Need direction on copying minicam dvd's

Newbie Forum
#1

I have a sony Handicam that burns movies onto the small (3"?) 1.4 GB DVD-R discs. My needs are simple, all I want to do is make copies of my home movies onto less expensive discs. The ones the camera uses are about $8.00 each, so I don’t want to use those to make copies. The only software provided with the camera assumes that the destination disc is in the camera. I want to copy my movies from the small disc to a standard sized dvd, and then be able to take the copy out and stick it in my dvd player and watch it on my tv. Can someone point me in the right direction. I need to know what software to get, what type of blank media I’ll need. I’ve tried and failed a couple times, and I’m sorta tired of guessing. I don’t want to spend $100.00 on software and find out it won’t do what I need. Here’s some info (generated by Sonic DigitalMedia…which didn’t work for me…) about my drive :

Burner : SONY DVD±RW DW-D56A
FirmWare version PDS7
Supported Media CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R,DVD+R 9

#2

Easy software to use would be Nero or DVDDecrypter. I would go with Nero. Lots of people have had no problems with this software (some have and will badmouth it, but it’s free to try). I’ve burned thousands of DVDs with it.

If you’d like to make fun menus and stuff it’s hard to not like TMPGEnc’s DVD Author. Extremely easy, starter-level software that will impress your friends and family.

Media, if you are in the USA go to www.rima.com and check out the DVD-Rs from Taiyo Yuden. No need to burn faster than 8x which should be less than $40 shipped for a 100 pack of media. If you want to jazz up the copies a bit you can go with inkjet printables for a bit more money and get a cheap CD/DVD printer (like the Epson R200/R220) for less than $80.

You’ll get other opinions too so your best bet is to read as much of the threads on this board as you can stand before making any big purchases.

Good luck,
-Evan-

#3

Thanks Evan,
I’ll give Nero a try. I found that my fatal mistake was that I was trying to use DVD+R, and the software I was using wanted a DVD-R. When I used the right media, everything worked. I wish software designers would use more descriptive error messages, maybe something like “You’re using the wrong media, dumbass! Try a DVD-R instead of a DVD+R” That would have saved me lots of time and trouble.