Was wondering what blank DVD's are best to use
 

Ive been trying to burn movies from limewire onto DVD's for a very long time, with no luck. Im using sony DVD-RW. Anyone whos had success in putting videos onto DVDs so u can watch them on a DVD player, can you please tell me what brand, type, anything about the blank DVD's u used. Thanks...

I personally like Verbatim and Imation RWs....

Also what software are you using to convert and burn your movies...:rolleyes_2:

I usually use Verbatim DVD+R or sometimes DVD-R. The ones that are scratch resistant (Very dark blueish surface)

Its all about the player. I picked up a Phillips DVP 5140 at Wallyworld for $49.95 and it will play anything i toss into it. The remote sucks.
I use the memorex dvd+r and can get up to six movies on a data disk. If i want a disk to play in almost any player i use nero and burn in iso at 4X.

First of all, I assume that you are converting your movies to DVD format? There are many programs that will do this, although not all of them produce high quality. Currently I am using WinAVI. I can get better quality by using TMPGenc, but it takes a lot more time and work.

I also have a DVD player that will play DivX (.avi) movies, and was pretty excited about it when I got it! You can watch movies without going to the trouble of converting them...some of the movies, however, aren't very big. Plus, I only have one of these players, and don't want to have to move it if I want to watch a movie on my other TV! I've gone back to converting movies to DVD. I have been extremely interested in reading about what type of media to use...Verbatims are usually suggested, but recently I've been reading a forum thread on afterdawn.com and the following media types are seen as the best: (not necessarily in this order, although Yuden was recommended when I said I was having problems such as you are having)

* Yuden (Taiyo)
* Maxell (Hitachi - make sure they're made in Japan)
* Verbatim

I've read that DVDRW's are not great for burning DVDs to, unless you just want to practice...

Good Luck :idea:

Thanks everyone for responding. I just got a new laptop, a Dell XPS, and it has a program called media center that says it can burn to DVD's it also has a program called Roxio, I havent tryed either yet. I take it Sony's aren't the best, and I though the RW's were the only ones that were rewritable. I dont know if the programs I have change the avi. format, or what.

I also use Verbatim dvd's. Did use TDK for a while but got some bad batches & also they didn't play on my brother's player. Now stick to Verbatim + & -. For double-layer I'm now sticking to Verbatim DVD+ DL because DVD studio pro does NOT like dvd- dl disks.

My set top dvd player also plays everything thrown at it. It also supports mpeg4/divX which means I can simply burn a data disk with mpeg 4 files on it & the dvd player treats it a little like an mp3 disk re: menus. But for burning normal dvd video disks, you specifically need to burn it in dvd video UDF format. Otherwise most set top players won't play such disks.

There are some brand & type specific players on the market. Panasonic is one of those. duh! Pay all the extra money for something that only plays panasonic disks ... no thank you. Many of the cheaper brands do better than the "brand" names re: dvd playback. But yes, some of their remote controls of the cheaper brands are not well designed.

In regards to Roxio. The one for mac is very good & is 'the best' general burner program for mac. But I believe for windows it depends whether you have the full version or the 'light' version which will be limited in its abilities. Roxio should be able to convert any mpeg 1, 2, 4, divX, XviD, avi, quicktime mov format at the beginning of the burning process.

I'd recommend burning at minimum speed for dvd R disks. And stay away from the 'el cheapo' disks. Get a decent disk if you want "reliability" for burning & lasting more than a couple of years & play-back on set top players. You can check to see what disks burn better on which dvd burners. There are sites that test burners for reliability. Some do better with some brands. I checked my burner here http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/ You can also check to see what dvd disk formats your player supports.

Thanks LOTR, so is using DVD-RW's made by Sony a good idea? Or should I use a different brand, or +RW, +R, -R, or both.

All you can do is see if the sony's work, if they don't try one of the brands that have been recommended...I use RWs simply for the fact that I can re-use them at a later time and if a movie doesn't work out properly on it I can re-write it again...

in general, any 'brand name' DVD will be fine...I tend to buy what's on sale...verbatim, imation, memorex, maxell...haven't had any issues with any of those...the cheapo generics tend to fail in a short amount of time...

I would suggest -R media as statistically speaking most players support that format...

as far as RW...well, with media soooo cheap these days I say why bother?...it takes time to erase a disc so you can re-use it...so I just throw away the occasional failed burn and go on with life...

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. :)

I have 3 different DVD players, so Im pretty sure that it'll play on at least one. My burner is suppose to be able to burn anything. Im downloading the trial version of Nero 7 right now to see if I have any success with that.

I recently received an external dvd burner for x-mas which came with Nero, but of course 2 months of having it and the Nero MPEG 4 program seemed to be a 'demo' and expired on me. I un-installed it and scooped up the Nero 4 I found online for free. Seems to be fine. However, my real question was, even with the first version of Nero I had, some burned movies would, on playback, skip, jump and at times even just freeze at the end of the movie. re you saying I may have better luck with that problem if I changed the burn speed to medium? Boy I sure hope so because that would be a lot of wasted DVD's. I use Imation by the way. DVD+R

nero7 not free,unless you know where too look, but it works great.you will need a converter program too.thats the hard one too find I ended up buying convertx. now no probs. good luck

I've tried downloading movies onto a disc. I use my windows media player and It'll burn to the Cd ok but when it comes time to play the movies on the dvd player it won't I've tried on my xbox and both my dvd players. It works on my computer but not on regular dvd players. Any help? I'm using memorex DVD+R rw. Thks in advance

WMP wont burn movies...You need a program that will convert the movie file into dvd format and then burn it...

Here a few suggestions...

http://www.gnutellaforums.com/252143-post6.html

http://www.gnutellaforums.com/tips-t...7-premium.html

WMP is no good for burning movies

Try this forum to find out more about burning:

VideoHelp.com