Here you will find the most commonly asked questions on the DVD side.

DVD stands for: Digital Versatile Disc.

PAL stands for: Phase Alternation Line.

NTSC stands for: National Television System Committee.

DIVX stands for: Digital Video Express.

MPEG stands for: Moving Picture Experts Group.  The term refers to digital video compression and can be encoded by special hardware and / or software.  The high compression is achieved by storing only the changes from one from to another.  There are two major MPEG standards, MPEG 1 and MPEG 2.  The video resolution of MPEG 1 is 352 x 240 at 30 frames / second.  The quality of MPEG 1 can be compared to the quality of VHS.  The video resolution of MPEG 2 is 720 x 480 and 1280 x 720 at 60 frames / second with CD quality audio.  The newest standard at the moment is MPEG 4.  This is used when backing up DVDs to DIVX.

Frames / second is a measure of how much data is used to store and display motion video.

Backing up a DVD is a long and complicated process and it involves a use of a few bits of different software like a DVD ripper, encoder, multiplexer etc.  Backing up a DVD to VideoCD (MPEG 1) can take around 17 hours but all the timing depends up on the length of film etc.  A quicker way is to back up your DVD to DIVX (MPEG 4) which usually takes around 8 - 13 hours again depending up on the length of film etc.

You can use any CD-R software with VideoCD features.  Both Adaptec Easy CD Creator and Nero Burning Rom have this but please note that only the latest versions will have VideoCD features.  We recommend you use Adaptec, it's easy to use and the little wizard will do everything for you.

In reality as long as your DVD player supports VideoCD you should be able to play them, but there have been a lot of reports that sometimes they do not work, mostly down to the make of CD-R that you use.  We recommend you use a high quality CD-R and give it a try.  If it doesn't work try a different make of CD-R.  We had this trouble with our Samsung 709 DVD player and we only got it to play our VideoCD's by using Maxell CD-R 74min / 650MB (Silver, Not Gold).

There is a lot of talk about this matter, but again, same as with all the MP3 problems.... it never stops.  If you own an original DVD and you wish to back it up for your own personal use, you are not really breaking any law.  Just face it, DVDs are expensive, and if you get a scratch on the disc or if it breaks you will have to go and buy another one.

ZIP files are compressed files.  When the file(s) is / are compressed it will be reduced in size therefore download time is also reduced as nobody likes to wait ages to download things.

We have always found that Winzip is the easiest and quickest.  There are many other compression utilities that all do the same thing.  For the latest version of Winzip visit the official website: http://www.winzip.com

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