DVD burning – 365 days old

[Alakazam]

I finally got hold of an ION VCR 2 DVD machine to make some DVD's from my old tapes, I did my 1st one today and it copied it just fine to my HDD. The thing is that it's in MPG format, I'm not sure to just burn it as a data DVD or convert to whatever the format is used with a DVD.

Any pros or cons, and what software would you recommend to convert and burn.

[Grogan]

Cons of mpg file format: Most DVD players will need it to be in DVD format. (i.e. .vob files in the proper directory structure). Video files are fine if you only intend to watch it on a computer or other device capable of playing the files.

To convert and burn, I would recommend:

http://www.vso-software.fr/products/convert_x_to_dvd/

It does a great job. I normally don't like software that costs money (or needs Windows) but I don't know anything free, or even no cost that does the job as easily and as well as this. A trained idiot could use this program and it will probably do the right thing for them every time automatically. It even generates nice menus, with moving previews.

I use this program in Windows XP running in VirtualBox, so I don't have to actually boot to Windows. The only reason I need to do this is because I have a friend that only has a DVD player so anything I bring for us to watch needs to be a DVD.

[Alakazam]

LOL, stupid me, all I had to do was poke around in the software that came with the unit and I found their burning program, there was very little documentation, just a basic set-up guide, I guess I missed that. Anyhow, burned to DVD now in the correct format and it was a success, plays fine.