Copying Recorded TV Shows to Another DVD

Newbie Forum
#1

I have multiple DVDs of TV shows recorded with my Panasonic DVD recorder; each DVD was recorded on EP, i.e. each holds 6 hours of TV. I want to extract specific shows from different DVDs and create a new DVD with menus playable on any DVD player.

I own an external BenQ DVD-RW drive connected to my laptop (which also has a standard DVD drive). The only DVD recording software that I have is what came with my DVD-RW drive, i.e. InterVideo WinDVD Creator – I am willing to buy any software that I need if this isn’t sufficient.

My only attempt to try this (with the very non-userfriendly InterVideo software) resulted in the software erroring out because the file I wanted to burn was too big for one DVD (although one show is only 650-700 MB file on the original DVD) – I had set the options for EP recording but it still seemed to limit the DVD recording to only 1-2 hours. Also, it only records to the DVD a little faster than realtime; this seems like a waste when the source is in digital form (converted from analog, of course).

Obviously, I can just transfer the individual show files and burn them to a DVD-R, but that doesn’t give me menus and won’t be playable in a standard DVD player.

Can anyone help? I am very good at internet searches and have been unable to find any sites that discuss this type of video transfer.

#2

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=2#2

One of those is bound to work for you. “Dvdauthorgui” or “GUI for dvdauthor” are both good freeware DVD authoring applications, grab one, follow one of the linked guides, and you should be able to author a fresh DVD without reencoding any video.

#3

I use DVDLab Pro for this purpose. I capture on my pc rather than on a dvd recorder, but as long as your videos are compliant to the dvd format, you shouldn’t have to reencode them.

DVDLab Pro has a free 30 day trial period if you want test it and make sure it meets your needs. Here is the link: http://www.mediachance.com/download.htm

I like DVDLab Pro and am familiar with it, but at $199 it is a bit pricey compared to some other options, like TMPGenc DVD Author 1.6, which you can find here:
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html