Burning DVD for Beginners

[asdf29]

Okay, forgive my ignorance & the fact that a million people have asked these questions before....

I still DON'T have a dvd burner, but I started downloading video torrents anyway, now that I have some harddrive space.

I am planning on burning to disc someday...but for now I am trying to play them on my computer.

Why do some play just fine, and others are all jacked up: can't control the playback point, jerky video, etc.

some play back beautifully.

they are all, seemingly, in the same format (TS).

is this normal?

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when I do buy a burner, is burning pretty simple, I mean will the standard nero/dvd burning suite work fine? Do you just add TS files and burn?

any simple words of advice?

[uninvited94]

when I do buy a burner, is burning pretty simple, I mean will the standard nero/dvd burning suite work fine? Do you just add TS files and burn?

any simple words of advice?

DVD-torrents here on TTD are built that you just have to add the VIDEO_TS-folder, NERO and quite all other tools should do the rest.

[asdf29]

Thanks.

I've DL'd torrents from here & dime, etc. They all look the same, as far as the lingo/jargon "TS"

one torrent had a reminder "do not add md5 checksum"

---small things like that would screw me up for a week.

I don't think burning will be a problem, kinda wondering why playing the TS files is unreliable. 50% play fine, 50% are jerky & you can't jump to different playback points.

[uninvited94]

The VIDEO_TS-folder is the only one you have to burn when creating a DVD-Video. When burned, everything should work fine when watching at your standalone. Other trackers allow the actual video-files within the same folder with the checksums, info-file etc., what makes it a bit more difficult to add the DVD-files you need.

Why checksum files must not be added to that very torrent is unclear to me.

[Audioarchivist]

I think it's meant that when you burn the TS folder you don't burn the md5. It needs to be in the folder to check it for accuracy, but must not burn (and most burn progs will not let you burn it). It probably was (and should basically always be) included in any torrent, that's not the question, right?

As for why some will play fine and some don't - what program are you watching them with?
Try VLC player, a link's available in the FAQ, prog is free. Not the best, but pretty good.

Sometimes, if I'm torrenting, and browsing, and I try and watch something all at the same time, things get a little funky jerky. That's not enough memory doing too many things at once. Maybe that's part of your problem? Maybe some DVD formatted files are at higher bitrates that your computer can't keep up with somehow, while the ones that play fine are lower resolution / bitrate?

DVD burners are cheap, and pretty easy to install (usually). Go get one! Boxing day's right around the corner, hey???

Hope that helps...

[pawel]

Why do some play just fine, and others are all jacked up: can't control the playback point, jerky video, etc.
Playback control depends on if, how, and in what program a DVD was authored. A lot of videos coming straight from standalone recorders have no correct chapter marks, and very often you can't use a playback slider to jump to whatever point you want.

Jerky video: if it's not a fault of recording itself then try to defragment your HD and decrease number of open processes running in the background. However, a computer bought within last 4 years should not have any problem to play a DVD when something else takes the memory.

[asdf29]

Thanks. Pending computer upgrades, looks like burning will be a-ok.

My computer is an antique, circa '01, never upgraded RAM....I'll probably have to add RAM before I can burn DVD's.

I'm guessing that's why it doesn't play TS videos back smoothly.

I have a lightweight ALLPlayer and the SMPlayer. I'll look into VLC Player also.

Thanks again (I'm not a techie by any means).