DVD Burners

[Cidien]

Anyone have a dvd burner? How do they work? I went to Best Buy today and was looking at them. I was expecting there to be two disc slots so you could directly burn one disc to another. :confused: (im talking about dvd players/burners not the PC ones) Anyone know how those (or the pc ones) work? I tried doing a google search but I get a whole lotta useless crap and forums discussing things when I do. Any info would be appreciated.

[Kersus]

well I imagine that the PC ones work the same as CD writers do, either reading on the fly from a seperate dvd drive you might have, or if you don't have a seperate drive, then dumping a copy of the image to your hard drive first before writing it onto a blank DVD-R (or +R) then deleting the image after it's copied. Which means if you only have one drive you'll usually need about 8 or 9 gigs of space free to do dual layered disk copies.

Now dual layered dvd media is pretty expensive still, so it's not really a hugely viable option till it comes down in price. (last I checked standing around 10 dollars per blank dvd). Till then you might want to try using single layered blank dvds which are half the size (about 4.7 gigs each). However if you download a free program like Dvd Shrink you'll be able to compress a full dual layered image to about half the size. As of yet I've yet to experience any noticable loss of quality when doing so, I imagine it would be even less so for animated works. Single layered blank DVDs only cost about 1 dollar each in comparison.

Great thing is though, the companies making dual layered dvd writers are only treating that new feature as a small step up from only writing single layered dvds (thus the price didn't increase very much). As well they are backwards compatible with the cheaper format. So you might as well get a dual layered dvd writer and burn a few single layered disks for now, then switch to dual media when they come down in price.

Hope this helps.

[Puppet Master]

well I imagine that the PC ones work the same as CD writers do, either reading on the fly from a seperate dvd drive you might have, or if you don't have a seperate drive, then dumping a copy of the image to your hard drive first before writing it onto a blank DVD-R (or +R) then deleting the image after it's copied. Which means if you only have one drive you'll usually need about 8 or 9 gigs of space free to do dual layered disk copies.

Now dual layered dvd media is pretty expensive still, so it's not really a hugely viable option till it comes down in price. (last I checked standing around 10 dollars per blank dvd). Till then you might want to try using single layered blank dvds which are half the size (about 4.7 gigs each). However if you download a free program like Dvd Shrink you'll be able to compress a full dual layered image to about half the size. As of yet I've yet to experience any noticable loss of quality when doing so, I imagine it would be even less so for animated works. Single layered blank DVDs only cost about 1 dollar each in comparison.

Great thing is though, the companies making dual layered dvd writers are only treating that new feature as a small step up from only writing single layered dvds (thus the price didn't increase very much). As well they are backwards compatible with the cheaper format. So you might as well get a dual layered dvd writer and burn a few single layered disks for now, then switch to dual media when they come down in price.

Hope this helps.

Nah you can get them for 50 cents for a single layered DVD disc...Well in bulk anyways like 50...

[kakomu]

PC DVD Burners will act just like CD burners

Standalones will copy on the fly, just like a VCR.

[Zagatto]

The big difference between most stand alones and a PC burner is that the stand alones are blocked by copy protection while using a PC with DVD Shrink you ignore any copy protection on a disc.

You need to have a seperate source for most of the commercial DVD recorders as well. So you can plug your video camera or a VCR or a TiVO or another DVD player into your recorder and copy programs to disc that way.

[Cidien]

Anyone know what video mode means? Like say a dvd player says this about it:

plays DVD, CD, VCD, CD-R, CD-RW, video mode DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW, MP3

[kakomu]

+ and - are two different types of media.

Since it can use both DVD-R and DVD+R, you don't have to worry about what media to buy.

[Cidien]

+ and - are two different types of media.

Since it can use both DVD-R and DVD+R, you don't have to worry about what media to buy.

That's not my dvd player, that's an example. Mine actually has all the dvd-r+r and such under the "video mode" thing. Just curious what that means.

[kakomu]

just idiotic jargon. -R and +R are just two different DVD media types.

[Zagatto]

actually... video mode refers to a DVD that has been recorded in video mode and not in data mode. The newer players that can handle DiVX and XViD movies can handle DVDs recorded in data mode.

[tsunami]

If you are thinking of getting a stand alone DVD burner for recording TV or VHS it is a good deal otherwise stay away from them. Most expensive DVD burners (PC and SA) support both +R and -R media. The +/- thing is the speed they can handle as the early stuff was only able to go up to 2x for burning. If you're gonna buy one make sure you have someone explain all the options it has to you.

[Amethyst]

just a couple of quick notes...


DVD shrink will not burn a DVDR... it uses an external burning program, like Nero to burn to the DVD. So you will also need another program to burn to disk.

Also, if you're planning on copying something that isn't a Region 0 (all region) you're gonna need something to remove the Region coding... like Any DVD, in order to copy it or all you'll get is an error message saying it is copy protected.

CloneDVD is a good copy program, it uses its own program to burn DVDR's... however, it won't copy a dual layer disk... hence the need for DVD Shrink and Nero.

Most programs put the files on your hard drive, unless you have 2 drives, one to read from like a DVD reader or another burner drive and one to write out to, if you don't want to have to change disks in the middle of burning.

The +R -R is the format of disks that your burner uses... unless you get one that does both formats (last one we tried, used it once and it quit working) your drive will only be able to use one or the other... so make sure you know which one your drive is before you spend lots of money on blank dvdr's.

[Cidien]

Thanks for the info guys. I went to buy a burner today and came home with Half Life 2 and World of Warcraft. Just got off work so i'll be playing those 'till the wee hours or the morning.

I'll probably buy one when I get the funds up again, but those two games were sitting at the front of Best Buy with a lady (who I talked to for 40 mins 'cuz it turns out I know her friend) trying to sell those and the new Harry Potter movie among other things. Glad I came up $2 short for the movie though, my girlfriend ended up buying it for us today lol.

[guitarshredder]

Cidien, for all your DVD needs (and etc.), go to this site:

http://www.videohelp.com/

[rav96]

the crazy thing is that i can get approx 2-3 hour id say around VCD qaulity of mpeg onto a CDR!!!
using tmpeg! lbut low sound quality, mono but i aint bothered coz i jack up the sound and its anime i used to do it with

also i use my DC (needs no mods) or PS2 to play DivX but XBox has the best playback but mines not modded

coz my DVD player can play any type of mpeg and i had no DVD burner but now i have w0ot!!!