Despite the fact that in recent years optical storage media has been increasingly superseded by all kinds of USB devices such as external HDDs or conventional flash drives, optical drives do not lose their relevance, since the vast majority of household players are primarily designed for their use. Next, consider how to burn a movie to disk using some of the simplest tools and tools for this. Running a little ahead, we can immediately say that these can be both standard tools of Windows operating systems and third-party programs designed to work with disk images and virtual drives.
How to burn a movie to disc: media selection
Before you start the recording process, you need to decide which media will be used. The most common right now are DVDs. We don’t take into account CD-carriers or BD-disks, since the first ones have too little volume, and the second type requires a special writing drive, which is quite expensive. But on any computer or laptop (except netbooks) there is almost always a DVD burner.
As for the "discs", there is little choice. Using disposable DVD-R media looks, to put it mildly, irrelevant. Where better to use DVD-RW discs. But, talking about how to record a movie on a DVD disc, you should consider the types of RW disks (standard DVD5, double-sided or double-layer DVD9).
If you use DVD9, you need to take into account the difference between two-sided and two-layer media. In the first case, as is already clear, you can use two sides of the medium for recording, each of which fits 4.37 GB, and when using a two-layer medium, you can immediately record a movie (films) with a total volume of 8.5 GB.
Using plain copy
Now let's see how to record a movie from a computer to disk using the most primitive means of the operating system. When you insert an empty disk into the drive, a pop-up prompt will appear, after clicking on which you can select files and write them to the media.
You can do it even easier by marking the files and folders in the most ordinary “Explorer” and using the PCM menu with the choice of where to send them to the desired medium.
But there are tricks. If a movie is downloaded from the Internet in a standard DVD format in the form of two folders with contents (VIDEO_TS and AIUDIO_TS), it is far from a fact that after normal copying, the household player will be able to play the original video. Copying is mainly used for single files of usual formats (AVI, MPG, WMV, MKV, MP4, etc.).
Windows DVD Studio
Now a few words about how to burn a movie to disk using the “native” Windows utility called “DVD-studio” (for the seventh version and below).
The whole recording process boils down to adding the necessary files in the application window, customizing the appearance of the main menu with text and pictures, and then activating the start of the process. When recording, the added formats will be automatically converted specifically to DVD (the output will receive the same two folders mentioned above).
Most popular disc burning software
But, as practice shows, most users do not particularly trust the means of Windows, preferring to use third-party programs. They have the advantage that they allow you to choose the final format of the recorded material and do without the use of various kinds of video converters (although sometimes you can not do without them). As mentioned above, applications designed for working with disk images are perfectly suitable for this, which also allows you to emulate optical drives. Programs like Nero Burning ROM, UltraISO, Alcohol 120%, etc. are considered the best.
From domestic developments, you can use narrowly targeted utilities like VideoMASTER, which very much resemble the standard Windows DVD studio.
How to burn a movie to DVD using Nero Express?
Now let's take a look at the recording process itself, and take the Nero Express application as an example, which is one of the components of the more complete Nero Burning ROM package. The program allows you to record movies to disk in two counts, as they say.
After starting the application, you need to select the appropriate section of the menu and the format of the recordable disc (although, as in Windows, it is appropriate to use a regular data record, which is akin to direct copying). Then, in the window on the right, the desired final format is set.
After that, files are added (for DVD, BUP, VOB and NFO file formats can be added separately), after which the disc name is indicated, the recorder is selected and the start of burning is activated.
What should be considered when recording?
How to burn a movie to disk is a little understandable. Now the most important thing is the subtleties of the settings for burning discs.
First of all, pay attention to the recording speed. Set it to the minimum that supports the disk used. Before starting the burning, it is advisable to immediately mark the data verification item at the end of the recording (verification). If you need to create a multisession with the possibility of subsequent addition of files, keep in mind that some household players may not play back the finished material, without trivially determining that it is physically present on the disk. Therefore, it is better to set the recording with finalization (Disc-at-once), and if necessary, if a rewritable disc is used, then erase it and record the necessary information again.
If the player cannot play the selected final or initial format, first use conversion to a recognizable format, and only then record (for example, to convert MKV to AVI). At the same time, you can limit yourself to creating a data disc without using the choice of video formats.
Instead of a total
As you can see, recording a movie on a disc is not difficult. The means described above can equally be used to record optical media with other contents (audio, graphics, etc.). As already understood, it is not necessary to specify specialized output disk formats, but you can do without it. But here - at will.
Finally, if you want to rewrite a movie from one disk to another, it is completely optional to copy it to a hard drive or to convert the format. In such situations, old proven programs like Clone DVD are great.