New to burning! Help please!

I hope I am in the right forum. Seems you were talking about some of the things I have ran accross. Okay I have had the computer for a couple of years and it came with the burner, but I could never get Adaptec to work, So I got Nero and I can burn now. I have managed to burn music and so now we are moving on to movies. I had gotten a movie and VCD and it took me forever to figure out how to burn it. Turns out though that the picture keeps stopping and starting. Perhaps it was just a bad quality file? Or did I do something wrong?
Also my husband has a burner and he got a movie in .avi. So I suggested we try to burn it so we can watch it on our DVD player. It was going through the encoding turned out we didn't have enough disk space. Since there were two files I thought we should do one to a disk. But what is encoding? Is it coverting to another format to be playable on DVD?
But here is the biggest problem. We both noticed our gigs on out hard drives were disappearing while doing all of this. When we stopped burning it never came back. We rebooted and tried to look everywhere to see what was taking our hard drive space and can't find it. Does anyone know the answer to this?

PLEASE HELP!!!!

 

Here are some helpful guides on how to backup dvd's and how to convert certain file formats. It is safe to have at least 10 gigs of free hd space to do dvd backups as long movies( The Green Mile) will take at least 7 gigs just to rip the dvd movie only!
http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/

Shoey

 

Thank you for the link. A great learning source. But do you have any idea what has happened to my hard drive space? I even deleted the movie both compressed and uncompressed files on my computer and didn't get back half the space I lost? Is there like some kind of setting in Nero that may store files or what it is burning? I lost 5 gigs on my system somewhere and my husband lost about 7 gigs. And we don't know what is using it.

 

Did you do any dvd backups? Example: SmartRipper+DVD2SVCD+Cinema CRaft Encoder. Once the dvd (vob files\ifo) are ripped to your hd, then comes th encoding, then burn. If this doesn't apply to you then the [bold] only [/bold] way you lose hd space is by adding files to it. Were the files you were trying to burn internet downloads? If so then you need to search your computer and locate them. All Nero does(in your case) is encode and burn the file to a cd-r(w), that's it m8. Movie files of all formats can use alot of your hd space, but when you rip a dvd, it takes alot more! If you can't remember all the movies you downloaded, then search the file extension (DivX, AVI, xvid), so forth, so on. Be sure you've emptied your Recylcle Bin, lol.

Shoey

 

Thank you again. no they weren't ripped. They were internet downloads and I have dleted them off my system emptied the Recycle Bin and ran a defrag (just cause of all the stuff I deleted) and I still haven't regained my space.

 

What is the capacity of your hd?
How much data is on your hd at present?
Do you have any partitions?

Shoey

 

I have a 20 gig hd and about 15 gigs were used up. I do not rip DVD's don't know how to. I just this week started to try d/ling movies and burning them. Last night was my first attempt at buring and I went from 5 gigs, to nothing! Even after I deleted the movie both decompressed files and rar files it didn't give me much back. I have been through everything I can think of trying to find where this could be happening. I am thinking it has something to do with Nero as my husband was trying his first burn too last night and lost some gigs on his system. We were burning different files types. I was burning a VCD and he was burning AVI...well it was encoding his. But both our computers lost about 4 or more gigs. And it hasn't returned.

Thank you!

 

Were any files downloaded in WinRar format or any other zipped up? (WinZip). If so, double click My Computer>Drive C:>unzipped>open and delete any files there. Did you uninstall WinRar? If not, do so (for now) and see if there were any files in that unzipped folder (if applicable).

Shoey

 

Yes, files were downloaded in WinRAR format. I have deleted all those files when I deleted the folders I downloaded the movie to. Just just uninstalled WinRar and there was no change. I do not have an unzipped folder. I really appreciate your help. This is just very puzzling. I never noticed losing gigs when burn music and now that we tried movies they disappeared.

Thank you!

 

I've had this happen to me on at least 1 occassion since I've been running computers (7 years) and I'm running out of suggestions. Try Windoze updates and see if you have any luck there and if not, consider doing a reformat, fresh Windoze install m8. Sorry for the bad lack (if it were'nt for bad luck I'd have no luck at all, doom, despair and agony on me), lol.

Shoey

 

I [bold] DON'T recommend you try this [/bold] as you'll see many .dll files and if you delete these then chances are your system won't run right. To access the this folder, go to drive C:>documents and setting>look up and click tools>folder options>then go to the view tab folder and enable "show hidden files". Click your user name (folder) and you can see the temp folder.

Shoey

 

Thank you both. My husband has XP and so I sent him your info. I am using ME and the first thing I did was delete my temp files. I still haven't recovered my missing gigs. I think I am going to try to burn again and watch closely and see if they disappear again.

Thank you!

 

I know this is an old thread, but i use to use windows me and i lost 8gig to the system restore folder, hidden in root of drive c, worth a look.
hope it helps

 

alternitavely, you could run a search on your hard drive for all video files. then go through the list and find the really large ones that you are talking about.

 

The restore is definately there on ME, it took me an age to realise where it had all gone, i went through my hard drive deleting things left,right and centre, then my friend told me to check it, 8GIG !!!! goddamit!