Burning your own DVDs

Making DVDs and video CDs (VCD) can be a very frustrating process, resulting in lots of $2.00 coasters. DVD's fail to work for two primary reasons: the disc and the player. The industry standard disc is the DVD-R, which will play in most DVD players manufactured in the past couple of years. There are several other types of disc on the market: DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-ROM, etc. These formats often cause both the audio and video to skip, or not to play at all. You may be o.k. using these formats, but be warned. Moreover, the older your player, the less likely that it will play any DVD other than those made in Hollywood. "Old" here means manufactured more than 18 to 24 months ago. If you plan on burning lots of DVDs at home, it's a good idea to take one of your DVDs with you to your favorite appliance store and verify that your DVD will play in the device you're planning on buying. And a word of warning: the more obscure the brand, the more apt you are to have compatibility problems.

There are numerous other reasons a DVD may not play as well. Unfortunately, creating DVDs is more an art than a science, especially if the source is VHS, S-VHS, 8mm and Hi8 tapes. It takes patience, study and lots of trial and error to get just the right magic working for you. We burned and discarded more than three dozen failed discs -- beverage coasters now -- before we got most of the kinks worked out.

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If you still think this is something you want to try at home, here are some suggestions that may help.

1. Understanding the anatomy of a DVD is a good starting point. The ODS laser products web site contains an excellent and easily understood account.

2. You're going to have to decide whether you want an in-computer burner or a stand-alone device. The choice will be determined by convenience -- whether you have space on your desk for a stand-alone; cost -- the computer drives are much less expensive; and by how much menu authoring you want to be able to do. Many stand-alones allow very little manipulation of the video once it's in the machine. Be sure to consider this when buying, and research your choices carefully. Time spent on the WWW reading specifications and reviews is time well invested.

3. Purchase good software for burning your discs. Because we use it and like it, we recommend Ulead's DVD Workshop for its reliability, ease of use and extensive features. It's fairly expensive though, and there are many other excellent, less expensive products on the market. You can find a good list of software choices at Digital Digest.

4. Read the documentation that comes with your software carefully, and fully. Don't try to muddle your way through disc burning. Hit or miss tactics are an invitation to failure. DVD Workshop's documentation is supplemented by How to Use Ulead DVD Workshop (Tom Bunzel, 2003, Que Publishing) ; many other DVD software packages have supplemental "how to" books as well, and there are quite a few useful books on the general subject. It can be a good investment. Check out this listing at amazon.com for an excellent list of these books.

5. Buy good quality DVD blanks. "Good" means relatively expensive. Expect to pay at least $1.50 to $2.50 each unless you buy in lots of 50 or more. Meritline is an excellent on-line source for blank media, jewel cases and labels. They carry Verbatim, Ritek and Pioneer, brands that have an excellent proven track record, as well as others. You can find many of these brands at your office and computer supply store too. Expect to pay a little more locally, though.

   The Meritline house brand is less expensive than the others, but of excellent quality. We've experienced very few failures with these discs.

6. Keep your menus simple and clear. Menus present a challenge in design and data acquisition. A well designed menu is clear in its organization, providing links (buttons) to specific places (chapter stops) which represent logical breaks in the narrative of the video.
   • Select uncluttered background graphics. A still frame taken from your video can make an excellent background choice.

   • Don't use more chapter stops than are necessary.

   • Let the button graphics tell the story. Don't overwhelm the menu with text.

   • Motion graphics on buttons are fun but can be very distracting, especially if you have numerous buttons on the menu, all moving at once.

   • Test your menu buttons carefully before burning the disc. This is doubly important if you are using nested menus. Be sure links between menus are fully functional and get you to the proper sub menu.

7. Use as little compression as possible. Better still, capture and burn your video using the software's Variable Bit Rate (VBR) setting. This will ensure that the maximum amount of video gets burned to disc at the best quality possible.

   Using Variable Bit Rate capture and burn, we routinely burn 6.0 to 6.5 mb onto a 4.7 mb disc. VBR provides an optimum compression-to-quality ratio.

8. Be wary of high speed burns. The Pioneer A03, one of the first in-computer burners, burned at a 1X rate: that is, an hour long tape took roughly an hour to burn. Currently, burners operate at 4X and higher. They're quick, but unfortunately they often create discs that DVD players can't read. If you're having problems with your discs, try a slower burning speed.

9. Never, ever, past a label onto your finished DVD. A paper label can loosen and slide off center, unbalancing the disc and causing damage to the player. Worse yet, the label can come off entirely, causing severe damage to both the DVD disc and player. If you want to dress up your finished disc, buy a DVD/CD printer such as the Epson Stylus Photo R300, a $175 printer that does an outstanding job of printing on ink jet printable DVD blanks and, a bonus, prints excellent 4x6 photos from video as well .

If all of this seems too daunting you can always bring your tapes to VideOccasions. We'll take the burden off your shoulders and turn those tapes into sparkling DVDs for you at a reasonable price. Visit our DVD/CD page, where you'll find pricing information, more information about the process of burning DVDs and CDs, and answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

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Last updated: 2/20/08