Main Menu

Best DVD Burner?

Started by Buttonman, 24 August, 2012, 11:07:50 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Buttonman

I'm having a few issues with DivX and it not burning my Pawn Stars and Storage Wars effectively - It starts but cuts off at the teaser bit.

Can anyone recommend a good, reliable and (obviously) free program? I've tried Real Player but they want $40 for the proper burner. Lots of the supposedly free ones are only limited trials (Goddamn them all to Hell) so any pointers would be appreciated.

Professor Bear

Trawl charidee shops for old discs that came bundled free with PCs or laptops and you might come across an early version of Nero, which up until V7 was one of the best, easiest to use burners you could get.
Failing that, do you have anything that can play MP4/MP3s etc?  Xbox, PS3, and even a lot of DVD players support MP3/jpeg/mpeg playback so you can put the files directly onto a usb card (or burn them onto a disc as raw data files rather than as a DVD) and play them on your telly that way.  A lot of modern MP3 players come with the option to stream videos onto your telly, too.
Last ditch effort you could try the in-built Windows burner - on Vista, Windows DVD Maker comes bundled as standard but might not be on your desktop so you may not realise you have it, but unless you're up to date with codecs it won't burn MP4s, though otherwise I have to admit it's fairly reliable as burners go, even with the 150 minute cap on the length of video files.

Unless you're passing the DVDs you burn on to other people, I would consider getting an Xbox or PS3 and using those to play the files directly off a flash drive.  Saves you having to spend all those hours burning DVDs you'll only watch once, and you can save further money if you buy the console off a burglar.  Or from Cash Converters.  Not that there's any connection between the two.

Buttonman

Thanks Byah for that trip through the underground burning scene! I've tried 'Easy Burner' but for now it has succeeded only in installing a crappy toolbar. Will percivere - need to know what that Dave Hester is up to now!

Professor Bear

The underground burning scene is less to do with pc software and more to do with branding irons and extreme sodomy, although it's true charity shops are a hotbed of both.
If you've bought your PC in the last few years it should have something already bundled that'll burn most files - even if you bought the DVD burner much later than the PC, they usually have some software in the box along with the driver that'll do the trick for you, though if you have a trial version of something already on your pc, you can try asking the board if anyone would be willing to share their serial number to unlock the full version.
Do stick to the legal route, too - the keygens and zipped files for software downloads via dodgy sites are usually riddled with viruses and aren't guaranteed to get you access to the programs.

Rog69

Imgburn is my program of choice - http://www.imgburn.com/

It's freeware and very easy to use and is the polar opposite of bloatware like Nero and Realplayer. It doesn't perform any kind of conversion ie Divx to DVD format but it's a cracking program for burning files and images to disk.

I would take a look over on http://www.videohelp.com/ as well, there is a wealth of information and some good tutorials on burning and converting video files that more often than not have a freeware solution.