Copy DVD or generate new from DVDAS?

CurtA wrote on 2/13/2009, 1:17 AM

Probably a silly question but...

I've been converting and editing Hi8 concert videos using my VMS8. After having rendered the finished project I've been using my DVDAS 4.5 to burn the concerts to DVD.

My question is... if I want to make future DVDs of the concerts, is there any audio/video degredation involved if I simply copy the existing DVDs? Would using DVDAS to make other DVDs result in any discernable quality differences?

Thanks...

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/13/2009, 3:55 AM

The only problem at all with copying the existing DVDs is that errors can creep in during the optical disc reading & writing process. They won't be video quality problems, but they could cause playback faults. With this in mind it's probably better to burn new discs from the image that DVDAS creates on the hard drive.

However, you don't have to use DVDAS to do the burning. Any other disc burning software should get the job done better. I usually use NERO because it's faster, easier, and performs a verification pass after burning (and even with verification it's faster than DVDAS' burning). Find the VIDEO_TS folder that DVDAS created when you did the prepare step. This is what needs to be burned to the blank DVDs.

CurtA wrote on 2/14/2009, 7:49 AM

Thanks Chienworks! I was pretty certain that the copying wouldn't affect the video/sound quality, as there wasn't any compression going on or anything, but I hadn't thought about "errors can creep in during the optical disc reading & writing process".

I've got to figure out a better "filing process" or something to do as you suggested, because it sems I have the video files, original, then the editied, then the rendered movie all over the place! Another question for another time...

thanks again