DVD Recording For Dummies

by Doina Stefanescu  |  June 16, 2008

DVD recording, or burning, or copying, or cloning, means basically the same problem to all of us out there not that computer savvy, and just looking for a simple solution to end all fidgeting about how to share our favorite movies with others. Here are same basic pieces of information on how to choose a proper DVD burner, some details about DVD formats and, moreover, how to burn a DVD without getting burned yourself.

Needless to say, you have to do a little bit of research before you start buying up burning softwares and piles of disks. You need to know which software runs with your drives, and what kind of disks you can buy to go with those softwares. Furthermore, you can read some descriptions on the burning process itself.

"To burn a DVD" comes from the laser beam used to etch the data into a chemical layer on a recordable DVD. "DVD burning" also describes what some people feel like doing to the pile of unusable DVD-R's they accumulated while trying to learn DVD authoring and production. Hopefully you can avoid this kind of mistakes, after reading this piece of article.

Before taking any actions, you have to make up your mind whether you want to make copies on a DVD burner or a CD burner. You require a DVD drive for reading original DVDs, but you do not necessarily need to get a DVD burner as the destination device for the new copies, since a CD burner does the job too.

Because CDs hold less data, you must either give up on resolution or use several CDs in order to transfer and entire movide to CD format. A DVD-R disk says on its label that it has 4.7 GB capacity. When trying to fit 4.7 GB of computer data on such a disk you will see that it is impossible. DVDs, as well as hard drives, have their advertised capacities computed in the decimal system, meanwhile your personal computer counts the data in the binary system. This means that a 4.7 GB DVD will hold only 4.37 GB of computer data. That is why you have to keep in mind during your editing of the movie, the size available for it on the available disk.

Usually, the data from a single DVD fits into 7 CDs. The best part in using a CD burner to produce DVD copies is saving money – many personal computers already have a CD burner installed, while recordable CDs are cheaper than recordable DVDs. Take note that nowadays many home DVD players support playing video CDs. Nevertheless, it is only logical to prefer the simplicity of a single disk of high resolution like the one provided by the DVD format, and to take into consideration these advantages worth the investment in a DVD burner – quite more now, since the costs of DVD burners has dropped significantly.

Ok, at this stage, you're probably somewhere in the supermarket, staring at the multitude of different formats of recordable disks available. Before you get there maybe you would want to read this paragraph. You'll typically see both DVD-R and DVD+R writable disks. Don't ask me, I didn't named them. That's just how the situation is, and you better just get over it. The thing with capitalism is that, provided a free market and fair competition, it is only natural that at some point in time in any segment of the market a multitude of products with the same purpose would appear. So competing manufacturers have developed this many disks just for you to enjoy. Who ever said diversity was a pleasure? :) Well, seriously now, all the worse for the best. Because you have a wide range of formats, with a bit of information and guidance you can definitely pick out the best product for you. Either way, some DVD format will probably end up dominating the market, maybe this is already happening, like with the Blu-Ray format. Anyway, getting back to our problem, you should be aware that if you buy a DVD+R burner you must use DVD+R disks, the same thing being applied also to DVD-R burners and DVD-R disks. Most persons make the common mistake of thinking that all DVD disks are supported by whatever burning program. If you are willing to pay a little more, you may purchase a DVD writer that enables you to copy both DVD+R and DVD-R formats.

Considering now the system requirements, you have to determine whether the processing power of your personal computer is sufficient, including writing speed, RAM, storage space. Even if the minimum conditions are met by your PC, the process of burning DVDs is a resource intensive task for your computer, so the powerful the machine you have, the more enhanced the copying performance is. When figured out this, the burning software you have choosed will basically do the job for you. If you are completely new to the field, it is best to choose a very user friendly software, one that has an ongoing phoneline for questions and help, and one that has detailed guidelines.

Related articles:

DVD Formats For Dummies
How To Update your DVD Writer firmware

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