FFmpeg - calling Ast3r3x

Here's what I'm trying to do: fit a larger than 4.4 gig DVD (even without extras) onto one DVD-R. I have DVD2One on Virtual PC which worked perfectly on Memento but using VPC is a pain and I have a feeling once I learn how to do this on FFMpeg it will be much quicker and higher quality. Ast3r3x, anyone else know how to use ffmpeg's complicated interface? First of all, I used DVDBackup to extract the VIDEO_TS folder. So if ffmpeg asks me to select a file, which one do I select, how does it know I want it to process the whole VIDEO_TS folder? I'm going to try doing it direct from a DVD now with the NTSC DVD preset. I assume this will lower the bitrate just enough to squeeze a movie like Dogma onto one DVD, and still give me the best quality? I'll report how Dogma turns out.



And YES I searched the Internet for Ffmpeg guides. Open source people at sourceforge or whatever make great stuff but I think one of the most pressing bugs is the lack of documentation!



edit:



I just tried every possible way to copy the Vanilla Sky dvd in my superdrive with ffmpeg. It keeps beeping at me when the Terminal opens and spits out a bunch of gibberish and this: "Unable to open file /Users/kevinmacleod/Desktop/vanillasky.m2v for reading." It keeps having problems with the files it's creating on my desktop. WTF?













FINAL edit! I'll just settle for splitting the DVD into two DVD-Rs. But how to do this was never clearly explained in that other longass thread. Please can someone explain it simply? By weeding out files I got a DVD image from Toast containing the first half of vanilla sky to play in the DVD Player but when I tried weeding out files to get a Vanilla Sky "part 2" it wouldn't burn in Toast, for some reason it said "Out of memory."! ACK, foiled! I included all those weird files with each DVD image, the .bup .ifo and whatever else, the first VOB etc.



How to split, that is the question.