DVD Software Explained and Clarified
Recently I was asked for recommendations for DVD software covering a wide range of purposes. The questions made me realize that there exists some confusion as to which DVD software does what. So I will attempt to clarify this seemingly confusing subject.
The real problem in identifying what DVD software would best suit your needs actually comes from the lack of a standard definition of each type. Also the technology of handling DVDs has come a long way now so burning a DVD would not be described as hugely difficult now!
The result being many of the DVD software makers incorporating other functions to try to lure customers through added features and benefits. This “blurring” of the things you can do with a DVD has resulted in a lack of clarity as to which software you should use to suit your specific requirements.
DVD Copying Software.
This DVD software has as its main purpose, the action of copying one DVD onto another DVD. It will commonly achieve this by making a copy on to the hard drive of your computer first then using the copied data to write to a new DVD. Generally this will be an automated process.
A variation of this is DVD Ripping where the software deconstructs the original DVDs contents into its various files and folders while it is being copied to the computer hard drive. This allows some degree of manipulation prior to burning a new DVD. Pure DVD Copying software is very often combined with the ability to make basic edits and changes to parts of the DVD and remove unwanted features like subtitles or extra content.
DVD Conversion Software.
The main action here is to take the contents of a DVD and convert them into another format. For example a home made video DVD being converted to a more compressed video format for uploading on to YouTube or similar or for viewing on a computer.
An example of a combination DVD Copying Software and DVD Conversion Software would be DVDFab or 1Click DVD. This is software that allows DVD copying in many forms with a high degree of control over the final output combined with the ability to convert the contents of the DVD to other formats.
DVD Burning Software.
The main purpose of DVD burning software is to take data from a computer and transfer it on to a DVD disc. This occurs in two ways depending on what is being burned.
For data in the form of documents and folders this is the simple action of copying those items and putting them on a DVD in a way that can be found again.
As for video DVDs it is a little more complicated procedure. There are certain protocols that determine how a video DVD must be written on to a disc. DVD burning software has the ability to understand and create those protocols as it is burning. The DVD Burning ROM of NERO 9 would be an example of this. This leads to another type of DVD software.
DVD Authoring Software.
DVD authoring is the action of creating the DVD structure (including menus, buttons, subtitles and reference to special features) that you would find on a video DVD.
The video on a DVD is actually a type of video file called MPEG2. If you simply wrote the MPEG2 file on to a disc as it is, a DVD player would not be able to play that file. The file has to be created within a specific type of structure for the DVD player to be able to read and play it.
Additionally, the disc must have menus made so that the player and you can navigate around the disc and play the parts you want. Doing all of that is the function of DVD authoring software. Corel DVD Movie Factory is an example of DVD authoring software and all these types of software must also be able to burn the DVD as well as write the structure.
DVD Editing Software.
Lots of people probably get frustrated as to why they can’t get an accurate result when they search for this. The reason is that the term is not very precise in itself. It is unclear whether the person wishes to edit the structure of the DVD (menus, movie titles etc.) or whether they are seeking to edit the actual video.
If you really want to change or edit the features or menus of a DVD prior to burning then either DVD copying software or DVD conversion software would cover this.
If what you want is to re-edit the actual video itself on a DVD then DVD software is not really designed to do that. This activity has now crossed over into the field of video editing software. Having said that there still is a range of DVD software suites that do include this function as an added feature. Roxio Creator 2009 and Nero 9 can both do this.
DVD Merging or Combining Software.
This function has probably the poorest definition of them all. Most DVD copying or conversion software can take a few DVDs or more and re-combine the contents on to a new DVD. So you could say they merge or combine DVDs.
However there is another very specific action which is the merging of two, three or even four DVDs into one DVD but at the same time retaining the menus of the original DVDs. The most common need for this is the case of DVD camcorders that record to 8cm or “mini” DVDs.
People who re-use their 8cm RW DVDs or who wish to archive their recordings may want to transfer the contents of a few of those DVDs on to one full sized DVD and save some space. Just copying the files of the DVDs over to one full DVD would result in your losing the menus of the original DVDs. That would mean you would have hundreds of individual MPEG2 files on a disc and no way of knowing which one is which. Just a mass of MPEG2 symbols in a folder!
There seems to be only one software product available that can be truly described as DVD Merging software. It is called DVDRemake and has the ability to combine or merge up to four DVD discs into one DVD disc and retain the original menus. Great for DVD camcorder users.
Finally! DVD Disc Repair Software / DVD Data Error Correction.
The makers of the whole range of DVD products from software to hardware would like you to think that DVD is digital so it is perfect but that is simply not true. DVDs can get burned with errors, get scratched, or have errors “built in” because of glitches in the software being used or even the computer being used.
For such occurrences we have this category of DVD software. Generally speaking we are now getting down to some very specialised software that can correct existing errors in DVDs.
Often when you get these errors you see silly or meaningless alerts like “no disc” (even if you can see one!), “disc error” (well duh!), “invalid DVD navigation structure” (my personal favorite!) and a whole number of others. Without going into the myriad of available specialist software for this it is interesting to note that Nero 9 now has a module within it to handle a great number of these problems called RescueAgent.
Well that became a bit more complex than I expected but I hope it will provide you with a workable guide to the different functions of DVD software.
Tags: dvd authoring software, dvd burning software, dvd conversion software, dvd editing software, dvd software, merge dvds