Computer Customizing Guide Blog

Since a DVD player is in just about everybody’s home these days, it makes sense to put all of your home movies and any other type of personal video footage you can think of on a DVD. The problem most people have, especially someone who has very little knowledge about computers, is that they cannot figure out how to operate the DVD burning software.

In a world full of different video and audio file types and formats, encoding, compressing and burning can become a tedious task unless you know and understand the basics.

So the first thing you should know about burning your own DVD’s is that you need a proper DVD burner. This is a no brainer for most people, since their DVD burners usually come with DVD authoring and burning software, but I thought I should still touch on the subject.

A proper DVD burner, that can make movies that play in just about every DVD player in every home, is one that supports both single and multi layer discs. A multi layer DVD is a DVD with two burning layers, so it can hold twice the information. This is very important, since a one layer disc will most likely not hold enough for one of your movies.

Really that is the only thing you need to make sure you have with your DVD burner, all the other options are pretty standard and should be just fine for making your own DVD’s.

DVD Burning Software

Now we move onto the most important aspect of burning DVD’s, the burning software. DVD burning software is the software that decodes and encodes your videos so that they are in the correct format for a DVD player to play them.

Some software is better than others, and some a little faster, but overall it really depends on the quality of your computer. If you have a slow processor and a small amount of Random Access Memory (RAM), then it will take longer to decode and/or encode your videos so they can be burned onto the DVD disc.

Anyways, back to the task at hand, burning your own DVD. You first need to open your DVD burning software on your computer. I recommend Nero’s DVD Burning Software, which can be found on their website at http://www.nero.com/

Once your software is open though, it should ask you what type of CD or DVD you want to burn. In this case you want a DVD Video. Now you will be taken to a section that should let you add the video you want on the disc, along with a selection menu somewhere, that allows you to choose what type of disc it is. Like whether it is a single layer, dual layer or even a VR disc, which is erasable and rewritable.

Once you have chosen the correct disc type and have the videos added, you would move onto making the menu. In case you don’t know, a DVD menu is usually standard with all DVD movies you purchase, and can allow you to get pretty creative and do some interactive stuff. I usually just skip making the menu because I don’t need it anyways, but if you want to make one go right ahead and have fun!

Once your menu is cerated, or not, you move onto burning your DVD. Now when you try to go forward, if it says there is a problem with your video format/codec or something along those lines, then that means your video is not the correct format that is allowed by your DVD burning software.

That is why I tell everyone to get Nero’s burning software though, because they have every format that you can dream of supported, along with automatic compression, video editing tools, advanced DVD menu creation and much more! It truly is the best and easiest DVD burning software anyone could use.

Moving on though, the next part of the burning process is usually just deciding the burn speed, and whether the video should be in NTSC or PAL format. NTSC is for North America, and PAL is European.

After hose options are chosen, you can start burning your DVD, and you only have wait for it to get done. Once it is completed, close the burning application down and try your new disk in the nearest DVD player. It should play correctly and start up just like a regular DVD! You have now successfully learned how to burn your own DVD.

Please remember I was being very general with my instructions because what exactly needs to be done varies from software to software. Just make sure you take a look at your DVD burning softwares instruction manual if you can, to see the specific steps that need to be followed.

One of the many advancements that came from the internet, but yet is not widely known or used by the average computer user, is remote computer connection software. Basically, this type of software allows you to connect to another computer that is anywhere in the world, so long as it to is connected to the internet. But you just don’t connect though, you take over that computer with the one that is right in front of you, and use it like it is the other computer!

This means you can connect to your office computer from your home, when your on vacation, or where ever, and use it like it is right there in front of you. For many, this type of freedom is priceless, and incidentally for many, they never use it.

In fact the Windows operating system has came pre-bundled with remote PC connection software since Windows 98 I believe. This means basically everybody has had the capability to do it for free, so long as they had the internet, for years.

Now of course their are pay for solutions that exist, that some say are much better and easier to use than remote PC on Windows, which is one of the reasons why it might have never taken off.

Anyways, the main paid for remote PC connection contender is GoToMyPC. Made by Citrix Online, GoToMyPC is very easy to use, free to try for 30 days, and even comes with a bunch of extra features that you wouldn’t even have thought of.

There is also another free open source software for a remote computer connection, which is called ShowMyPC (I wonder what that sounds like?), and is actually highly recommended also.

So really it all depends on what kind of reliability and service you want, which itself depends really on how much you plan to use it!

How to Use Your Remote PC Software

If you choose to buy your remote connection software, they all come with live support and manuals that will tell you how to connect to another one of your computers. The free solutions, like Microsoft’s and open source ones, are a bit more complicated. They all usually have directions telling you how to do it, but since they are free they are not going to put together a really nice tutorial that will tell you everything.

The best way to figure out how to use your software would be to search Google for answers, and thoroughly read any instructions that come with it.