MovieChat Forums > Goodfellas (1990) Discussion > Goodfellas on DVD

Goodfellas on DVD

posted 8 years ago by countZero87
18 replies | jump to latest

I love the movie but the DVD of it that I own is really strange. I have quite a few DVDs but this is the only one that is double-sided. The movie just stops in the middle of a scene and you have to turn the disc around to continue. It's like they didn't know that double layer DVDs exist. And it's not super old. I bought it in 2010!

Does anyone know how common double-sided DVDs are?

Something similar happend when I bought the Animatrix in 2015 and it came in one of those cardboard cases (www.markdownmedia.com/product_images/085393731625.jpg) that I haven't seen in the last 15 years.

[–] wynthsave 8 years ago

I clicked on this to see if yours was also double-sided. it's weird, isn't it? I have only seen double-sided DVDs in the case where the extra features / bonuses are on the back, or a different format like Widescreen. Goodfellas is the only DVD I own that requires me to flip it halfway through (right at the scene after Tommy shoots Spider)

I think I got the DVD in 2009 or 2010. before I left for college so it had to be right around the dawn of the decade. not an old DVD at all; so weird!

[–] infinit9 8 years ago

buy the 25th anniversary Blu-Ray. It is less than $10 on Amazon.

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look to the edge of the universe and see the beginning of time.

[–] slimone (7996) 7 years ago

I watched it the other night on DVD and thought maybe something was wrong with the DVD player, but then I turned the disc over. There was a time lap between the first and second side of the disc. Not my favorite movie anyway.

[–] MaximRecoil (4631) 6 years ago

"It's like they didn't know that double layer DVDs exist."

The movie may have been too big to fit on a single side of a double-layer DVD. The movie is quite long (2 hours and 25 minutes), so if they used the maximum allowable bitrate (10.08 Mbps for everything combined), you'd get a file size of 10.48 GB. The most you can fit on one side of a double-layer DVD is 7.95 GB, so a double-side, double-layer DVD would be needed.

Most of the time, even movies with long running times are fit onto a single side of a double-layer DVD, but they can only do that if they lower the bitrate well below the maximum. 6 Mbps is common, which would result in 6.24 GB for Goodfellas, well below the 7.95 GB limit. Whoever was in charge of the DVD transfer for Goodfellas may not have wanted to compromise on quality though in order to fit it all on one side.

[–] shydwaynehobbs (284) 6 years ago

I have sleepers on dvd same thing lol! i just bought the 2 disc goodfellas movie today!

[–] GetWokeGoBroke (763) 4 years ago

No, you can fit 3+ hrs or more on a dual layer DVD, a lot of these early DVDs like Goodfellas or Sleepers were not duel layer discs to begin with.... they were essentially glorified laserdiscs but you could fit more data on them.

[–] MaximRecoil (4631) 4 years ago

"No"

What do you mean, "no"? What you typed didn't contradict anything I typed, which means you didn't read or didn't understand what I typed.

"you can fit 3+ hrs or more on a dual layer DVD"

The limit isn't running time, it's bitrate. You could fit e.g., 12 hours or more on a DVD if you used a ridiculously low bitrate that resulted in terrible picture quality. The running time that you can fit onto a DVD depends on the bitrate that you choose when encoding the video and audio streams. If you want maximum possible quality you can't fit Goodfellas onto a dual-layer DVD, as I already pointed out. If you're okay with less than maximum quality, then you can fit it onto a dual-layer DVD, or even a single-layer DVD; you simply lower the bitrate enough to make it fit the target size.

[–] GetWokeGoBroke (763) 4 years ago

I wasn't just talking about running time on dual layer discs, the bitrate is what I was talking about as well in order to fit 3+ hrs correctly but the very early double sided discs were usually not dual layer discs..... bitrate is irrelevant in single layer discs because of limited capacity hence they were borrowing from LDs. Single layer discs are DVD-10 discs with two recorded data layers that only one layer is accessible from either side of the disc. The total capacity of a DVD-10 disc is 9.4 GB but each side is locked to 4.7 GB which is what limits those discs and are the infamous "flipper discs". Dual layer discs are DVD-9 discs, 8.5 GB but both are readable from the same side so putting 3 hrs+ films on a single disc can still be high bitrate if done correctly, I have many single disc DVDs with long films on them and the quality is not affected by it..... most newer DVDs can hold movies that are 3 hrs long although you will need a 2nd disc for features if you want the best quality but blu ray fixed that problem. Are you sure Goodfellas is a dual layer disc or just double sided? They're not the same thing unless the DVD is a dual layer flipper disc that has both the widescreen and full screen versions on the opposite sides of the disc but can still fit a full length film on one single side.

[–] MaximRecoil (4631) 4 years ago

"bitrate is irrelevant in single layer discs because of limited capacity hence they were borrowing from LDs."

Bitrate is never irrelevant when it comes to DVD and other digital storage media. If you want a whole movie to fit on a DVD, regardless of whether it's a DVD-5 (single-layer) or DVD-9 (dual-layer), you have to adjust the audio and video stream bitrates accordingly when encoding them.

Goodfellas or any other Hollywood movie can easily fit onto a DVD-5, though for longer movies the quality will be noticeably poor (i.e., it will have visible compression artifacts such as macroblocking, smearing, color banding, etc). You can even easily do it yourself. Just download the old freeware program DVDShrink, and it will fit any movie onto a DVD-5 if you tell it to; it just transcodes the movie at a lower bitrate to make it fit. With Goodfellas not being an extremely long movie, the quality wouldn't even be all that bad at 4.7 GB. I fit one of the Lord of the Rings extended edition movies (3 someodd hours if I remember right) onto a single-layer DVD+R with DVDShrink for a friend about 16 years ago. I thought the quality was poor, but he didn't mind.

Single-layer DVDs, and DVDs in general, have nothing to do with LaserDiscs. With LDs, bitrate actually is irrelevant, because LD is an analog video format, and bitrate only applies to digital media such as DVD and Blu-ray. With LD, the limit is running time, which is a half-hour per side with CAV discs and 1 hour per side with CLV discs. The video on an LD doesn't have a bitrate, it has analog video bandwidth, measured in Hertz.

As for the rest of your post, I already know all about the various types of DVDs. I've dealt with just about every digital audio and video format in existence over the past ~20 years.

"Are you sure Goodfellas is a dual layer disc or just double sided?"

I don't know what type of DVD they put it on, and I never said that I did. I don't own it on DVD at all, let alone the first release of it, so I can't check to see whether it's single-layer or dual-layer. I only said that it could have been on a dual-layer DVD and still not fit on one side, if whoever encoded it wanted to use the maximum bitrate allowed by the DVD Forum standard. As I said before, at maximum bitrate it would have exceeded the capacity of even a dual-layer DVD.

"They're not the same thing"

I know that.

[–] GetWokeGoBroke (763) 4 years ago

T2 Ultimate Edition is also a great example of a dual layer flipper disc and taking DVD to it's limits on a single disc if you owned the 1st pressing, the 2nd pressings were put on 2 discs because people hated the flipper version lol.

[–] GreenGoblinsOck8 (7704) 4 years ago

I feel like it's bullcrap though cause when I watched the Godfather on DVD in 2006, it fit on one side of a DVD. So the same should be done for Goodfellas. But history is history. I was so annoyed with the double side that a few years ago I finally just bought it on bluray where I can watch the movie without taking the DVD out and flipping it over. Now thinking of it, the 1968 movie Oliver got the same treatment on DVD.

[–] GetWokeGoBroke (763) 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] MaximRecoil (4631) 7 months ago

"Double sided DVDs/flipper discs are not dual layer DVDs, that's why you have to flip them."

You don't know what you're talking about. A double-sided DVD can be single-layer or dual-layer:

DVD-5 = Single-side, single-layer
DVD-10 = Double-side, single-layer
DVD-9 = Single-side, dual-layer
DVD-18 = Double-side, dual-layer

https://amifw.com/difference-dvd-5-dvd-9-dvd-10-dvd-18-blu-ray-dvds/

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Jes' Sayin' (6366) 2 years ago

Every now and then you run into a DVD like this. Ray is another movie that they did this with.

[–] millsey72 (10326) 2 years ago

I like the dual sided DVDs. This way I have a reason to get up and switch the DVD side over. Its the only one of its kind that I know of

[–] Gd5150 (11758) 2 years ago

The Laser disc is like 4 sides.