DVD happened a few years ago to become one of the most useful media when it comes to storing, transferring files and making backup copies. Although there is no doubt that one of its main uses was to play movies not only on the computer, but on almost any DVD player.
Although they are still being used, the arrival of Blu-Ray discs (with greater storage capacity), or even different portable devices with greater capacities (such as SSD drives ), have made the use of DVDs only limited to the recording or playback of home movies.
However, if we have recently been given a DVD recorder , and we are not quite sure how to use it, we can quickly create DVDs with most of the applications and tools included in many of the currently active operating systems.
In any case, if you want to create a video DVD that is compatible and works with most DVD players, it will be necessary to use an extra application (although free).
Choosing the correct DVD disc format
As with CDs (which, indeed, are still being used, especially when recording music for playback on a mini-system with a disc player), DVDs also come in different formats , so we should actually choose which one. would be the most suitable for our unit:
- DVD + R. The DVD disc is recordable and it is possible to re-record it or add new files, replacing them with new ones. Of course, it is not possible to format them, but the files that we delete will be “hidden” under the new ones, so it would not be possible to recover that space.
- DVD-R. It means that the disk cannot be erased and its reuse is not possible. However, the files can be copied to another drive.
- DVD-RW. It can also be a DVD + RW. It basically indicates that the disk can be completely erased without the previous files continuing to occupy disk space.
Therefore, depending on what the purpose will be, it is convenient to make sure that we are buying the appropriate DVD format. For example, while most DVD drives and DVD writers on your computer are capable of reading and writing in virtually all formats, this does not tend to be the case with home DVD players.
Starting to burn our DVD
On this occasion when recording our DVD we are going to use Windows Media Player . To do this, we insert our disc in the recorder unit and copy the file that we want to record in the Windows Videos folder.
Now we go to Start , All Programs , and proceed to open Windows Media Player . We look for the category that interests us, and we choose the Videos option. We select the video we want to record, and drag it to the Record list.
Now click on the Start recording button. Just when the system finishes burning the DVD, we just have to remove the disc and test it, in order to verify that everything has worked as it should.
