I am curious about burning dual layer dvd's in linux. I want to knwo what is involved in doing so before I invest ina dual layer drive/disks.

any references or hwoto's would be appreciated as well as personal experience.

Put the drive in the computer, open K3B, and burn away!

I have been burning dual layer DVD's for a year now.

I didn't have to do anything special.

Memorex Dual Layer burner.

this is the problem with automated software that has no customizations, without dual layer k3b seems to have no dual layer capeability, there is no user setting I could find that even huinted at dual layer, is it safe to assume that you do new dvd and it just shows 8.xgb instead of the 4.xgb? or is there a dual layer dvd option as well as the usual cd and dvd options?

Well yep I would say that without a dual layer burner K3B has no dual layer capability.

As a matter of fact without a dual layer burner, there is not an application for any OS, anywhere with dual layer capability.

not what I was asking

let me put it this way:

k3b hides *software* dual layer capeability so that you cannot see that it *would* support dual layer *if* you had a dual layer drive correct? or is *software* dual layer capeability completely transparent to the user, if so how then would it work?

this is in contrast to command line utilities which have a --help and man pages describing all areas of functionality regardless iof weather you meet the hardware requirements, thus allowing you to check and see if the software would support the hardware before you actually buy it. thus my point is that software apps liek k3b that do everything for you leave you hoping and praying that if you buy the drive that the required options in the software would magically appear.

K3B burns DVD's, that includes dual layer DVD's. It doesn't hide anything. It is a simple concept, it will burn a DVD whther it is a 8.5 gig, or a 4.7gig.

when I do new dvd in k3b it shows xxx of 4.xgb, if I go over it turns red, leading me to beleave it has dvd'as are only 4.xgb. this is before I specify wehat drive or query any media, so it is not simply reading 4.x disk, show 4.xgb, now, when you burn a dual layer dvd more than say 5gb does it show the usage bar in red? or does it query all the drives to see if any are dual layer?

In k3b, go to Settings -> Configure K3b -> Devices
Scroll down and looks for "Writes DVD-R Dual Layer" and "Writes DVD+R Dual Layer"

If you do not see either option, you need to upgrade k3b. If you do see that option listed but BOTH are "no" (I've never seen DVD-R DL, incidentally) then you may need to upgrade your cdrecord package, or depending on your burner, switch to a different device. I have a cheap reliable Lite-On and dual layer capability is recognized for that drive. What model drive do you have? What version of cdrecord do you have installed?

1 members found this post helpful.

the point of the thread was to ask aboujt support before buying dual layer, I do not have a dual layer yet.

Oh I'm sorry, that's what I get for skimming. D'oh!

I've been able to sucessfully burn dvd -r dual layer only with nerolinux. I'm using Ubuntu and run both 64 and 32 bit operating systems dual boot. But the results are kind of buggy and I don't like how the proprietary nero interface is so totally non integrated with the rest. If you are desperate this is the only solution I have found. But as I say it is buggy - the disk after being burned takes a long time to mount and doesn't always work. Kind of unacceptable is you are doing -forinstance- a crucial backup.

I've read that dvd+r dual layer is more likely to be supported. I plan on buying some and giving it a try. I started with the -r dual layer because that is all the local store had and my experience from normal (single layer) dvd's that dvd-r is very sucessful and supported (by such things as nautilus, k3b)

Can anyone confirm who knows more about this that dvd+r dual layer is the way to go for linux?

I also found this link which seems to explain the technical reasons why dvd-r dual layer isn't supported but I can't tell if this is limiting to all linux or just this perticular software: dvd+rw-tools http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/-RW/#nomultisess

If you need to use nerolinux just search that term on isohunt and there are many copies for *free trial* I wonder how the proprietary nerolinux succeeds (though not 100% consistently) Perhaps they are using some open source tools we aren't thinking of... Or perhaps they are "Ahead" of the OSS development and someone should try to study their method to develop one for the free world.

I just popped a DVD+R DL in K3B and as soon as it finished reading the disk showed 8.0GB. Hope that helps