Burn

I need help. I want to burn the Movies and T.V. Shows I have on my mac book air to DVD's using my superdrive. I downloaded the software BURN to do this. I have spent my entire afternoon after reading various manuals, and watching different tutorials, and trying multiple methods to burn a movie I downloaded using Burn and my superdrive onto my non rewritable DVD's. I have almost used up all my non rewritable DVD's. Everytime I think I've successfuly burnt a movie, but when I go put it in my basic DVD machine hooked up to my tv it says ERROR. I am so frustrated. It can't be this complicated! How can I be able to build webpages, and do HTML and yet not understand the very basics of DVD burning?

What movies are you trying to burn? The first thing I advise you to do is to read our Sticky Post about copying and burning movies. If the movies you're trying to burn are copy protected, it's not going to work and besides, it's against the law here in the US to do so.

Are you terminating or closing the DVD after burning? Most DVD players won't play non-terminated disks.

EDIT: Thanks, for highlighting the copy protection issue. I must be sleepy as I read right past that in th OP's post.

I live in rural country Ontario. I am an ODSP recipient who lives independently and can not afford internet or cable t.v. in her apartment. The closest mac computer store or Apple store to me is a 2 hour drive away, and I cannot afford a car. I got my laptop ordered through the intenret. I got it so I can get internet at free wi-fi hotspots like the library. I download movies and t.v. shows to watch on my T.V. instead, since I can not afford cable T.V. or internet. I can not afford a new Flat screen T.V. and do not know how to hook up my sound enabled HDMI cable to an old BIG BOX SCREEN t.v. that only uses red white blue yellow white jack inputs. I thought it would be simpler to burn my movies I've downloaded to my small Macbook Air using my superdrive so I can watch them in my old regular T.V. that has a larger screen than my mac book air using a regular DVD player. Also my macbook air has limited memory. Just enough for some of my I-Tunes Songs, and Photos, and Word Documents. It seems silly to keep movies in an external hard drive just to watch on my laptop. I do not want to get anyone in trouble here for helping me to do something highly illegal. Instead of continuing this conversation and getting you in trouble I will save my movie on a memory stick, and save up my $ to call a local computer expert and pay him 25$ an hour to sit with me at a wi-fi hotspot the library and teach me hands on how to burn DVD's with my super drive there. The movie T.V. Show series I downloaded is a foreign film I do not believe I could easily purchase legally. Thank you all for your patience, time, consideration, and help.

I feel very sad that no one will help me.

tH3_M346573R said:

I feel very sad that no one will help me.

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You just posted that you didn't want help.

Regardless, the answer I gave you in my post still applies irrespective of the content you are putting on your DVD.

DVD players (unlike computers) typically require terminated disks to operate.

Anyway, we will neither condone nor support violation of copyright laws. And discussion of illegal practices will nt be allowed.

tH3_M346573R said:

I live in rural country Ontario. I am an ODSP recipient who lives independently and can not afford internet or cable t.v. in her apartment.

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Sorry to hear that, but I'm afraid that doesn't give you a license to break the law.

I do not want to get anyone in trouble here for helping me to do something highly illegal.

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Good! Then you'll understand why we can't help you steal TV and movies illegally as you are doing.

My suggestion to you would be to subscribe to Netflix for $8 a month and watch it on your computer. You can borrow DVDs from your library to watch on your TV. Those would be your legal options.

Hopefully the computer "guru" you are going to hire has some ethics about him and will give you similar suggestion rather than expose you to litigation and penalties you could never afford.

It is not clear from the original post whether or not the movies and tv shows in question are DRM protected and, of course, it would be wrong to condone breaking the law. However, if the items are not DRM protected, then I offer the following comments that might be of help. Firstly, I do not think that BURN can write DVDs in the standard DVD format or, if it can, I was never able to get it to do so. I found that Roxio Popcorn was pretty capable for this task and was much cheaper than most competitors. Popcorn is also capable of converting video files into various formats and can compress large files so that they will fit on a standard DVD. There may be free software that will do the same sort of thing but Roxio is a well-regarded provider and probably worth the small cost.

I understand that, at least in some countries, it is legal to copy DRM-protected DVDs from one DVD to another to provide personal backups of legally-purchased items. If this is the case, then there are simple, free methods of doing so but I suspect that it may be rather more difficult to do so without degrading the video quality for items that have already been downloaded onto the computer.

To summarise:

I do not think that BURN can write DVDs in the format that standard DVD players recognise.

Roxio Popcorn will, however, do this (and there is other software that will do the same)

If the movies and TV shows are DRM-protected, then it may well be both illegal and difficult to copy them.

I do not think that BURN can write DVDs in the format that standard DVD players recognise.

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Burn may not be as sophisticated as Roxio Toast, but it can indeed write a DVD so that it can be played in a standard or stand alone DVD player.

And since the OP never really responded back as to whether or not the content she was trying to copy was protected (vague response from her), I assume it was.

I stand corrected... when I tried it, I had just switched to a Mac so was very much at the bottom of the learning curve and, having installed Roxio Popcorn, never persevered with Burn. For me, it's bit academic now because, following a burglary where my iMac was stolen, I now have the latest model iMac which does not have any optical drive. I don't suppose that Roxio will give me my money back for Popcorn!!!!!