Before Burning your First DVD!
What you should know before trying to make a copy of a movie.
If you are reading this then I assume you have never burned a DVD before. We call it burning becuse the laser in
your DVD "burner" creates marks that resemble the pits found on a commercial "pressed" DVD. These equate to the ones
and zeros that digital stuff uses as data. See the more technical explanation here.
Some reasons your burn might not go as planned or as we say, You have made a coaster!
- You downloaded the programs but there are too many "settings" and you might have got something wrong.
The program just does not do anything or it is doing the wrong thing.
Just like your TV, there are all sorts of "dials and buttons" to adjust. Do you need to adjust them? Just a
couple. Like your new television a program will generally run correctly with it's default settings but has to be
set -up initially. The primary program we want to adjust here is DVD Shrink. Just make a few changes to it's
settings so it will behave as we want it to.
Start by getting familiar with the adjustments. There are two primary area that DVD Shrink is adjusted. The
first one is Preferences which can be accessed when the program opened. The second one is the Backup DVD menu
which can only be accessed after selecting the Backup! button. The second menu is where we direct Shrink to find
DVD Decrypter. Shrink will do all the work. You do not have to open Decrypter at all. This process is so seamless
that many folks believe that it is Shrink that is burning the disc.
- Your hardware has something wrong with it. I hope you have a fairly new computer with an
internal DVD burner and a DVD ROM drive. A good quality DVD ROM drive can be bought on line for around $30.00US.
A good Burner for less than $80.00US. When you add drives pay close attention to the instructions. Get your
jumpers on the back of the drive set correctly. Follow the instructions that came with the drive.
-
Your "roundware" is not recognized! Your blank discs should be of the correct format, that
means if your burner only burns +R media then that's what you should buy. "Media" is what your blank DVDs are
called. Make sure you are using DVDs and not CDs. We are burning DVDs here!!
The media comes in a confusing array of formats, brands and capacities. Lets go over a few of them.
- DVD+R or DVD-R: Use what is compatable with your equipment, including your DVD player. I prefer -R
but use both without problems. some burners that come installed on new computers can only burn one or the
other though. That is becoming rare though as the prices for dual format burners have come down
dramatically in the past few months. More manufacturers are installing very good burners in their desktop
PCs. Check yours and see what it is capable of burning.
- DVD-RW or DVD=RW: These discs are eraseable! More expensive, but very handy to have for learning the
process without costing you $$$ each time you make a mistake. The RW stands for
ReWriteable.
- How much does it hold? The standard blank DVD holds roughly 4,464 megabytes of data. The 4.7 GB
written on the package and stamped on the disc are in "Japanese Megabytes" That is calculated a bit
differently So just trust me on this. What you want to begin your DVD burning career with are single
layer, single sided discs. You can move up to the exotic world of expensive double layer DVD burning
later, after you get the basic stuff down.
- Brands. So you ran out to the nearest video superstore and found a huge assortment of media. Which
one to get...hmmm. There has been a ton of stuff written about using cheap media. Don't do it. Even
though most will work for data and other non-video work, you need the good stuff for your movies. The
best deals can be found on-line at retailers like supermediastore.com or meritline.com. I use Taiyo Yuden
and can even spell it!
Read what ScubaPete says about media:
RiData, Phillips, Sony, "Branded" Ritek G04's or "Branded" Verbatim Data Life, Verbatim DataLife plus,
Taiyo Yuden's and generally, almost any discs manufactured by Mitsubishi or RICOH are excellent bets. Among the
better discs we're looking for, any media boasting "Advanced Metal AZO" - BUT it must say "METAL" AZO !, this
indicates a superior dye and dye application on a good composite disc, while they are sometimes a bit "pricey" they
are just the type of media we're looking for to do our DVD backups, Prices online from Meritline.com OR Newegg.com
have gotten Ritek G04 starting at about a $ .45 (USD) a disc-For DVD backups, purchasing inexpensive media or even
average media is a gamble, some people win BUT the majority lose, they lose varying amounts true but, they still
lose.
Multitasking while ripping and/or burning. Do so at your own risk. Find something else to do
while your PC is working on your copy. It is one of the most memory intensive tasks you can ask your computer to do
so let it concentrate on that one task only. While you are at it, check and make sure you don't have a bunch of stuff
running in the background. Go into your task manager and shut off unneeded applications. If you don't know what an
application does, enter it's name in Google and find out. Don't shut off things that are needed for your PC to
function properly.
-
Other Problems...
- Old PCs with non NTFS file systems.
- Your blank disc is in upside-down, hehe.
- External DVD drives hooked up to a slow USB 1.0 port.
- Dirty, scratched source discs.
- Conflicting Programs such as Roxio and Nero InCD.
- Operating system problems.
Guides to get you burning:
A few DVD defintions:
- Rip, ripping : This is the process of copying from your original DVD to some other location,
removing any encryption in the process. Your DVD becomes a bunch of video files. Always keep track of where you
put them. They can get lost!
- Burn, burning : This is the process of taking your video files and recording them to a blank
DVD.
- 4.7 GB: This is how much disc manufacturers tell you can fit on one of their single layer
discs. It is actually somewhat less, about 4.38 GB. This has more to do with the way gigabytes are calculated.
The disc manufacturers using 1000 as a multiplier rather than 1024.
- DVD Burner, DVD writer: This is a drive on your computer that you must have to burn DVDs. A
CD burner will not work.
- DVD ROM: This is another drive that you should have if you plan on burning more than a few
DVDs. They are inexpensive, so spend $30.00 and get one. It saves wear and tear on your more expensive burner and
can simplify the recording process as you will see later. Follow the instructions to install it so you get the
cables hooked up right.
- Media: What you record your video files on. DVDs, CDs and Magnetic tape are all forms of
media. When we refer to media we are usually talking about the blank DVDs that will be recorded to.
- DVD-5: A DVD single side, single layer disc that can hold up to 4.38 GB. Your typical blank
disc.
- DVD-9: A DVD single side, double layer disc that can hold up to 7.95 GB. Your typical movie
that you would like to record to a DVD-5 is a DVD-9.
- Encrypted, encryption: For the purpose of this guide, this means what the manufacturers have
done to your movie to prevent you from copying it. The typical encryption scheme they use is called CSS or
Content Scrambling System. There are a few variations starting to appear, but nothing that will prevent you from
copying your movie if you use the correct technique.
Back
Top of the Page
