First time burning a DVD? DVD burning and DVD recording is a hot topic and there are more and more DVD burning software available these days in the market. In this article we will mostly focus on burning a Movie onto a DVD. First before you begin the DVD burning process place the DVD that you have legally purchased in the DVD Drive. Normally you should see two folders in the Windows Explorer 1) VIDEO_TS 2) AUDIO_TS folder. The first folder VIDEO_TS is used to store the Movies while the second AUDIO_TS folder DVD Audio is stored.

As mentioned we are concentrating on copying a DVD Movie therefore a look in the VIDEO_TS will reveal .VOB .BUP and .IFO files. The .VOB file contains the actual movie. This file is MPEG-2 encoded files. MPEG-2 is a compression technology used for movies, just like MP3 is the compression technology used for audio files. But DVDs contain an improved form of audio compression technology called AC-3. Besides that contain the .VOB files the subtitles and multiple camera angles. The .IFO files contain information used by the DVD Players. The files contain the information such as what .VOB files to load and when. The .BUP files are back up IFO files that are only used if when the original .IFO files get corrupted.

The basics of DVD Burning

There are many DVD burning software tools that can be used for copying these files. But copying these files is not at all easy, you might think that just copying these files to your hard disk folder and then copying them to a DVD recordable will work. But no, unfortunately they have not made DVDs that can be copied this easily. These files are in encrypted format and copying directly will not work. DVD movies are protected with the Content Scrambling System (CSS) encryption technology that was developed and adopted by the Hollywood Studios. The industries involved obviously have an interest in making it very difficult to copy their products.

The protection was applied simply to protect their interests from pirates who want to make multiple copies and sell. The encrypted DVD require a special key to decrypt the files. All DVD playing software's have to purchase such a special key so that their software can play DVDs. Unfortunately these keys are unavailable to anyone else therefore making DVD Burning very difficult. See the section on DVD Decrypters

Apart from the CSS encryption problem there is one more major problem with DVD Burning, the data from original DVDs won't simply fit the recordable DVD. How is this and why is this? The reason is simple size of the DVD recordable, currently the DVD recordable can only contain 4.7 Gigabytes (GB) of Data and these DVD recordable are referred to as DVD-5. On the other hand the movie you purchased might contain an additional 4 to 5 GB of data as many movies are released on the DVD-9 discs. It's simple to understand that a movie on a DVD-9 will not fit on a DVD-5 disc. Therefore in order to make DVD burning possible you have three possibilities - (1) Remove Data (2) Shrink Data (3) Slit Data.

Currently there are many DVD burning programs that are available which can help you select what part of DVD Movie should be copied to the DVD recordable. By selecting the right information with the help of DVD Burning program you can see if it fits on the DVD recordable, if it fits then you are ready to burn the DVD but if not then there are two more options available (a) Shrinking the Files or (b) Splitting the Files.

How to use DVD Burning programs

The most common option applied by users these days is Shrinking the data. As mentioned above there are many DVD burning programs available that can compress the data in a DVD-9 disc and make them fit in a DVD-5 recordable disc. Such compression DVD burning programs are commonly referred to as compression engines, re-mixers, encoders or transcoders.

Trancoding is also sometimes used to effectively reduced the data size.

Trancoding is a way to reduce the size of an MPEG video without the need to re-encode the whole movie. In a nutshell, that is achieved by throwing away data that your eyes can't see, hence reducing your DVD video files size and making it suitable for backup. The compression technology used by these DVD burning programs is such that you will be unable to make out that you are watching a copy.

DVD burning programs make it possible to reduce the amount of data and make it fit on a DVD recordable. But these compression technology in the DVD burning programs are very memory dependent and take a lot of memory while compressing the data. Therefore faster your computer and more of the memory it has, the lesser will be the time required on the process of burning the DVD. An average PC should take about 2 hours to complete the entire process. 

Splitting the Data

The other alternative available to shrinking or compression is to split the data into various parts and make them fit into several discs. There are many DVD Burning software that can be used to split the data. But as is obvious the major drawback of this method of shrinking is that you have to change the discs while watching the movie. Therefore this method is generally not preferred by many users.

After ripping, shrinking, removing or splitting the data, you have to burn the movie on to a DVD recordable. To do this also there are many DVD Burning software available that will conveniently allow you to burn the data and give you a perfect backup of your original DVD. The important thing to remember if you are using a DVD recorder that records on a DVD+R(W) or DVD-R(W) media is to test if your DVD player is capable of playing the media written by your DVD recorder. If you use a rewriteable media the chance that your DVD player is able to read is lower.

The best DVD Burning Software

Understanding the process of making DVD backup might seem easy, but what we have discussed here is just the beginning. There are ways to burn DVDS using freeware and shareware, but the process is often complicated and a lot of the time you will end with copies with errors, bad sectors, or inferior quality picture and sounds quality. When you think about it, forking out thirty or forty odd dollars for an application that can do it all for you is well and truly worth the money.

We have compared the various features available in a range of DVD Burning software titles, to identify the best DVD burning software.

We have conducted an in depth study of more than 40 DVD burning software applications comparing usability and performances (as well as features). We have paid special attention to the advanced features that are available in the software, checked if the DVD burning software has online help and most importantly given marks based on the how user friendly the DVD Burning software is.

These DVD burning software packages are especially recommended for those who just want to make a backup of their movie, don't want to fiddle around with settings and spend a lot of time learning. These packages will give you a perfect copy, while saving you a lot of learning time.

For a comparative study of the best DVD burning programs reviewed by us CLICK HERE