I was recently asked to recommend DVD software for a range of purposes and I realised, from the questions, that there is a bit of confusion regarding which DVD software does what. So I will try to help clear up this often confusing subject.

The real problem in identifying what DVD software would best suit your needs actually comes from the lack of a standard definition of each type. In addition to that the technology of dealing with DVDs has stabilised through development so that just burning a DVD would hardly be described as rocket science anymore!

The result being many of the DVD software makers incorporating other functions to try to lure customers through added features and benefits. This "blurring" of the things you can do with a DVD has resulted in a lack of clarity as to which software you should use to suit your specific requirements.

DVD Copying Software.
This DVD software has as its main purpose, the action of copying one DVD onto another DVD. It will generally do this by first making a copy on to the hard drive of your computer then using that copy to burn to a new blank DVD. Generally this will be an automated process.

A variation of this is DVD Ripping where the software deconstructs the original DVDs contents into its various files and folders while it is being copied to the computer hard drive. This allows some degree of manipulation prior to burning a new DVD. Pure DVD Copying software is very often combined with the ability to make basic edits and changes to parts of the DVD and remove unwanted features like subtitles or extra content.

DVD Conversion Software.
The primary function here is to take the contents of an existing DVD and convert them into another format. Such as a home video DVD converted to a more compressed video file format for uploading on to MetaCafe or similar or for watching on a computer.

A good example of a combination of DVD Copying Software and DVD Conversion Software would be a product called DVD Fab. This is software that allows DVD copying in many forms with a high degree of control over the final output combined with the ability to convert the contents of the DVD to other formats.

DVD Burning Software.
The main purpose of DVD burning software is to take data from a computer and transfer it on to a DVD disc. This happens in two ways depending on what is being burned.

For data in the form of documents and folders this is the simple action of copying those items and putting them on a DVD in a way that can be found again.

As for video DVDs it is a little more complicated procedure. There are certain protocols that determine how a video DVD must be written on to a disc. DVD burning software has the ability to understand and create those protocols as it is burning. The DVD Burning ROM of NERO 9 would be an example of this. This leads to another type of DVD software.

DVD Authoring Software.
DVD authoring is the action of creating the DVD structure (including menus, buttons, subtitles and reference to special features) that you would find on a video DVD.

The video portion of a DVD is a special video file called MPEG2. If you just burned the MPEG2 on to a disc a DVD player would not be able to recognise or play that file. The file has to be created within a specific type of structure for the DVD player to be able to read and play it.

Additionally, the disc must have menus made so that the player and you can navigate around the disc and play the parts you want. It is the job of DVD authoring software to do all of that. Corel DVD Movie Factory would be an example of DVD authoring software and all such software must also have the ability to burn the DVD as well as create the structure.

DVD Editing Software.
Many people search in the internet for this and probably get a little frustrated as to why they can not get a definitive result. The reason is that the term is not very precise in itself. It is unclear whether the person wishes to edit the structure of the DVD (menus, movie titles etc.) or whether they are seeking to edit the actual video.

In reality if you want to re-edit or manipulate the menus or features that are on a DVD and then burn to a new DVD that action would be covered by either a DVD copying or conversion software as mentioned above.

If you are wanting to edit the actual video contained on an existing DVD then DVD software is not really designed to do that. This is leading more into the area of video editing software than DVD. Having said that there still is a range of DVD software suites that do include this function as an added feature. This function is available in Roxio Creator 2009 and Nero 9.

DVD Merging or Combining Software.
This function has probably the poorest definition of them all. Most DVD copying software or conversion software offers the ability to take a couple of DVDs or more and have you re-combine the contents on to a newly created DVD. So you could say they merge or combine DVDs.

However there is another very specific action which is the merging of two, three or even four DVDs into one DVD but at the same time retaining the menus of the original DVDs. The most common need for this is the case of DVD camcorders that record to 8cm or "mini" DVDs.

People who re-use their 8cm RW DVDs or who wish to archive their recordings may want to transfer the contents of a few of those DVDs on to one full sized DVD and save some space. Just copying the files of the DVDs over to one full DVD would result in your losing the menus of the original DVDs. That would mean you would have hundreds of individual MPEG2 files on a disc and no way of knowing which one is which. Simply a sea of MPEG2 icons in a folder!

There is only one software I know of that can handle that problem and is the only one I know of that could be described as DVD Merging software. It is called DVDRemake and has the ability to combine or merge up to four DVD discs into one DVD disc and retain the original menus. A great feature for DVD camcorder owners.

Finally! DVD Disc Repair Software / DVD Data Error Correction.
The makers of the whole range of DVD products from software to hardware would like you to think that DVD is digital so it is perfect but that is simply not true. DVDs can be burned with errors, become scratched, or have "built in" errors because of bugs in the software being used or even the computer being used.

For these times we have this designation of DVD software. Generally speaking we are now getting down to some very specialised software that can correct existing errors in DVDs.

Of course when you get these errors you will get nonsensical and meaningless messages such as "no disc" (even though you can see one!), "disc error" (well duh!), "invalid DVD navigation structure" (my personal favorite!) and a whole number of others. Without going into the myriad of available specialist software for this it is interesting to note that Nero 9 now has a module within it to handle a great number of these problems called RescueAgent.

So, that got a whole lot more complicated than I intended but I hope at least it will provide you with a general guide to the various functions of DVD software.

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