As we all get into the idea of streaming movies, it’s easy to think that we will never use a DVD again, but that’s simply not the case. There are plenty of times when we have a mobile internet connection that’s either playing up or not fast enough to stream media content in the moment. At other times, we wish to disconnect from the internet and just enjoy a movie without receiving email notifications and reminders to distract from our viewing pleasure.
Whether you want to make a backup of a favorite movie or turn some personal videos into a playable DVD to share them easily with friends, here are some general instructions on what to do.
The Basics
Before you begin, you’ll need a few things:
- A DVD drive that burns discs. Not every desktop or laptop computer comes with a drive like this now, but you can buy one inexpensively that connects via a USB port.
- Blank DVD discs to burn onto. The main difference is between writeable (R) and rewritable (RW) discs; the latter can be overwritten whereas the former used just the once. Dual-layer discs are newer and offer 8.5GB of space, but not all DVD drives support them; single-layer discs store up to 4.7GB.
Recommended Software
For Windows, we’d suggest using the free and open-source DVD Flick to format your videos to an acceptable standard and ImgBurn (also free) to perform the burning process. For the Mac, Burn is a free app that will get the burning job done.
There are many new software packages coming out every month that will burn DVDs for you. It’s quite a common activity, so software developers love to release new applications. These days, it’s more about the ease and usability of the software than the features because many of the standard features are similar across different software titles.
The Burning Process
Depending on which software you use, their procedures are a little different.
The first step is usually to select that you wish to Create a DVD. There’s a button for this in DVD Flick, for instance. You then need to add files to a playlist until you are finished.
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The file structure then needs to be changed to suit a DVD, making it playable on modern standalone DVD players and the DVD drives used with computers too. Depending on the storage capacity of the DVD disc you’ve placed into the tray or slot, the software will determine how many files you can fit on the disc and alert you when you’ve chosen too many. Once this is done, you’re ready to go ahead with the burning procedure.
When you need some additional advice on the more efficient DVD burning procedure, recommended software or with other DVD-related matters, we recommend burnworld.com to find out the latest news and view their tutorials.
Burning your first DVD is a little daunting initially, but it’s actually not that complicated. There are now burning buffers to avoid corrupting the disc during the recording process too, so the whole thing is hands-off once you’ve set it up correctly.