DVD Burning Basics

DVD burning is an excellent way to preserve your digital camcorder movies, record your favorite television shows and collect a library of your favorite movies. It is absolutely necessary to make backup copies of the movies you have purchased so you don’t have to replace them if they get damaged or lost. As long as you are not breaking the copyright laws for commercially created entertainment films, you can also share your burned DVDs with family and friends.

You will need a DVD drive that can burn blank DVD discs installed on your computer; software to actually burn the DVD, a program to import movies from cameras or VCRs, and blank discs that are compatible with you DVD burner. At the moment, Windows Vista is the only operating system that contains built-in support for burning DVDs. However, most of the commercial DVD burning applications have features that built-in and free applications just don’t have.

DVD Burners and Drivers

The most import thing about your DVD burner is that it be able to support a format that can be read by most DVD players and that you can get drivers for your computer’s operating system. If you are running Windows XP, you must Windows XP-compatible drivers. For Vista, you need Vista drivers, etc. If the drivers are not compatible, the burner will either not work at all or will not work properly.

Transferring Video to Your PC

If your camcorder can link directly to your computer by USB, firewire or ilink, fine. If not, you can buy a DV bridge that will allow you to hook up an analog camcorder and VCR’s audio and video outputs to your computer.

Most DVD burners come with free software that will let you import the movie and save it as a file that can later be used to burn your DVD.

Burning Software

You will need DVD burning software and blank DVD discs to finish your project. Keep in mind that the process of encoding a movie into a DVD-compatible format can take a while. A 60 minute home video, can take several hours to encode. Most burners need about 15-20 minutes per hour of video for the actual burning process. After you’ve created a DVD, you can immediately burn additional copies for friends and family without having to encode it each time.

Most DVD packages provide capabilities such as the ability to include menus. .Although there are several brands of DVD burning software to choose from, my favorite is 1 Click DVD Copy.

1Click DVD Copy

According the publisher, LG Software Innovations, here are the key features of 1 Click DVD Copy:

• Windows Vista Compatible
• Uses CPRx technology for copying new DVD movies.
• Has an integrated burn engine.
• Makes a high quality copy of just the movie or you can include all the extras.
• Copies Episodic DVD Movies, TV Series, etc.
• Copy a DVD movie on one disc using compression.
• Copy a movie directly to your hard drive.
• Supports burning Dual Layer media.

• Supports both NTSC and PAL DVD movies.
• No warning messages or anti-piracy tracking codes added to your copy.

• Supports both NTSC and PAL DVD movies
• Bundled with CopyToDVD which allows you to copy data, DVD video, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and WMA files to DVD

Feature Set - 1 Click DVD Copy from LG Software has everything you need for disc backup. It has a simple, intuitive interface and good instructions. The CopyToDVD bundled software is a nice bonus and you can use dual layer DVD burners without sacrificing quality on dual layer movies.

Ease of Use - it really only takes 1 click to make the backup copies of your movies. Of course, you have to select which options you want to use such as copy to hard drive or to the DVD burner.

Quality - the quality was extremely high for both compressed movies and straight copying.

Speed - the copies were made much faster than with my other DVD burning software.

Usefulness - This product is very useful if you have a habit of scratching or not properly storing you DVD’s. I managed to melt one on the front seat of my car on a very hot summer day.

Help & Support - they have a good online knowledgebase is extremely useful.

Conclusion

All in all, 1 Click DVD Copy from LG Software is a good solution for you disc backup needs. Ease of use, quality of the backup and the $59 price tag makes this product a must have.