I have recorded several films on my Sky+ box then copied them to the DVD HDD so I can edit them. When I try to copy a 1h 55m 7.9GB film from the HDD to a 4.7GB DVD I get the message "Cannot dub due to insufficient free space on disc"

That's fair enough because 7.9GB won't fit into 4.7GB But I enter intial set up and change the manual rec mode setting from HQ to SP it still won't fit. I tried again after changing the setting to ESP but still insuffucient space on disc and its a new blank DVD+RW disc.

I guess that it is space and not time that is important. The film is less than 2hr so it should fit on one disc in SP according to what it says on the label.

I have read the manual several times and still don't understand what I am doing wrong. I don't want to divide the film, after all the free DVDs from the Daily Mail are always on one disc and they look OK.

I noted that when Rec Mode Adjust is ON it automatically compensates for disc space but only on timer recording.

It there no way I can dub from HDD to DVD and simply select HQ, HSP, SP etc and it starts recording when I select a Rec Mode that matches the disc space avaiable?<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->__________________

I solved the problem by talking to my local Sony Centre
Apparently I was looking at Dubbing List and thinking I don't want to dub more than one title onto a single DVD and Create a Dubbing List so didn't pursue this option.

It was simple. For those having similar difficulties:
1 select System Menu
2 select dubbing
3 select direction HDD-DVD
4 select title
5 select YES for automatically reducing title to fit DVD
6 let it dub at normal speed for best quality and then go to the pub for 1-2hrs<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

Another 2 ways of solving  the problem. I thought I should put it on this site in case others have the same one in future. 

1.  Divide the title into two or more titles using the edit functions so that each are less than 2 hours.  Then they can be recorded on to 2 or more DVD discs.

2.  Better still, when making the origional recording to HDD, by means of Recording Mode, adjust the recording quality so that it is within the capacity of a DVD i.e. if the programmis is of 2hrs 50min duration, record on the HDD in ESP format.  Now it will dub at high speed on to a 2 hour DVD.

I have suggeasted that Sony should re-write the instruction book but I won't hold my breath.  Isn't techonology a wonderful thing.