What does layer break mean when your copying a dvd movie?

Question

I always wondered what they ment by layer break when copying a dvd movie.What is it any way?What does it mean to break the layer when copying a dvd movie?

Answer 1

The layer break is the point at which the disc moves from one layer to the other.

The majority of movies released on DVD these days are single sided discs.  Originally, this meant that they could only hold about 4.7 gigs of information on one side.  However, a dual layer system was devised, in which you have the normal layer of data, then another layer on top of it that is slightly transparent.  The DVD laser is capable of focusing itself to read either layer.  This resulted in the current DVD9 standard used by most movies.

When the DVD player reaches the end of the data on the first layer, it must refocus it's laser and quickly move to the next to keep things going.  Most players can't quite do this fast enough, so there will be a very brief but noticeable pause in the movie as it is making the switch.

When you're copying movies you can set where this transition from one layer to the next takes place.  This is the layer break.