which DVD format do I need to buy to burn movies watchable on a DVD player?

[g-boac]

Very confused at all the "+R, -R, +RW, -RW" offerings out there. Seems every variant of both "plus" and "minus" discs are available anywhere I look.

I want to buy the right disc that will let me burn movies in iDVD or Toast that I could then generically expect to play on most any DVD player. I'd like to burn some home movies for family and friends, and don't expect that most recipients would be able tell me which disc formats are compatible with their players -- much less what players they have.

Obviously I've done a Google search, but was simply overwhelmed with the results returned to the point of the search being useless.

thanks!!
Mark

 

[SilentPanda]

The -R discs are the most compatible last time I checked but unless your friends have ancient DVD players my guess is you won't have issue with any. +R and -R were just different competitors (or something) and the +RW and -RW are the same but rewriteable.

Mostly you just need to make sure when you burn the disc that you are authoring a Video DVD and not a Data disc.

Another thing you might see is "DL". This means dual layer and can hold roughly 9GB of data instead of the 4.5GB that normal DVD's hold. You have to have a dual layer burner for that which I think most modern Mac super drives are. These discs are more expensive and you probably don't need them unless you have a terribly long movie and want to keep the quality good.

 

[mac88]

iDVD takes so long authoring a dvd when I transfer over my home movies. The only thing I miss of Windows is the Nero program. DVD authoring would be relatively fast on it. Anyways, try and stay away from the RW discs. I have had nothing but trouble with them and I stick to +R discs. It's just my preference in using these. Good luck.

 

[tug]

toast titanium, is better than nero, and its roxios mac burning software