How to Burn a DVD
DVD as you probably know stands for Digital Video Disc and they can be burned, copied or recorded just like a CD, but you can fit more information on a DVD (about 4.7 GB of data)
When you burn a DVD you can do it in three ways: you can make a Data DVD’s, a Multimedia DVD or copy a commercial DVD.
Burn a Data DVD
Burning your computer files (spreadsheets, word documents, PDFs, etc) to a DVD is the easiest type of DVD burning. They only require general DVD burning software and you do not require any kind of decryption or region specific software. The Data that you burn can be easily read on any DVD drive.
You may want to purchase a specific DVD burning program, but chances are that free DVD burning software already came installed and configured on your computer. This software is very intuitive and you basically need only to follow the prompts on the screen. It will probably take less than 20 minutes or less to burn your Data DVD.
Burn a Multimedia DVD
This is essentially the same as burning regular data, except that Multimedia files usually include video from a number of sources such as your webcam, your video camera, or commercial video of some sort, so the files are larger than simpler data files.
Multimedia DVDs also allow you to add some extras such as chapters (to navigate a large video file), a title, a menu page or a catalogue of the content on the disk. Some DVD burning software will let you add subtitles or even add DRM (digital right management), to make it harder for others to burn a copy of your DVD.
Burn a copy of a Commercial DVD
First you should know that it isn’t illegal to make a copy of copyrighted material for a personal archive or to make a back-up copy of your favorite commercial DVDs, but in most of the world it IS illegal to copy DVDs for commercial purposes or give them to a third person.
To copy and burn a commercial DVD you will need, besides you normal burning software, additional special software that can decode or “crack” digital rights management (DRM). You will also need to shrink the file, since most DVDs are “dual layer” and pack around 7 and 8.4 GB of Data and you want to fit all that in a DVD-R that can store about half that amount (4.7GB). You can find copy software that comes as a suite of programs, so you can crack or decode the DVD, shrink it, and add extras such as subtitles or chapters.
Once you have cracked and compressed the DVD, just use your day to day burning software to burn your DVD. DVD and then burn it to a normal DVDR.
