The term DVD stands for both Digital Video Disk and Digital Versatile Disk. This is an optical storage medium that is very much like your compact disc. The only difference is that DVDs have a greater and improved capacity and bandwidth compared to a CD. Other than that, you can do just about anything on a DVD that you can do on a CD, which invokes the question – how to burn DVDs?

DVDs can store about six times as much data as your regular CDs. Since you can do the same things on a DVD as on a CD, it is possible to burn various types of data on to your DVDs. With its improved capacity, a digital video disk can hold 133 minutes of a full length film.

Types of DVD Disks

Depending on how the data is stored onto a disk, DVDs are often called by various names. DVD-ROM would mean you can only read from such a disk, which means that you can’t burn data to it. DVD+R/DVD-R can be used to record data once. DVD-RW/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM disks can be written to and then erased and burned onto again, a number of times.

Burning Data onto a Disk

The first thing you need to have in order to burn DVDs is burning software. You may purchase software to burn DVDs, or alternatively, you may download ones that are free. You also need an optical drive that can burn DVDs. Make sure you have one that supports both CD burning and DVD burning. You can backup up to 4.7 GB of data onto one disk.

Burning Multimedia Files

Burning your multimedia files is basically just like burning data files. Video files take more space and a lot longer time to burn onto your disk.

Your videos can come from a variety of sources. Some people would want to convert their videos from VCRs and burn them onto a disk. Videos recorded from a camcorder, digital camera or your TV can also be burned.

There are added features that can be implemented while burning a DVD when you’re dealing with multimedia. You can add chapters, a title page, a menu page and even subtitles. You will need to install authoring tools in order to add these specific features when you burn DVDs. You can also copy protect your disk using Digital Rights Management (DRM) software.

Burning Commercial DVDs

Before going over how to burn DVDs for commercial purposes, please note that it is illegal in some territories, to make copies of copyrighted DVDs and redistribute them in the market. You may be breaking copyright laws even if you’re giving them away as a gift. That being said, it isn’t a breach of copyright laws to make copies for an archive or backup for another device you own (such as another computer or a player on your car).

In addition to your burning software, you’ll also need software to rip the videos from commercial disks. These will crack the DRM for you and allow you to copy the videos. At times, you may have to convert videos you rip into other video formats before you burn them onto a DVD disk.