring software (only have experience with Ulead's MovieFactory) allow you to input two separate MPEG-2 files when authoring a single DVD?