Can't look as those programs you mention ar PC only and I have a Mac... (the settings I used were the default High Quality 4mbps settings for Encore, and as I said, the only thing I changed was the target to 5mbps, which is what it should be given that there's close to 2 hours total footage)
As an FYI, I recreated the entire project and had it do an automatic run through and...yup...still likes having the DVD only 4.26GB total (442.1 MB free...) So Encore thinks that's the right size somehow.
Ah well...Thanks for your help. It's looking like an Encore oddity (and that in instances where it does a crappy job auto encoding, one is better off using Adobe Media Encoder and bringing it in already compressed/encoded.
Oddly enough....been trying to use the m2v and ac3 files I ripped via Cinematize from a DVD I burned of the original project (back when Encore had figured that a 3.9GB file was the perfect size) and it does not seem to want to import. Claims it's imported and processed but keep getting "Media offline" for the video (audio is fine)
it's a puzzlement...