Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD

Burn almost any video file to a playable DVD




by Adam Pash


Putting any old video file - like the DivX/Xvid-encoded videos you've downloaded with BitTorrent - onto a DVD to play on your TV can be a daunting task. There's plenty of software that tackles this sort of thing for a price, but as a lover of open source software, free's always my first choice.

Luckily for all of us, authoring playable DVDs from just about any video file has gotten a lot easier in the open source community. This week I'm going to show you how to burn those downloaded TV shows to a DVD you can play in your living room using the free (as in speech), open source application, DVD Flick.

NOTE: DVD Flick's almost embarrassingly simple to use, but since it's a subject that can be confusing for people who haven't authored many DVD's, and it's a question we've been asked about several times before here at Lifehacker, we thought DVD Flick deserved a quick guide.

In a few simple steps, here's how to burn almost any video file on your computer to a playable DVD.
Step 1: Download and install DVD Flick

DVD Flick is a free, open source DVD authoring tool that will take care of pretty much all of the legwork involved in authoring your DVDs. So thank the gods of open source and go download it here.

In order to make a DVD that you can play on your DVD player, your video files need to be encoded in MPEG-2 format. What makes DVD Flick special (aside from the fact that it's free) is that it handles all of the necessary transcoding of your AVI, MPG, MOV, and WMV files (among others) to MPEG-2, and then authors and burns your DVD all in one fell swoop - meaning it's very simple for anyone to use.
Step 2: Configure your project settings

The DVD Flick interface is very no-nonsense - everything you need to access is available to you through the 7 buttons in the toolbar. Before we add videos to your DVD project, let's take a look at the settings and make sure everything's as you want it.

Click the button labeled Project settings. By default you probably won't have to change anything, but I do want to point out a couple of things.
general%20tab.png

The General tab lets you set the size of your target media (i.e., the capacity of your DVD). If you're burning to a standard DVD-R, you'll want to keep the default 4.3GB setting. However, you can also set your target size to Dual Layer DVD, Mini-DVD, CD-R, or your own custom target size.

video%20settings.pngThe Video tab lets you set the format of your DVD player - namely whether your DVD should be NTSC or PAL-formatted. If you live in the US, NTSC is your pal. Most of Europe and Asia, on the other hand, use PAL. You can also set the encoding quality in the Encoding profile drop-down. If you feel that the quality of your authored DVDs isn't high enough, you might want to try upping the quality and ensuring the "Second encoding pass" checkbox is ticked. If you're more than happy with quality but you want to speed up the encoding process, you can lower the quality and get rid of the second encoding pass (you probably won't want to do this, but just in case, there it is).
burning%20options.png

Also of note, the Burning tab lets you set the options for the final product. If you don't have a DVD on-hand for burning, for example, you can tell DVD Flick to create an ISO image that you can easily burn to a DVD later on using a tool like ISO Recorder or ISOBurn.
Step 3: Add titles to your DVD

As I said above, DVD Flick lets you add nearly any type of video file to your DVD project. The easiest way to do this is to open up the folder holding your video files and drag-and-drop the files into DVD Flick. The yellow bar on the left of the app shows you how much space you've used. The amount of video you can fit on one playable DVD will vary by length and quality, so keep an eye on your space.

chapters.pngDVD Flick is pretty no nonsense at this point; you can't build any fancy menu screens. [1] Instead, the DVD you author and burn will simply play each file as a chapter in the order you add them to the project by default. If you want to add chapters to individual video files, select the video/title and click on Edit title... and change the method of chapter creation. You can create chapter points every so many minutes, create a set number of chapters per title, or leave your video chapter-free.

Advanced users can add extra audio tracks (like commentary) and subtitles through the Edit title menus as well.
Step 4: Create your DVD

destination%20folder.pngBefore you start, pick the directory that the transcoded files will be saved to while DVD Flick works. You'll need to have a drive with a fair amount of space, so keep that in mind. You'll also want to keep that in mind so you can remove those files after the process is complete so you don't end up with a hard drive full of pre-burned DVDs.

create%20dvd.pngNow that you've got everything set up how you want, click the button labeled Create DVD. DVD Flick will now start transcoding the video files and authoring the DVD while you sit back and browse the internet. If you've never done this before, you'll learn quickly enough that video transcoding takes some time and CPU horsepower.
http://lifehacker.com/assets/resources/2007/01/dvd%20flick%20progress-thumb.png

If you don't want DVD Flick to eat up precious CPU cycles while you're working on your computer, it's sometimes useful to save this sort of operation for when you're away from the computer. Tick the checkbox labeled Shutdown when completed and you can leave DVD Flick to do its business overnight and shutdown your computer when it's finished. When you get up the next morning, you'll be the parent of a newly authored DVD!

Adam Pash is an associate editor for Lifehacker who likes his DVD creation to be dead simple. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
Footnotes:

[1] If you're looking for a free solution for authoring DVDs with nice menu screens, check out DVD Styler. The downside to DVD Styler is that it doesn't handle all the transcoding that DVD Flick does, meaning that you'll need to transcode your video files to MPEG yourself. [back up]

Feature

9:00 AM ON TUE JAN 30 2007
BY ADAM PASH
280,930 views

Read More:
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BACKUP, BACKUP UTILITIES, BURN, DIGITAL VIDEO, DVD, DVDS, FEATURE, HACK ATTACK, HOW TO, MOVIES, TOP, VIDEO

Comments
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No commenter image uploaded BY DAEDAL AT 01/30/07 09:07 AM

Also check out CDCovers.cc for tons of DVD covers too. Great when you're backing up your DVDs.

No commenter image uploaded BY ADI AT 01/30/07 09:19 AM

How does it run under Vista?

Image of Grungydan BY GRUNGYDAN AT 01/30/07 09:21 AM

This is awesome. Thanks guys!

Image of William Mize BY WILLIAM MIZE AT 01/30/07 09:23 AM

Well poo. I got all excited because I figured this was a mac app.
Wrong.
As a sidebar is there something like this for the mac to burn flv's to DVD? Something that a mac n00b would understand?

No commenter image uploaded BY DUH-FACTOR AT 01/30/07 09:29 AM

Or skip all this and just buy a DivX-Certified DVD player so you can play the video file back natively (you don't even need a DVD burner, usually a CD-burner or thumb-drive will do it)

No commenter image uploaded BY LODGER AT 01/30/07 09:45 AM

Very nice, simple application- I'm definitely going a good bit of use out of this one :D cheers

No commenter image uploaded BY JEREMYNIELSON AT 01/30/07 09:49 AM

Free, as in beer refers to cost of a product
Free, as in speech refers to your rights to use the product.

Both "free"-doms are important. In this case, the product is both... it's truly "free" - as in both beer (download for free) and speech (open-source).

Image of soke2001 BY SOKE2001 AT 01/30/07 10:00 AM

Well, my wait paid off. I was about to buy VSO's ConvertXtoDVD ($39.00), but instead decided to wait. DVD Flick does the same thing, and it's free!

No commenter image uploaded BY BSWIZ AT 01/30/07 10:04 AM

I've used DVDStyler, and it works pretty well. But as you point out, it doesn't handle any video transcoding, so there could be an extra step involved. Luckily LH has recommended a few video conversion programs lately, so I have options.

Now if someone could just add menu functionality to DVDFlick, or transcoding to DVDStyler....

Image of Ben Zvan BY BEN ZVAN AT 01/30/07 10:10 AM

On Mac, I use ffmpegx to cross-code files. It doesn't do all that fancy DVD authoring, but I just copy the MP4 file to a CF card and play it back on my PS3.

Image of TheVault BY THEVAULT AT 01/30/07 10:16 AM

I got a question. When I had bought my external DVD Burner(I LOVE THIS THING!)

It also came with Nero Suite 6 which is a very excellent program. But the only thing I dislike about it is that when I burn movies, it plays the movie and then burns it onto the DVD. Does this software here do the same? Play movie and then burns it or does it automaticlly burns it and then your done but after it encodes it of course? Thanks in advance.

Image of roadragerintherapy BY ROADRAGERINTHERAPY AT 01/30/07 10:17 AM

I use Nero Burning ROM to burn DivX and XviD .AVI files to DVD, and it does a great job of converting them to native DVD format with a very user-friendly interface (one that looks much easier to use than what I can see in this article).

Image of DeaconSune BY DEACONSUNE AT 01/30/07 10:26 AM

Those wishing to know what JeremyNielson is talking about feel free to refer to this Wikipedia article. He ain't kidding when he says both are important.

Image of eeefresh BY EEEFRESH AT 01/30/07 10:28 AM

Sweet! I have a ton of downloaded avi files at home, and now I can watch them on the big screen. Thanks Lifehacker!

No commenter image uploaded BY HERNIA1 AT 01/30/07 10:45 AM

That is an awesome app. Unfortunately, I don't see .TIVO format on the DVD Flick list. I don't like having to rely on Sonic myDVD to burn .TIVO proprietary files. Let me know if you come across something free to do this. Thanks!

No commenter image uploaded BY SILENTFOOL AT 01/30/07 11:00 AM

there's a program called "divxtodvd" that does the same thing essentially. It's the GUI is not as robust, but it gets the job done and it's also faster at encoding I believe.

unfortunately they charge for the current version...however if you look around you should be able to find the older, free version (0.5.2)

Image of bswilson BY BSWILSON AT 01/30/07 11:29 AM

Is there a Linux equivalent?

No commenter image uploaded BY LINUS29 AT 01/30/07 11:41 AM

Seems like an important point to leave out: This does NOT run on a free OS. You mention freedom, but this is a Windows Only program.

We need a Linux version.

No commenter image uploaded BY DUH-FACTOR AT 01/30/07 11:43 AM

I'm still missing it, why would you want to author a DVD (transcoding and losing quality in so doing) when you could play the file natively?

No commenter image uploaded BY WOOLFIE AT 01/30/07 11:44 AM

Linux? Why yes, and if you prefer the command line like I do, then you'll love:

tovid - to convert the file(s) to mpg format
todisc - to build the DVD structure (automatically produces the *animated* (or static if you prefer) menus
makedvd - to actually burn it

I can run all the above on my home machine remotely.

See http://tovid.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

No commenter image uploaded BY ELEAZAR AT 01/30/07 12:16 PM

Thanks guys! Extremely useful :) I have been looking for something like this for a long time (actually I haven't been looking, but I have been wanting) :)

No commenter image uploaded BY CHICOPENGUIN AT 01/30/07 12:20 PM

Please help us Mac OS X users. Any programs that do the same? Also, any ideas on the reverse? How do I get those movies I bought on DVD into iTunes for Mac and onto my iPod?

Image of Foamator BY FOAMATOR AT 01/30/07 12:33 PM

Lol... Extras rocks.

No commenter image uploaded BY NI2SML AT 01/30/07 12:46 PM

Another Linux option, if command lines make you break out in a cold sweat, is Varsha (http://varsha.sourceforge.net/).

I've used it for just this task on Linux a couple of times.

It's a Java front end to various command line tools and while a bit rough around the edges, it's worked well enough for me so far.

It does require that you have the movie file in an appropriate format. As well as tovid, ffmpeg and transcode can help do that job.

It might be possible to bodge the same setup together in Mac OSX?

Image of anithinks BY ANITHINKS AT 01/30/07 01:41 PM

So what happens to the file size, Adam?

For example, I can fit 25 anime episodes (each around 170 MB) on 1 DVD if burnt as .avi (which can be read by a computer, not a DVD player), but how many of the same on a DVD-player playable DVD?

Image of anithinks BY ANITHINKS AT 01/30/07 01:45 PM

What I meant above was that does the DVD-player playable DVD only contain around 4 episodes? (Like the commercial DVDs do.)

I think the transcoding somehow increases the file size by a great magnitude (not sure why, as it cannot increase video quality as such...)

No commenter image uploaded BY CALENDARPHONE AT 01/30/07 02:15 PM

This would be a vital tool for me on my Mac. Right now I can only watch my avi files thru my VLC player on my computer. TV would be nice. MAC alternatives, please?

Image of Ben Zvan BY BEN ZVAN AT 01/30/07 02:23 PM

@ChicoPenguin
You can use MacTheRipper to rip DVDs to disk (It removes all that pesky copy protection and region encoding). Then use ffmpegx to convert the file to .m4v for iPod. The default settings for 'iPod for TV' actually work pretty well, but if you're going to watch it on your TV I'd recommend changing the resolution setting so it's the same as your source.

Image of Lula Mae Broadway BY LULA MAE BROADWAY AT 01/30/07 02:57 PM

Ahhh! I got all excited, and it's Windows Only! Yes, some Mac alternatives...

ALSO - maybe this would fit into your new NewBs category, but some "Getting Started In BitTorrent" help would be great. Especially regarding configuring preferences and opening/choosing ports to get the darn programs up and working. I've tried to set up Azureaus (sp?), use the torrent part of Opera, and at some point I donwloaded the LH recommended Transmission, but don't think I've ever gotten any of them to work. Acquisition is also not finding many files these days. Help!

Image of Eric Danielson BY ERIC DANIELSON AT 01/30/07 04:25 PM

@anithinks: DVD video has to be in a certain format, and one that's considerably less thrifty than mp4/divx/pretty much anything else. Figure it roughly akin to mp3s vs CD audio - You may be able to store 200 songs in mp3 format on a CD, but if you want it in CD Audio (ie, playable on home devices), you can only store about 80 minutes. Same principle applies with the DVDs, so yes, you're capped at a certain length in minutes of video.

Image of anithinks BY ANITHINKS AT 01/30/07 05:45 PM

Thanks for clearing that up, Eric. Unfortunately, this is the reason that this method of transcoding to play on DVD player pretty much sucks - I believe there should be workarounds - say, connecting your computer to your TV via S-Video et. al.

Lifehacker should do a feature on how to connect TVs to PCs so that they can display on each other - I have been saying this for a while - Gina/Adam/Rick/Wendie - listen to my plea!

Image of anithinks BY ANITHINKS AT 01/30/07 06:02 PM

Or in other words, Lifehacker, please put an update to this article from 2005, which was technologically eons ago...

http://lifehacker.com/software/video/how-to-watch-video-fi...

No commenter image uploaded BY CHRISLROB AT 01/30/07 07:45 PM


Yeah! This is my chance to get unchain myself from my computer and get back into the living room with my wife!

Duh-factor says that a divx dvd player means you can play the files without the conversion. Can I use my CD burner to burn the files or would I still need to get a DVD burner?

Image of Billifer BY BILLIFER AT 01/30/07 08:04 PM

Anyone have any ideas on convert RMVB (Real Media variable bitrate) and other RM/RAM/RV files to other formats? I curse the day that Real.com came to exist, because their format is so closed. Just whenever someone figures out how to transcode it, they create a new version of the codec.

I've tried ffmpeg (command-line invocation, even), but with no success. Thanks in advance for any assistance. I've got several very large .rmvb files I want to get off my hard drive and onto DVD.

No commenter image uploaded BY HOTTYMO AT 01/30/07 09:15 PM

Um, tried to put some movie trailers that iTunes offered for free on their site, there is no DRM on them, and when I dragged them over to the program it thought about it for a moment and exited itself. Tried another trailer and it exited itself, crashed. Does this program not support QuickTime videos?

Image of upnishad BY UPNISHAD AT 01/30/07 09:59 PM

DVDFlick is a super piece of software. I used it for several conversions. Only drawback is that its very slow while decoding the Audio/Video compared to the paid heavyweights like Nero. But for a free software, its a masterpiece. If you have 7-8 GB DVDs and if you want to shrink it to a standard 4 GB Disk, DVD Shrink does wonders and suprisingly there is very little loss fo quality.

No commenter image uploaded BY OO AT 01/31/07 08:37 AM

I have been trying to figure out a way to play DivX movies with seperate subtitle files on my DivX machine for a while. This seemed like the answer, and in a way it was. Tried it last night, and makes 2 movies fit on a DVD quite nicely. But all subtitles are about 2 minutes out of sync.

So, although this worked well, is there a better way to paste subtitle files into a movie file so I can watch it on my DivX playing DVD player?

No commenter image uploaded BY OO AT 01/31/07 08:38 AM

H6aXUjc

Image of ADM BY ADM AT 01/31/07 09:37 AM

fellow mac people, google is your friend. chico penguin, just use handbrake to convert a dvd to an ipod-compatible format.

to the person who wanted to burn tivo files...this has been exhaustively covered on the web. if you have a PC, use Direct Show Dump to strip the light encryption. It is very fast. You will be left with an MPEG2 file, which is essentially the same format that one would use to burn to a DVD. Once you have the MPEG2, you can burn it to a DVD, or use software such as Videora iPod Converter to turn it into an iPod-compatible MPEG4.

people who want to output video from their PC to their tv should just buy a video card that has the requisite output (s-video, composite, etc). you don't need lifehacker to tell you that.

in general, i think it is easier to get yourself in a situation where you can easily output from your pc to your tv, rather than bothering with all this transcoding and burning all the time.

Image of cheesebubble BY CHEESEBUBBLE AT 02/01/07 01:02 PM

DVD Flick seems like quite a useful program. I'll have to give it a try. I have a question about zapping just the audio from a DVD. Is there a free program that would allow me to do that? I would like to be able to take audio tracks off some of my music DVDs and utilize them as wave or mp3 files. Any suggestions?

Image of Mysterius BY MYSTERIUS AT 02/01/07 08:16 PM

Any tips on burning an Xvid file into a VCD or other CD disc format playable on a DVD player?

No commenter image uploaded BY RADEK AT 02/03/07 01:47 AM

Just buy the DVD/DivX/XviD player (about 100USD), or hook up your silent PC/notebook to the TV directly.

You will save your time messing with re-encoding video files.

Image of weirdlyspazoid BY WEIRDLYSPAZOID AT 02/03/07 02:25 PM

just tried this today after reading the article. i had pretty high hopes for this program. it is as easy to use as stated, but the main drawback for me is the speed. it is just so SLOW! painfully slow encoding..

any suggestions to speed up the app or an alternate program with faster speeds??

No commenter image uploaded BY ISH_KABBIBKE AT 02/04/07 02:33 PM

I have been trying for about ten hours now to burn a dvd from this and other similar programs without success. (meaning that they won't play on my dvd player(a sony 1080i compatable unit) my wii or my playstation. I have hooked up my laptop to my 46" LCD screen and play my downloaded movies using this method. Has anyone used a newer dvd player (a 1080i compatable unit) with any success using this program?

Image of Lula Mae Broadway BY LULA MAE BROADWAY AT 02/26/07 11:26 AM

ADM: Actually Google isn't much of a friend in this case, as most of the results still return Windows programs, and/or programs that rip DVDs to AVI, not other way around. If you've found useful links please post them.

LH HQ - if you're still reading this thread, any mac help, alternatives on this.

Thanks.

No commenter image uploaded BY COMPACT AT 03/01/07 01:30 AM

Speed issues:
All software is slow when converting video. Imagine how many frames per second it has to deal with and then remember how slow windows takes when just simply rotating an image file in the viewer..

Flick is pretty damn good, for free.

Also AVI2DVD is good (though no burning software)
and Satsuki's All2DVD (links to IMG Burn)....

If you want to get deeper into all this
afterdawn.com has many many guides to help and a good forum for questions.

No commenter image uploaded BY PEREZTECH AT 03/01/07 05:23 AM

Hey thanks for the link, now i can free up about 40 gigs of divx files. WOOHOOO

No commenter image uploaded BY MAX4000 AT 03/01/07 10:14 AM

wow.

Since this was posted I've been using DVD Flick like crazy. I'm a video editor, so I'm no stranger to dvd transcoding. But generally, casually burning a divx file to DVD isn't even worth the effort. It's either too long of a process with too many steps, or the simpler programs just plain don't work. Running this remotely on my office computer while I'm not even there is painless. Now I won't be chained to the computer to watch all these videos that have been piling up. It's also nice to be able to watch at someone else's house.

Thanks!

Image of CarrieC BY CARRIEC AT 03/01/07 10:15 AM

@William Mize:
Check out VisualHub by Techspansion
It costs $23.32 US and is worth every penny.
They are the same people who do iSquint.
I have no affiliation with them, i just love the program.
-Carrie

No commenter image uploaded BY LIFEHACKERLAURENT AT 03/02/07 05:13 AM

I only use open source or freeware to burn AND I financially contribute what I can to the developers/programmers. It is only fair. Now to burn there's none better than CDBurnerXP Pro 3 in these & all instances. Fast, nice interface & easy to use.Nothing more, nothing less.

No commenter image uploaded BY PROVOBIS AT 03/09/07 06:30 PM

Tried 1.2.1.3 build 326 which was posted as temporary fix for bugs that caused transcoding failure when using edit to burn several clips. The new temp worked fine (notwithstanding 3 hours to transcode and burn one one hour clip and two 5 minute ones), but the two 5 minute clip videos on DVD were out of sync with the sound track. Otherwise video and sound quality were good. Any new fix for the sync bug?

Image of Aetherfukz BY AETHERFUKZ AT 03/14/07 11:26 AM

I can only second Max4000's comment. This is a great app! I too burned my fair share of divx and other videos to stand-alone-playable DVDs, but it always was very time consuming and I had to be at the computer nonstop usually because there would be like 6 little tools involved.

No commenter image uploaded BY ALLTHEWAYUP AT 03/20/07 09:02 PM

Dvd flick is absolutely the best. Hats off to the creators of this program. Time management is necessary. Run it before bed, lights out and tomorrow another excellent DVD. Nice and Easy.
I love this program.
Thanks

No commenter image uploaded BY GOONSOCK AT 03/29/07 03:25 AM

On the Mac, Burn 1.7 will convert most video files to dvd player compatible discs:

http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/

and... it's free.

No commenter image uploaded BY M8M AT 06/16/07 05:41 PM

Every time I try to start the burning process, it gives me an error about the Audio Encoding process. Can someone help me out?

No commenter image uploaded BY PENTAPENGUIN AT 06/21/07 01:43 PM

Wow! Great find! It worked perfectly putting some MOV files from my digicam to DVD. Awesome program! OSS rocks!

No commenter image uploaded BY CHICKENDINNER AT 06/29/07 10:05 PM

Thank you so much! I've been looking for a way to burn DVD's like this and before I only got the audio to download on the DVD! Thanks again!

Image of marksman7328 BY MARKSMAN7328 AT 07/15/07 06:42 PM

Thank you once again, LH. Awesome find!

No commenter image uploaded BY ROBERTGORETSKY AT 09/12/07 06:29 PM

For a similar open source program for burning playable Audio CD's from directly from a plethora of file formats (MP3, FLAC, OGG, etc.), I recommend a program called "Burrrn" -- its available here

Robert Goretsky
Hoboken, NJ

No commenter image uploaded BY KNIGHT_OWL AT 10/06/07 11:29 PM

I just used DVD Flick for the first time, on some xVid clips, and it worked beautifully! The encoding was perfect - far superior to my OEM Cyberlink software - and the interface couldn't be simpler or more effective. This totally rocks for a no-hassle, flawless way to transfer to DVD format.

No commenter image uploaded BY STONOGIRL AT 10/10/07 01:10 PM

I have some TV shows downloaded to my PC. Does anyone know what file format I should/can use? Does it give you a choice? I would like to burn these to a DVD that can be played on a Mac laptop. Do I use an app like DVD flick, then convert the files to one that is Mac compatible? Help, I have no idea what I am doing!!!!
THANKS!!!!

No commenter image uploaded BY LALIATK AT 10/11/07 11:29 AM

THANK YOU so, so, SO much. I've only been looking for a solution like this for 2 years. This will be extremely useful for me in my work AND personal life. Bless you!

No commenter image uploaded BY LE_CAT AT 10/18/07 07:43 AM

hello, first post around here :)

i've just began using DVD Flick and DVD Styler, and got frustrated because Flick doesn't do menus, and Styler doesn't do transcoding... so i took the mad scientist approach: create VOB files on DVD Flick, one title for each vid you want to have on your dvd, then open those VOB files on DVD Styler, and voila! You can create all the fancy menus and navigation you want. I did noticed a little bit of "stuttering" on the videos, mainly when a scene was fading to black, and i had to press the forward button to get the audio started on each title, but i'm not sure if that's from a bug on Styler, a side effect of transcoding, some settings i got wrong, or just because i crammed eight 22-min. anime episodes on one disc.

No commenter image uploaded BY STANDAN AT 12/02/07 04:18 AM

I am using flick to burn a dvd from my hard drive. It has been running for 13 hours, and is only on "combine sources. Will it ever complete? Is there something I can do to speed up the process? I had the process priority on normal, and just switched it to above normal. I will push it up to high when I stop using the computer, but still, the time seems excessive.
I have an AMD 2200+ processor(1.8ghz) and am running xp. My new liteon dvd burner is hooked up to usb 1( I have ordered a usb 2 card, it is on the way)but I don't see how that matters until the dvd actually begins to be ripped.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.

No commenter image uploaded BY KEVO_GEE AT 12/09/07 01:44 PM

help! im just wondering if anyone can tell me why is it that when i try to pick which drive im going to use my DVDburner is not showing, the only thing showing in the drop down box is my CD burner, my dvd burner is external but im sure thats its plugged to the USB and still its not showing on the drive. what next?

No commenter image uploaded BY SOURUBIES AT 12/13/07 06:38 PM

i love you. i have been searching for a way to burn a downloaded movie forever. thanks. sine cera.

also can anyone help me with the proper drivers to use with this? i just used a folder..is that bad? also where would i find these proper drivers? thanks.

No commenter image uploaded BY GARYWANG AT 12/15/07 03:59 PM

Hi Adam - thanks for this article. The best dvd copy software of all-time was 321 Studios DVD X Copy Platinum (www.dvdxcopy.com). I see above that many people have discussed mainstream DVD burning programs like those from Nero, Corel (DVD Copy 6), Cyberlink, and Roxio. The truth is that these are mostly for DVD data and music backup and not as good for DVD movie copying. DVD X Copy had a CSS ripper on board and the compant was shut down because of it. Since DVDXCopy has faded away, two new and separate DVD burning programs have emerged and the best DVD movie copy software, they are: DVD neXt Copy and 1 Click DVD Copy. There are dozens of other inferior products like DVD Cloner, DVD Fab Platinum, DVD Wizard Pro, DVDtoDVD Copy, etc., but they simply do not have the support, development teams, technology or ability to copy every DVD movie. FYI, all major DVD copying software are listed, ranked, compared side-by-side and reviewed in detail at: [www.dvdxcopy.com]

Image of Felixe BY FELIXE AT 08:49 AM

The problem here, and the reason people are sometimes partial to one program or another, is that avi files are just containers to a quite large of video file formats. So there's no such a thing as perfect encoder.

But tools like DVD Flick can do the job 95% of the time. Thanks for the heads up.