What's the difference between DVD-5 and DVD-9

May 29, 2013 2:20 pm / Posted by Ian Lam to DVD Solutions

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DVD-5 and DVD-9 are widely used in normal DVD disk which is not the same with Blu-ray DVD. It can be played on PC, DVD player, some family theatre center device like XBMC, WD Player, Roku Player, DivX Player etc. As DVD is a good storage media tool so far in case any data loss in our computer or other data center, it will be very useful until we find a better way to store our data and enable to keep as long as DVD disc.

Video to DVD-5, DVD-9 tool
DVD Maker for Mac: Burn iMovie video, iPhoto Slideshow, iTunes M4V, QuickTime and common video movies like MP4, MKV, MOV, MPEG, AVI, MOD, TOD etc any file format to DVD-5, DVD-9 for disc.

About DVD-5:
DVD-5 discs are one-sided, single layer recordable DVDs with a capacity of 4.7GB. The numbering after DVDs can be approximated to the capacity of the discs. For example DVD-9 discs can hold 8.5GB on a one-sided, double layer disc and DVD-18 can hold 17.4GB on a dual-side, dual-layer disc. DVD-5 are the most common type of DVD as the 4.7GB capacity is currently more than enough for most applications or requirements, holding 120 minutes of high quality audio and video.

About DVD-9:
DVD-9 discs are one-sided, double layer recordable DVDs with a capacity of 8.5GB The DVD-9 format is not as common as the DVD-5 format as the 4.7GB capacity of the DVD-5 discs is usually sufficient for most business uses, although many DVD films will use DVD-9 format if the film length is over 120 minutes.

The difference between DVD-5 and DVD-9:

1. Structure
In double layer (also referred to as dual layer) DVD-9 discs, two layers of standard DVD-5 are joined together with a transparent spacer and a thin reflector between the two. The bottom layer is read and written to in exactly the same manner as DVD-5. Reading and writing to the second layer is achieved by the laser focusing a fraction of a millimeter beyond the first recording layer.
The diagram below shows the difference between single (DVD-5) and dual layer discs (DVD-9):

2. The storage:
As the structure shown above, the DVD-9 storage is almost double the DVD-5 storage. But we should notice that:
DVD-9 can hold approximately 7.95 gigabytes of data, even though marketers like to use the 8.5GB value instead, but this is misleading and is calculated by using so-called "Japanese gigabytes" which means that gigabyte is calculated as 1,000 megabytes, but in real computer terminology, gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes.
DVD-5 actually can contain upto 4.38 gigabytes of data on it.

3. Supported formats:
DVD-5 holds 4.7GB and is supported by the DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW formats.
DVD-9 holds 8.5GB and is supported by the DVD+R and DVD-R formats.
So now you can put the DVD-5 or DVD-9 to the DVD Player with supported DVD format and won't meet the situation why you can't play the DVD disc well.

4. Reusable or not
The last difference between DVD5 and DVD9 is that the DVD5 can be reused when compared to the DVD9, where the information can no longer be edited once it is burned. This makes the DVD5 more efficient and friendly to the environment.

So now, you are clear what is DVD-5 and what is DVD-9. If you hope to burn videos to DVD on Mac, then you what you should use is DVD Maker for Mac above, it enables you burn MP4, MKV, MOV, MPEG, AVI, MOD, TOD, iMovie video, iPhoto Slideshow, iTunes M4V, QuickTime to DVD-5 or DVD-9. After the burning ending, you are allowed to play the DVD disk on DVD player best.

Take iPhoto Slideshow as example. It enables you import the exported iPhoto Slideshow MOV to the DVD Burner and you can do additional edit work like DVD disk Background, Menu Title (DVD Name), Button Style and Frame (Video decoration Frame). So you can create your most personalized and outstanding DVD disk to DVD-5 or DVD-9 disk.

For related DVD tool, we are familiar with:
DVD Ripper: Rip DVD disk to all kinds of videos like Mp4, MOV, MKV, MPEG, AVI, WMV, M4V etc common SD video format.
DVD Maker: Burn iMovie video, iPhoto Slideshow, iTunes M4V, QuickTime and common video movies like MP4, MKV, MOV, MPEG, AVI, MOD, TOD etc any file format to DVD-5, DVD-9 for disc.