DVD not having full timeline from Encore CS5, but states it burned all

Question

I have searched the forums here and have not found anything that addresses my issue, so I thought I would ask. I will be as detailed as possible, so please bear with me.
I am recording high school football games using a Sony HDR-FX1 camcorder using MiniDV tapes. I am shooting in 1440X1080 resolution. I am doing my editing and such on a Windows 7 64-bit computer that has an i5 - 750 processor, 12GB DDR3 RAM, ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard, and a 320 GB HDD. I have Master Collection CS5 installed, and am primarily using Premiere Pro and Encore for this. I edit the footage and include chapter markers for each Quarter of the game, and then export it to build the DVD in Encore. I also edit up a Main Menu sequence that is basically highlights, which I will put buttons on once in Encore. Once the Encore project is built, I check the project to be certain there are no errors and double check the chapter markers are where they should be, etc. Everything is exactly how I want it to be. My DVD file size is 7.55GB and I am burning to a dual-layer DVD. I'm currently using Optical Quantum 8.5GB DVD+R DL blank media which has a speed of 8X. I watch the process take place, which takes about 20-30 minutes and the window states it burned all 7.55GBs of information. But when I test out the DVD, the file size is only 7.05 GB, not the 7.55GB it should be. My 1st chapter marker is correct, my 2nd one is correct, my 3rd chapter marker is too early by about 3-5 seconds, and the 4th chapter marker shows up half way through the 3rd quarter, yet the actual 4th quarter footage is not on the disc. I usually burn the files at 6X speed. I've also noticed that in the higher action parts of the footage there is what I would call "ghosting", meaning there are trails behind the fast moving objects and it gets blurry. I've burned two separate games with almost identical results and have now gone through about 6 blank DVDs.
What has me is I did the exact same process with games last year and I never had this issue. Now granted I only had 4GB of RAM back then, but I highly doubt the additional 8GB of RAM is causing this. One other thing, last year my footage only took at most 2 hours to encode from Premiere Pro, but now it is taking over 7 hrs. Any help in this matter would be most appreciated. I'll be glad to offer any additional information if necessary. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

There are some bugs with Encore's layer break workflow.In some cases, Encore adds an extra chapter on the timeline at the place where the layer break occurs. As a result of this, subsequent chapters will be incremented by 1.
Since you are facing problem with automatic layer break, I would suggest you to add a manual layer break exactly at the chapter #3.
if Encore doesn't allow you to add layer break at chapter #3 then you may want to add a new chapter in between #3 and #4 and add layer break at the new chapter.
Steps to add Manual Layer break:
1. File> Build>DVD
2. In the disc info section, make sure the dic's size is set to Dual layer (8.54 GB)
3. Select the Manual Layer break option
4. Click on the Build button, now it opens the "Set Layer Transition dialog box" where you can set the layer break.