Hello. I have several questions regarding burning DVD files. For reference, I'm using a Nero "suite" of packages that came with my burner; it features Nero Smart Start and Nero Experss v6.6.1.4.

I have several related files that I want to burn to DVD, and I'm trying to get as many of them on a double layer disc as possible. I'm a stickler for features; I'm trying to get all of them accessible by a nice menu (with animated buttons) but I'm having MAJOR problems trying to get my menu system to even work...that's the focus of most of my questions:

1) The video files in question are .AVI files (yes, those cursed things)...I'm guessing they're DivX-related (I'm still learning about it). I must have the codec to PLAY them, even though Nero's Media Player always displays that MPEG licensing warning every time ("Due to patent licensing restrictions, MPEG-4 decoding is not available"). However, Nero's in-application player refuses to play these files in the chapter-marking and menu-button-animation screens, and sometimes the whole program freezes up during those tasks, which require me to simply skip those steps. The resulting DVD's I burn do actually work, but without any chapters and unanimated menu buttons. I've noticed that I have something called FFDshow that seems to act as the codec-translator for these files; it appears in my system tray when I play (or Nero tries to play) these files. How do I fix all this? Is the issue some incompatibility with FFDshow and Nero? Is there another codec program that would be more compatible? Better yet: Is there a better conversion/burning program, with DivX compatibility, double-layer burning capability, and improved menu customization (including animation) that's out there and won't cost an arm and a leg?

2) One of my friends mentioned just burning the DVDs now without any fancy features, to save hard drive space, and then coming back to burn "full-featured" DVDs later. My question is, are there any "lossy" DVD conversion/burning methods that I should be aware of to avoid? If I'm going to make some "basic" DVDs to redo later, I want to stay away from those methods, because I don't want the quality to degrade over conversions/burnings.

3) Finally, I actually HAVE been perusing some of the threads here in this forum...and I'm a little alarmed at some of them. I'm having difficulty understanding some of the steps, which seem quite complex and require at least 5 different programs. Worse, it seems every method will require at least 4 spare GiGs of Hard-drive space, which I currently do not have. Is this really necessary?

Everyone: Thanks for answering these questions...wish me luck!

The 4 gigs of free hdd space is less than a bare minimum for a dvd project. Keep in mind, a DL disk holds 8 gig. Different jobs require different tools, and because many abound, many have thier favorites to do the same job as another may use different tools thier hardware....Z

Avi's to dvd/mpeg2............avi's are much smaller (usually) than a native dvd mpeg, you must convert it back to mpeg to get it to play nice on your set top player as a burned dvd. (hence that hefty 4 gig plus thing).

I've never used it, but if your playingwith menus, avi's, and trying to make a compiled dvd, I hear dvd santa does a nice job all in one interface.

Several tutorials are available here as well as www.videohelp.com , free and pay applications. If your serious about tinkering with this, you genuinly need a fair amount of hdd space (take that 4 gig and double it just for your project while your learning).

Welcome to the forums and if you have a more specific question, please feel free to ask......

Thanks for your response!

I see that DVD Santa can copy from dual-layer and compress onto single layer...but can it burn to double layer? Someone might say, "well, if it can copy dual-layer contents and compress it to a single layer, why not copy your stuff in compressed fashion to a single-layer DVD?" The answer is, I'm worried about that compression...I'm betting that it's lossy, and I'd rather record a dual-layer DVD than risk that.

I'd still like to use something that would be more Nero-friendly (unless I can find another burning program with more features). To add to my previous post, I tried AVI2DVD (I think that's what it's called) to make a more compatible converted-file...but I still had problems with the resulting files (Nero's in-program player didn't work with them in the chapter-adding/menu-button animation sections). So I'm not sure what's the problem could be. Any other takers?

No one ever answered my second question, so I'm re-issuing it (I didn't really get my first one answered either, but I'd really like to know about quality loss):

2) One of my friends mentioned just burning the DVDs now without any fancy features, to save hard drive space, and then coming back to burn "full-featured" DVDs later. My question is, are there any "lossy" DVD conversion/burning methods that I should be aware of to avoid? If I'm going to make some "basic" DVDs to redo later, I want to stay away from those methods, because I don't want the quality to degrade over conversions/burnings.

THANKS!

If you want just save the source, then burn it on DVD±RWs in DATA-mode.