What to do about the alphabet soup of DVD media formats?
The oldest format is DVD-RAM, but these disks have never grown popular with consumers, and you won’t find many players that can read them. They are useful for backing up data. The first general format was DVD-R. It is far and away the most compatible, especially with older DVD players. All the rest are statistically about the same in terms of compatibility: DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW. The + varieties can record faster in a capable burner. Dual-layer DVD+Rs hold much more than the standard 4.7 GB DVD, but the burners for them are just coming out, and the compatibility is a question mark. The -R and +R DVDs are better for archiving. You can’t accidentally overwrite them as you can with -RW and +RW rewritable DVDs. No one package fills my needs. I use Nero for most everyday use for data and music CDs and DVDs. I use Adobe Premier or Elements for DVD authoring and camcorder capture. I like Magix Video deLux (now called Movie Edit Pro) for slide shows. For duplication, I use the freeware DVD
