Need Help! Can't get my DVD to burn from my hard drive!!!!

[kallimac]

I'm looking for anyone with information, I have a movie that i copied off a mini DVD to my PC and I have it edited and ready to go. Will play on my PC and when I go to burn it, it says that it has burned successfully, but will not playback on the PC or the home DVD player. The mini DVD was a DVD+RW format and I use Nero 9 software. My DVD burner is multi and I have tried both DVD-R and DVD+RW to burn on. What am I doing wrong? I am self taught and still learning all the ins and outs of burning. Please help???

[neomaine]

Sounds like you may have burned it as a data disc instead of a DVD disc. If you saved it as DVD compliant MPEG2 (see What is DVD to the left), just import it to Nero and be sure to burn as a DVD-Video. I don't use Nero so I'm not sure what it'll do for things like menus and chapters.

I'm guessing its one of two things:

1 - Authoring: Taking a DVD compliant MPEG2 video and creating a DVD structure.
2 - You burned it as a data DVD disc. No all players can handle this.

How did you save the project after?
Did you output a DVD structure?
Did you burn as a data disc?

Basic DVD steps:

1 - Capture/Create
2 - Edit
3 - Encode
4 - Author
5 - Burn

Some tools can do one, multiple or all.

[kallimac]

Thank you for answering. Yes, I have done all the steps that you have listed. I have created movies previously using that same format. Was wondering if it was recoding issue? I will double check my burn process to see if I have created a data disc, but I have it saved to my PC as a MPEG file. Will a video recorded on a DVD+RW disc burn onto a DVD-R disc?

[orsetto]

Its very easy sometimes to slip up on obvious things that you've always done correctly in the past, also Nero is famous for unpredictably crapping out and creating unreliable DVDs. Try downloading the IMGburn utility and use that to do the actual burn.

Double check what your software created from this Mini-DVD: the edited file has to be formatted as a "VIDEO_TS" folder, when that folder is copied to a DVD-R most hardware automatically recognizes and plays the disc as if it were a normal video DVD. Using eraseable media, particularly DVD+RW, can muddy the waters- stick to write-once DVD-R or DVD+R to ensure broad compatibility. Depending on the age of your other hardware, it may simply no longer be able to read the blank media you're using- try switching brands (although this is difficult since nearly all brands come from the same factory nowadays: the distinct brands are Verbatim, Sony, TY/JVC [Taiyo Yuden], Maxell and then everything else lumped together).