dvd creation for dummies

[Yerbury]

Hello all - please forgive the regurgitation of a commonly-discussed topic.

I am a complete novice with dvd creation. I've never tried it before, and have no understanding of the various terms used to describe the process, so please bear with me.

I have been asked to make copies of our wedding dvd, which was created by our official photographer/videographer. It has a typical menu with 'play all' or 'scene selection' options. As an aside, we have copyright to the video and photos.

Having copied the dvd to my hard drive, I see that it has two folders: Video_TS and Audio_TS.

Is there anything special I need to do, when burning these folders to a dvd+r, to make it play in a standard dvd player? We are distributing these copies to family over the holidays.

Thank you!

[filmboss80]

Easy. Copy the disc's VIDEO_TS folder to the hard drive on your computer. (The AUDIO_TS folder is empty. You can also copy it, but with the burning tool I'm suggesting, it's no big deal.) Use the free tool Imgburn in the "Build" mode, selecting that VIDEO_TS folder. Imgburn will do the rest. Make sure you use good blank DVDs, like Verbatims.

[Yerbury]

Thanks so much for the very fast reply! I'll give it a go.

[CobraPilot]

How large is the VIDEO_TS folder?

If it's too large to fit on a single-layer disc, you will need to use double/dual-layer discs, which can be an iffy challenge, not to mention discs costing many times a single-layer disc.

If it's too large for a SL disc, you can use DVDShrink (especially if it's not copy-protected) to reduce it to SL size, then burn with Imgburn, as described above.

[Yerbury]

The folder is 4.4GB, so I'm hoping everything will be fine, but thanks for pointing that out!

[CobraPilot]

It takes only a minute or so to check in DVDShrink before you get too far into this project: Just run it and if you get a compression ratio of 100%, you're okay for SL discs.

I've seen a few times when a 4.4 GB folder is just slightly over the limit, but when that's the case, I've seen compressions of 95+%, indistinguishable from the original.

[Yerbury]

Okay, I have followed the steps above, but unfortunately I get an 'unknown disc' error when I try to play it in my dvd player.

I ran ImgBurn in build mode, and selected the folder containing the Video_TS and Audio_TS files. I then inserted the dvd+r blank disc, selected my e_drive as the destination folder, and clicked build. It scolded me for not having selected a volume label (or something similar), I clicked ok to select its suggested label and off we went.

When it was finished, Windows prompted me with a 'you have files ready to burn to disc', and I clicked that option to proceed with the burn.

What have I done wrong?

[filmboss80]

Okay, I have followed the steps above, but unfortunately I get an 'unknown disc' error when I try to play it in my dvd player.

I ran ImgBurn in build mode, and selected the folder containing the Video_TS and Audio_TS files. I then inserted the dvd+r blank disc, selected my e_drive as the destination folder, and clicked build. It scolded me for not having selected a volume label (or something similar), I clicked ok to select its suggested label and off we went.

When it was finished, Windows prompted me with a 'you have files ready to burn to disc', and I clicked that option to proceed with the burn.

What have I done wrong?

How did you first copy the disc's contents to the hard drive? You could have just dragged and dropped using My Computer or Windows Explorer. As for burning, your destination is the disc, not the e_drive. Insert the blank disc and don't let Windows autorun anything. Open Imgburn and select the folder, VIDEO_TS. If the Windows onboard burning software is getting involved, something was done improperly. Check out some of the many Imgburn guides to make sure you're following the steps properly.

[Yerbury]

Thanks filmboss80. I first transferred the data by inserting and opening (in Windows Explorer) the original wedding dvd, and dragging the contents (Video_TS, Audio_TS) over to a file I created on my desktop. Was this wrong?

[Yerbury]

Further, should it be the _TS files that are copied, or is it right that an .iso file is created at some point in the process? Because that's what happened!

[jman98]

Since it should be unencrypted, can't you just use ImgBurn to read it in ISO mode and create an ISO? Once you have that you can burn it in ImgBurn without having to worry about copying folders correctly, etc. The ISO will already be in the exact state it needs to be for successful burning to a new disc.

[Yerbury]

I have created a fresh iso file using ImgBurn, but when I did so, an .mds file was also created. Both were saved to my desktop. What do I do (if anything) with the .mds file?

[Yerbury]

Thanks to everyone for their help. I've gotten it to work.

It appears that, as suggested above, I failed to burn the .iso file to the disc correctly. As a result, although the file was on the copy disc, it was not there in a format that could be recognised by the player.

You learn something new every day!

[tinker]

Do not worry about all this. ImgBurn has options when you open it. One is "Create image file from the disk" do that. Second is "Write image file to disc" do that and you are done.
Other method is using any other software which will do "Disc copy". Put your original in drive, do copy disc, after a while it will prompt you to insert new disc, do that and wait when finished, you are done.
If you have two drives, you can copy from one drive to the other.
If you are experiencing playback problem, it could be a disc brand you are using or a player does not like +R disc (computer player,should have no problem with this). In that case it is a good idea to re brand (book type) disc to DVD-ROM, for that ImgBurn will do the job well.

I guess you solved it while I was typing, than this is for other occasions.

[jman98]

The MDS file is the preferred file to burn for ImgBurn as it contains some additional info about the ISO. But if you try to burn the ISO it will automatically change to the MDS file for you if it exists with the same name as the ISO.

I think that ImgBurn automatically sets book type, if it can, when burning DVD+R discs. This assumes that your burning drive supports book typing (some do not). However, this step is usually only necessary for older DVD players.