DVDs..Data or Video

I left off talking about storing or archiving your video. With SD(Standard-Definition) you have the choice of Data Discs or Video Discs. First I'll discuss Data Discs.
A Data Disc is nothing more than your files, of any kind being copied to a different storage medium. So if you done nothing more than burn your video files to a DVD you could have a wide variety of video files, along with about any other file type, on the same disc. These are commonly referred to as back-up discs. If you open a data DVD up using windows explorer, it would look something like this;

Data DVD with Video Files

 If you look at the right side, you see some files with the file extension AVI. These are video files, that were captured to a computer for editing. In the left pane, there's other folders that contain numerous other file types. The DVD was used just as back-up media. You can not play this in your stand-alone DVD player, to view the videos on your TV. You could however, put this disc in the DVD drive on your computer, and play the video files using a software DVD player. Let's now look at a Video DVD.

A Video DVD must have a specific file and folder structure. The root-layer of the disc, must have at least a folder called VIDEO_TS, and might have AUDIO_TS folder, however the latter is no longer required, and most of the time now is empty. Below is a screenshot of a video DVD.

Most all files on a Video DVD are contained in the VIDEO_TS folder.

There are International DVD Specifications, that set out just how a video DVD must be structured. The group which is responsible for setting the standards is known as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ISO 9690is published by the ISO lays out the standards for optical disc media, such as video DVD.


Here's a look at the inside of the of a VIDEO_TS folder;

Files inside a VIDEO_TS folder

In the screenshot you see 3 types of files, VOB, IFO, BUP. The folder must contain all of these files so that it can play on your stand-alone DVD player. The VOB files are video files, with some additional data. It is possible to copy VOB files from a video DVD to your computer, rename the file extension to mpg and play them with a software video player, such as Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, or VLC. Notice I emphasized mpg, as in MPEG-2. No other video file extension will work, because the video files must be MPEG-2 format. 


Video DVD Files
Video DVD must contain VOB, IFO and BUP files in order to be played. I touched on the VOB file above, mentioning that it was a video file, and the format type must be MPEG-2. 
VOB stands for Video Object, and can contain, video, audio, subtitle, menu, and navigation contents, mixed together in stream form. On a DVD all the content for one title set (a video clip) is contiguous, but broken up into 1-GB VOB files for the convenience of various computer operating systems. Each VOB file must be 1GB or less.
IFO files are info files and contain all the information that a DVD player needs to know about the disc so a user can navigate and play the disc properly. This would include the menus, the chapters, and where subtitles are supposed to start.,

BUP files are back-ups of the IFO files, should corruption occur. 



So that should get us started on putting those precious memories on a DVD so that you can share them with friends and family.