It takes my burner like 2 mins to erase a dvd-rw. lol :D That's using Roxio Toast, which has both quick & long erases & most decent burner programs offer this option. Quick erases simply erase the TOC (Table Of Contents) which contains all the directory information & is the very 1st thing that's burnt on any type of disk & takes up the 1st few sectors, etc. Actually TOC refers to CD's, but both TOC and DVD Structure (roughly same thing) are located in the Lead-in of a session.

I use RW's for borrowed dvd's so we can watch them at our leisure. When customising dvd's I like to use RW's to be sure layout & effects & usability appear as designed.

DVD-R's certainly are cheaper these days & a loss of a disk is not a major catastrophy. ("frisbies" lol) DVD DL's are a more tricky proposition since the layer jump point & type & direction can play a major part in both the disk's successful playback & layer jump delay time. At least this is true for custom video disks. DVD+R DL's seem to have an advantage in regards to this on the mac. Also 1st layer must be larger than the 2nd.

interesting....well I admit to having never erased a dvd-rw...the first cd-rw I erased took like 20 minutes for whatever reason...I've never looked back on the idea of skipping rw discs..

Thanks, now that I have an idea on what discs to use, what program is all around best? Ive tried Nero, DVD Santa, but niether worked on my old laptop.
LOTR you said you use Roxio Toast, would you recommend it? If so, where can I get it and how much is it, or is it free?

roxio toast is for a Mac...

I've found nero7 to rule..haven't had any problems with it..

have you tried nero on a newer machine (or should I say a newer, fresher install)??..there are some conflicts with nero and certain drivers from other programs...perhaps that is the real issue...

is nero7 free, and where can you get it?

google nero...they have a 30 day trial version....it has all the codecs needed to transcode an .avi file to dvd format....takes my box (3 GHz P4, 2 gigs ram) about an hour to turn a 735MB avi file into a 2 hour DVD....

does it tell u what to do after its converted or is it complicated?

Here's a step by step for Nero....:rolleyes_2:
Making a DVD Video using Nero 7 Premium

what DVD do u use though with Nero?

it depends on your burner & dvd player as to which one you should choose. This was discussed earlier. :)