The easiest way to tell is described below in easy to follow steps.

Step 1
Insert DVD into DVD drive and double click My Computer.

Step 2
Right Click on DVD drive and select Open.



Step 3
Then double click left mouse button on the VIDEO_TS directory to open it.



Step 4
Now you will have something like this.



What we are looking for here is the movie files (this is easy after your first few times).

The movie files will be in sets of 0.99GB each (the last one will always be smaller).

The way the name corresponds is vital. VTS_01_1 ß this represents the first file in the set of files of the first Title. We don’t need to worry about the vob files that have _0 at the end of the name EG, VTS_03_0 that is not important and not needed. Most of the time this will just be the FBI warnings ETC…

When we look at out picture about we need to find the vob title that has the most about if consecutive files EG.

VTS_01_1 ß to small to be movie.

VTS_02_1, VTS_02_2 ß could be the movie but lets look at the rest.

VTS_03_1, VTS_03_2, VTS_03_3, VTS_03_4 ß looks like the biggest so will be the movie. (just to make sure open the first vob file with your DVD player (VTS_03_1) in file mode) if this appears to be the film then good J.

In this case after checking that the movie is actually in VTS_03_1,2,3,4 I found it was correct.

Step 5
Now that we know what the files are which represent the film we need to check if they need to be encoded.

To do this we need to find out the size. Highlight all of the files needed and right click then select Properties.



Now as we can see the DVD I am using is ok and dosent need to be re-encoded. We can tell this because the size is 4,101,941,248 bytes (4,700,000,000 bytes roughly will fit on a DVD-R but I would recommend to say that 4,500,000,000 bytes is size to be sure it will fit)

Now here is an example of a film that needs to be re-encoded to fit on a DVD-R



Now as we can see this one is 7,706,036,224 Bytes and as we already know that is far to big to fit on DVD-R so it needs to be re-encoded.

Step 6
Now that we know if it needs to be re-encoded please select the necessary tutorial to start the process required.