So altogether with the video files, slideshows and opening and closing
credits I have about 191 minutes just over 3 hours. This is all at
720x576 (CCIR-601D1) 4:3 in Standard Play mode (5073 kbits/s). Used
space as stated in NVE is 7.30 out of 7.95GB.

The slideshows' effect on the amount of discspace needed will be quite
small - unless they are actually videos made up of still images, in which
case they are not true slideshows but videos. It's semantics, but important.

Yes they are definitely slideshows made up from still images not video
files.

As far as I can tell, a DVD slideshow is a series of navigable single frames
encoded as MPEG I frames, and you can specify the time between frames etc.
So basically you end up with a tiny video file, with the audio taking up
more room. If there are fancy effects like image panning and crossfades,
what you've actually got is a video, and there's no need to distinguish that
from the other video on your DVD.

I do have crossfades between the different photos in the slideshows.
It does seem to be the background music that takes up most of the
space on the slideshows.

If Nero does create slideshows as video, you should make your DVD folder at
the highest acceptable bitrate, then use Nero Recode to get it down to
single layer disc size. Recode will analyse the video to determine where it
can make savings and will yield the best quality for the available space.

I might have to have a look into this. I thought that Nero Recode just
converted to MP4 format which I wouldn't really want to do because the
quality isn't as good, but if it can just recode the original files
and do a better job of that than NVE then I might give it a shot.

If it makes the end product better quality on a single layer disc I'll
give it a go and see if its good enough. I do think though that I will
probably have to get this onto a dual layer disc, or over two single
layer ones.

Rounding everything up to the next minute, I get:
7+35+90+4+5+55 = 196 minutes or 11,760 sec

I had already done the rounding up/down to the nearest minute e.g
the second video file may have been 33 minutes and about 20 secs so I
called that 33 mins, and the third video 1hr 29 was 1hr 28mins 42 secs
etc so I round up to 1hr 29 etc etc. 191 minutes is app what the
length of the project is.

On a DL disc you have 8.5GB which is 68,000,000 kbit
Divide the latter by the former to get a desired average bitrate (audio +
video) of 5780 kbit/s

The Dual layer DVD disc does say 8.5GB but only 7.95GB of that appears
to show up as being usable. Same with the single layer its stated as
capacity 4.7GB but only 4.38 shows as being usable within NVE. Maybe
this is something to do with the 1000 or 1024kb in an mb issue and so
on?

On a SL disc you have 4.7GB which is 37,600,000 kbit
yielding a desired average bitrate (audio + video) of 3190 kbit/s

Well, it shows as only 4.38 as being usable for me in NVE, so I guess
you can't use a full 4.7?

Use AC3 at 225kbit to give average video bitrates of 5556 and 2966 kbit/s
respectively

I will have to see if there is an option for this and see if it does
that.

Considering your source media is stills and DV, I reckon that creating the
VIDEO_TS folder for DL disc and then running it through recode for SL discs
will get rid of your stutter problem and still yield acceptable quality.

The stutter problem was just on my system it is not a problem with the
video files just the performance of my computer.

Note that crossfades on stills are particularly demanding on bandwidth, so
if your slideshow has them, consider replacing them with a different
transition.

Yeah, I have used crossfades. I didn't really like any of the other
transitions, the crossfade was the best one for this project.

As yet, I haven't seen anything to convince me that it's bad media. I'm not
saying that's not the problem, just that it could be a player issue. If it
is bad media, I _do_ think it's likely to be a whole batch (the only time
I've had problems it's been with every disc in a tub. Started a new tub
after a dozen or so failures - problem went away). Have you tried Jerry's
suggestion of different media?

I am about to try that now. I have some Verbatim DL DVD-R.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can get these with a printable
surface, you can only get the DL DVD+R as printable. So I will have to
also get some DL +R verbatims to see if the problem was the media I
was using, then if it was I should still be able to use printable DL
+R verbatims, otherwise I am going to have to do it on a branded
DL -R disc

John