Burning a DVD

Guys, I need help! I just got a new computer, so I decided to burn all my old data onto DVDs. Usually, I just do it the old-fashioned way—copying files in Windows and hitting "burn"—but today my burner started acting up. It starts the process, then stalls out around the 30% mark and tells me the DVD is bad. The real kicker is that it’s throwing the same error for every single disc I try. I highly doubt the burner is dead, considering it hasn't even burned ten CDs or DVDs in its entire life. What on earth could be going on here?

Bad DVDs?

Generally speaking, when you're burning media, Windows tries to burn the disc at the highest speed possible. When you push those higher speeds, you just increase the margin for error—you end up with bad DVDs and more frequent write errors.

Try installing some dedicated burning software (maybe BurnAware?) and run a simulation first, or just try burning at a lower speed.

Yeah, just like Drew Gray50 says, simply install the program, burn it at 2x speed if you want, and you're all set.

BurnAware 9 should definitely do the trick—it's 382 MB for Windows XP / 2003 / Vista here"
If that doesn't work, your burner is probably dead.

Wouldn't it be way easier if she just grabbed a tiny little utility to burn everything and call it a day? 😛 I mean, from what I can tell, she’s in a massive rush to migrate everything to her new PC anyway 😁

I grabbed some stuff from YouTube and converted them into MP4 files—now they just show the Windows Media Player icon. When I tried to burn them using BurnAware, it hit 99% and then just threw an error at me (can't even remember which one)
What the hell could be the issue?

Look, just—search for the NeroHistory.log file and then just copy and paste the error description right here...
Don't go pasting the entire damn log, though—it's way too massive—just grab the specific part from whenever you were actually burning that disc.

Getting an "Error during encoding" message. Here’s how my SVCD settings look:
Create standard compliant CD: YES
Encoding resolution: PAL
Encoding bitrate mode: 0
Fit to size in min: 74
Video directory: MPEG2
ENTRIES.SVD file ID: ENTRYVCD
I was making a decent video CD
😕🤷

p.s. Is there any way to just trim specific parts of what I downloaded? I tried doing it in DivX before, but now I'm stuck—can't burn them or even copy them over...

The options look fine to me... but I have to ask—are those MP4 files actually playing alright when you run them through a media player? Did you run into any weird error messages when you were adding them to the DVD compilation?

Benjamin King2 said:The options look fine to me... but are those MP4 files actually working when you play them back? Did you run into any errors while you were adding them to the DVD compilation?

Nah, everything works perfectly—I just run them through VLC Media Player.
Can I burn this using DivX? Or maybe some other software?

Maybe try converting those original files to MPEG-2 first—WMV just isn't the best format for this... you could also try using Handbrake to whip up an SVCD.

Benjamin King2 said:Try converting those original files to MPEG2 first—WMV is honestly a terrible format to work with... you could also try using Handbrake to whip up an SVCD.

How am I supposed to convert them? So far I've just been using some YouTube downloader tool.
And how the hell do I make an SVCD with Handbrake?

There’s a free converter right here if you want to try it—you can actually use this thing to convert stuff into SVCD format: http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

Can someone please refresh my memory on how to turn TS video and TS audio files into a proper DVD that plays automatically once it's burned? I guess I tried to wing it by navigating to the "New DVD Video" option, dragging everything over to the TS video folder, and hitting burn... but it just keeps acting like I made a "data disc" instead of an actual DVD video. What am I doing wrong?

Could someone lend me a hand regarding BurnAware 7? I'm trying to figure out which specific tool within the software I should be using to burn my discs. For instance, I have two different wedding DVDs; one burns perfectly fine, but the other comes out completely silent. Also, why on earth is it burning them as a VCD instead of a standard DVD format?

What's the actual file format for those wedding videos? And just a heads-up—try not to double-post the same question across multiple threads next time.

Benjamin King2 said:What's the actual format for those wedding videos? And please, let's try not to double-post the same question across multiple threads next time.

My bad. No intention to clutter things up. The wedding footage is on DVD.

So, look—when you pull up that DVD in Windows Explorer, you’re seeing two specific folders sitting there, right? AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS? Or am I missing something else entirely on the disc?

Benjamin King2 said:So, when you pull up that DVD in Windows Explorer, what are we looking at? Just those two standard folders, AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS? Or is there some other junk on there?

Exactly. You've got the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders, sure, but there’s more to the story. It’s cluttered with stuff like VIDEO_TS 1-01, VIDEO_TS 1-02, and so on. Basically, it's just a bunch of fragmented clips broken up one after another.

Hm... I honestly have no clue what software they used for this authoring... if you’re looking to make a carbon copy, the easiest way is just using Nora's 'copy disc' feature. You basically tell it to dump the whole DVD onto your hard drive as an .nrg image file—super straightforward—and then you just pop in a blank disc, hit 'burn image,' and boom, you've burned that .nrg file onto the empty DVD. There’s no need to mess around picking formats or settings; everything is already set up for you.