How Do I burn a DVD?
March 25, 2004
We get this question enough in our daily pile of email… that we thought it best to provide a detailed explanation of How To Burn A DVD… so here goes. First of all, this explanation is for those folks who are new to the DVD burning excercise… and as such, we will not examine all the poindexter nerd nuiances associated with burning a DVD …. like transport vs. program mpeg-2? or other specs designed for mass production, regional limitations… and all the kind of stuff most of us could care less about. As such - the focus is…. how do I burn a DVD with as little effort as possible…. i am not an engineer… and can’t even get the time right on my VCR…. OK! We hear you!
The easiest way to create a DVD from the download library is to search our site for DVD ISO. These titles have a DVD iso in the download folder for the title. Making a DVD from an ISO file is easy. Just download the file - which is massive, often a gig plus to your computer. Then open your CD/DVD DATA creation software, and create a new session that creates a DVD from an “image file” - which is an *.iso file. Select the iso file you downloaded as the image file, and ok. Boom! You just made your own DVD!
To create a DVD from the MPEG-1 files provided in the Download library - you will need to have a DVD-R burner… or a DVD+R burner - this is hardware that goes into a bay into your computer. Many new computers now come with a DVD burner as part of the package… if you are buying a new computer, by all means, it is worth getting a DVD burner as part of the package. You can also purchase one at Best Buy, Circuit City… or your friendly neighborhood computer dealer as an add-on device. They currently cost about $125-$400, depending on the make and software bundle. We have used DVD burners from Sony, Pioneer, Philips, and HP. All of them worked fine for us… though we did have some troubles installing them on some older WIN NT boxes, but nothing that would remind one of “computer hell” or anything like that. To be honest, it isn’t that hard to install the devices, especially if you have ever put in a new PCI card or added another drive.
All these DVD-R,+R,-RW types drives come with a modest bundle of software - including a very wimpy… DVD authoring program from somebody… that in the end, is woefully inadequate at getting the job done. The bundled DVD authoring software like the Sonic DVD-it, or Neo-DVD standard… are of NO help. Imagine trying to bake a batch of toll house cookies in an EZ Bake oven. It won’t do the job. Period, end of story.
All right… do you need to get a new workstaion with Sonic Solutions… for a mere $20,000? or more? No… we found a decent software program that does the job, it easy to work with, pretty stable, and best of all, you have the tools to customize it in a way that makes it look pretty professional. We suggest trying a DVD authoring program from ULEAD called DVD Workstation (learn more from ULEAD’s site - or read a review). How much, you ask? Last time i checked it was around $400 or $500 bucks, or if you have another related ULEAD “lite” program… just $250 or $300 to upgrade. Yes… it is pretty expensive, but this program does a lot of heavy lifting for you, making the process very easy without losing a lot of power.
As most know - our MPEG-1 files for downloads have a window size of 352 x 240, an MPEG std. size. These clips are loaded in the proper order (part 1, part 2, etc)… , you create some menus or chapters if you like… and then test it in a simulation. The program also tells you places you might have screwed up.
After a great deal of trial and error - we found that setting the DVD video output to Half D-1 with a data rate of ~2.6 M/sec worked very nicely. The window size on Half D-1 is 352 x 480. When the file is played - the width is doubled - for a video window of 720 x 480. Because we were interested in keeping the files as small as possible - our logic here is considering the trade off between download times for you - and as high a quality video as possible. And there are exceptions - like Owl Creek Bridge DVD iso file- that offers a wonderful quality DVD encoded at nearly double the data rate.
My DVD authoring program won’t accept your MPG files as videos - what’s wrong? The program you are using to author - does not have the ability to re-encode the media files - and probably fails trying to de-MUX. I’ll spare you the details… but it describes how all the compression, sound, video, and keyframes etc…. get flattened into the mpg file output. The higher quality DVD authoring programs provide the feature - and many less expensive programs don’t handle it well or at all. But don’t despair - there are workarounds - programs that do a decent job de-MUX ing… and transcoding into files your DVD authoring program will accept. A little while back - we provided some info on MUX issues for those using Apple. You can always find some inexpensive or free software that converts our MPG files to an avi, and use the avi files as input for your authoring program. There are workarounds - but getting some decent pro-sumer authoring software is a lot easier - and faster too.
