November 23, 2005

DVD burning 101: Nero, Roxio, Memorex, Staples, CDW and Dell...

In about 5, 4GB files I had a total of 20GB of video to burn to DVD's. I needed to send them to someone to look at and of course FTP was not going to work as I had could not be sure of their connection speed and technical expertise. The solution was easy (making DVD's) but the process was a pain.

I started with Nero Express software which comes bundled with many computers and DVD players. I kept trying to burn the files to a DVD only to get an error message that I was trying to burn a file that was 2GB+ (although the DVD holds 4GB) and hence Nero could not do it. I finally figured that Nero Express might have a limit on file sizes.

Unfortunately this is NO WHERE in the manual and I didn't want to buy a software package if there was only a technical error that I could solve. I called up Nero's FEE BASED technical support to ask, and sure enough, there is a size limitation.

Next I went to find a low cost DVD burning software. Roxio had a tool called Record Now, which I purchased for about $50. I didn't purchase something from Nero as I had it with them (for now).

I then purchased from online retailer, CDW (great company), a Memorex dual layer, external (USB/firewire) DVD burner (to burn 8GB dvds) and some dual layer DVD's from Staples (another great company).

That did the trick and I can burn, burn, burn to my heart's content. The only problem is that the PC I'm burning from is USB 1.0 which means that data transfer from PC to external DVD burner is SLOW - burning 8GB's of data takes hours per DVD!

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