Clarification and Explanation of DVD Software

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!

This has resulted in many of the DVD software brands branching out into other functions in an effort to attract customers through added features and benefits. This merging of the various things you may want to do with a DVD has resulted in it becoming rather unclear as to which software you should get to suit your particular needs.

DVD Copying Software.
This is DVD software that has, as its main purpose, the simple action of copying a DVD onto another DVD. It will generally do this by first making a copy on to the hard drive of your computer then using that copy to burn to a new blank DVD. Generally this will be an automated process.

A slight difference to this is DVD Ripping which implies the concept of pulling the contents of the DVD apart down to the original files whilst being copied to a computer’s hard drive. This permits a degree of manipulation before burning a fresh 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. Such as a home video DVD converted to a more compressed video file format for uploading on to MetaCafe or similar or for watching on a computer.

A good example of a combination of DVD Copying Software and DVD Conversion Software would be a product called DVD Fab. 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 happens in two ways depending on what is being burned.

In the case of data such as files, folders or documents this is a pretty straightforward process of copying that data and placing it on the DVD in such a way that other programs can read what is there.

In the case of video DVDs it is a slightly 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 follow those rules as it is burning. An example of this would be the DVD Burning ROM of Nero 9. This does, however, lead 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 portion of a DVD is a special video file called MPEG2. If you just burned the MPEG2 on to a disc a DVD player would not be able to recognise or play that file. The file has to be “wrapped” in a certain type of structure for the DVD player to be able to 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. It is the job of DVD authoring software to do all of that. 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.
Many people search in the internet for this and probably get a little frustrated as to why they can not get a definitive result. The reason is that the term is not very precise in itself. It is hard to tell if the person wants 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 you are wanting to edit the actual video contained on an existing DVD then DVD software is not really designed to do that. This action leads more 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. This is very often called for when a DVD camcorder is being used that records to 8cm 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 is only one software I know of that can handle that problem and is the only one I know of that could be described as DVD Merging software. It’s name is DVDRemake and it can merge or combine two, three or even four DVDs on to one without losing the original menus. A great feature for DVD camcorder owners.

Finally! DVD Repair Software and DVD Data Recovery.
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 be burned with errors, become scratched, or have “built in” errors because of bugs 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.

So, that got a whole lot more complicated than I intended but I hope at least it will provide you with a general guide to the various functions of DVD software.