Forum Newbie DVDRW questions

[PLAT1NUM]

Sorry but I have searched and you guy speak too technically for me to understand. Hopefully my questions will get answered in the simpllest way.

1. What do I use to take all my old movie clips and make a DVD? nero 6 is not helping me do this. I keep getting errors during encoding or some of them arent compatible. 2.Why does it have to encode anyway? Some of them are Mpg and some AVI or WMA. I'd like to create a cool menu like you can with a VCD if possible. I can do a VCD but no luck with a DVD. 3. I have a lite-on DVD+R and I have DVD-R disks. does that matter? I have a sony DVD player that plays MP3 disks from CDRWs and it plays burned DVD's. So its up to date. I am very frustrated with this. Sometimes I cant even make CDRWs into VCD's but I definitely cant do it with a DVD. Please be patient with me and help as much as you can! 4. Can movies be put on DVD-RW's like you can with CD-RW's? I dont wanna watch movies at my computer all day and especially not pornos.I wanna use my DVD player! Help!

[Jucius_Maximus]

Welcome to CDFreaks.

It's hard to answer these things without being technical. It is a technical process, and if you want to do it, you will have to endavour to do some learning and expand your knowledge. There are many step by step guides on this topic at afterdawn.com and videohelp.com.

If you don't understand words in this post, try looking them up in the VideoHelp Glossary.

1. To make a regular DVD from your video clips, you first have to encode them into MPEG-2 format, take the resulting files and then author them into standard DVD format and then burn it.

2. DVD is a standard that has specifically defined ways of storing data and audio. It is necessary to encode your videos into the appropriate MPEG-2 format in order to author them to DVD. If your DVD player does not find the specific standard formats it is expecting, then it will not play the videos! The DVD format is a lot more complex than a VCD, so that's why it's easier to author a VCD. It is definitely possible to create DVD menus and such - this is what you do in the authoring stage. (I use TMPGEnc DVD Author software to do it.)

3. If your drive only burns DVD+R discs, then it cannot burn DVD-R discs. Please look closely at the specifications of your drive before buying media, otherwise you may obtain media that is useless to you! It is possible that you drive burns DVD-R as well, so make sure you examine the specifications to verify this. (I suspect you haven't fully familiarised yourself with the capabilities of your drive.)

If your DVD player does list DVD+R and DVD-R in the manual as supported disc formats, then that is good.

4. You can burn DVD-Rw or DVD+Rw just as you would burn a DVDR and erase them again. Of course this will only work if those Rw formats are supported by your DVD player. Look in the manual for the specifications. Also you can try videohelp.com and look at other user experiences to see if they had success with Rw formats. Also note that Rw less less reliable than the R formats, and many rewrites might result in glitchy video or playback errors.

[PLAT1NUM]

Thanks for the help. I'm gonna read up on it, and then i'll post here again. I appreciate your time and efforts and hopefully next time, we can get all technical about Mpeg formats, and codecs etc. I think my lite-on DVD burner burns -R and +R also... I'll research that too. Thanks again!