Hi everyone I am new to the forum and had a few questions about dvd r/rw's. I use to be pretty big into computers in college but when I graduated I lost all my software connections and kind of faded away from it. But anyways I wanted to purchase a dvd burner but for a while they were changing alot and I wanted it to settle down and let prices drop. Now seems to be a good time to make that purchase and I am reading about the Dual layer burners. I found some on pricewatch with 16x burn speeds for around $80. I was wondering what I needed to start off with and what a good brand was. I was looking at some BenQ or something. What software would be good to burn home moives, make "backups" of purchased movies and even xbox games. Is there any freeware or trialware I can use since I am very tight on cash? I was wondering if there was a good run down of what to get, look for and where to download the needed software. Thank you for all the help and I look forward to helping out where I can. I do have alot of knowldege with computers but more in the hardware field since that is my career. thanks again
Geez, thats a lot of questions packed tightly together! I have some opinions that might help ya though.
First consider the price of the dual layer media when deciding on a burner. $5.00 to $9.00 each was what they were going for the last time I checked.
However, the price difference between dual and single layer burner is not that great, so consider the dual layer BenQ. Personally I like Pioneer and Sony burners but there are lots out there and most work pretty well. Support and firmware availability is always something to consider.
The thing you want to remember is to use high quality media. I and others here recommend Ritek G-04 -R media the most, as well as Verbatim. Do not use cheap media! It will end up costing you more.
For just making backups I recommend DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter. These two free programs are used together to make backups. Very easy to do. Find 'em here at the software page.
Authoring and making DVDs out of home videos will cost you a bit, however when you pick out your burner, see if you can get one that comes with the Nero 6 OEM software. This will usually have Nerovision Express on it which is a good way to start into authoring home video stuff. A lot of fun too!
I don't do games so I can't help ya there. You are at the right forum though. Sombody knows!
Hi Chris,
Editing and authoring the home videos costs more than burning the backups because you can use Shrink and Decrypter, both free. For editing though you are going to need a program like Nero to get started with. It does have a free 30 day trial though.
Nero 6 has a bunch of different aps to use so it can really be handy. I use it to burn all my DVDs with.
There are lots of programs available to do all the stuff you mentioned. Authoring and editing programs can cost thousands of dollars. I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my editing. It is considered a "prosumer" program. It just has a lot more features than less expensive programs. For authoring, I mainly use DVD Lab because it is enjoyable to use. I also have Adobe Encore which is a great standard authoring program.
For quick and easy DV work I use Nerovision Express 2 which is part of Nero 6. It does all the things that need to be done to turn your DV into DVDs. No other program is needed.
If I were starting from scratch, the first three programs that I would get would be DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink and Nero 6.
