Newbie to PC DVD burning--stupid questions 101

Yes, I'm a Luddite and yes, I'm a techno-idiot, so with that out of the
way, I have today's stupid questions from a beginning PC DVD burner:

I got a PC with Nero Express pre-bundled, but without, unfortunately,
any manual (there's a Manual option in the Menus, but it's not on the
computer for some reason). I have found one online but it doesn't
answer a couple of questions. So here we go:

This version of Nero comes with these burning choices:

D:_NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A [DVD]

and

Image Recorder [DVD}

So my first stupid question is: what is the Image Recorder, what does
it do and how does it work? It appears maybe it copies stuff to the
harddrive. But when I tried that I got a very small file (like 4KB)
that is obviously not DVD data.

My second stupid question is: If I use the actual ND-1100A burner and
select the "copy entire disc" option, it immediately goes to "Burn,"
which scares me a little bit. When I've used Nero to burn CDs, if I
copy an entire disc there is an intervening menu where I select the
source data. So I'm wondering if this is correct or if this version is
malfunctioning. I don't think I'm skilled enough to extract the
individual files I need to copy a DVD with the "DVD-Video Files" menu
option, but maybe some patient soul can walk me through what I need to
do with that option.

Thanks for bearing with someone hopelessly caught in the late 20th
century.

JMK

"JMK" <> wrote in news:1147142464.226968.38020
@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> Yes, I'm a Luddite and yes, I'm a techno-idiot, so with that out of the
> way, I have today's stupid questions from a beginning PC DVD burner:
>
> I got a PC with Nero Express pre-bundled, but without, unfortunately,
> any manual (there's a Manual option in the Menus, but it's not on the
> computer for some reason). I have found one online but it doesn't
> answer a couple of questions. So here we go:
>
> This version of Nero comes with these burning choices:
>
> D:_NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A [DVD]
>
> and
>
> Image Recorder [DVD}
>
> So my first stupid question is: what is the Image Recorder, what does
> it do and how does it work? It appears maybe it copies stuff to the
> harddrive. But when I tried that I got a very small file (like 4KB)
> that is obviously not DVD data.

Ignore the Image Recorder. You don't use it for copying a disc.

>
> My second stupid question is: If I use the actual ND-1100A burner and
> select the "copy entire disc" option, it immediately goes to "Burn,"
> which scares me a little bit. When I've used Nero to burn CDs, if I
> copy an entire disc there is an intervening menu where I select the
> source data. So I'm wondering if this is correct or if this version is
> malfunctioning.

This is correct. Your goal is to copy an ENTIRE disc. There is no need
to select parts from the source disc because you must copy them all. The
files from the source disc will copy to your hard drive then will burn to
a blank disc after you are prompted to put it in.
A DVD is not like a CD where individual songs are like separate files.
The DVD chapters are merged together into big .vob files and the .ifo
files act as indexes to tell your player where they are. If you were to
able to pick out parts of the DVD, the indexes would no longer match the
..vob files.
This is all assuming you not trying to copy comercially made discs. For
that you a decrypter program to copy the source files to your hard drive.
A commercially made disc is usually too big to fit on a blank disc so you
also need a program to shrink the files before burning.

>I don't think I'm skilled enough to extract the
> individual files I need to copy a DVD with the "DVD-Video Files" menu
> option, but maybe some patient soul can walk me through what I need to
> do with that option.

The "DVD-Video Files" option is for when you already have a DVD's .ifo
and .vob files in a folder on the hard drive. When you use use this you
add all of the files in the folder to the "add" window.

>
> Thanks for bearing with someone hopelessly caught in the late 20th
> century.
>

Take a look at www.videohelp.com for detailed information.

Jeff