Did you know that in addition to books and calendars, Lulu also publishes CDs & DVDs? If you’re interested in creating an audio book, video tutorials, your latest music album, or home videos, Lulu can help.

As the DVD specialist at Lulu, I’ve noticed that if an author has a DVD problem, it is usually due to a disc formatting error. We offer two distinct DVD formatting options – one for video and one for data. It helps to know how the file type you upload determines whether you create a data DVD or a video DVD.

A. DVD-Data: This type of DVD will work only on a computer, not in a household DVD player like the one connected to your TV. This DVD is similar to a store-bought software disc and can contain audio, pictures, software, and almost any other file type you desire. The most common DVD error happens when an author tries to make a DVD for video, but uploads a file that isn’t formatted casual playback. Improper formatting of a DVD-Video disc will create a DVD-Data disc by default.

B. DVD-Video: This kind of DVD is great for capturing and sharing your favorite moments through video. When you put a DVD in a household player, the player looks for one master file to pull information from and then displays it to you on your TV. Authors can use a number of file formats as the source for their videos ( .mpeg/.avi/.wma/.wmv), but then comes the tricky part. When you are making your video DVD, all of your video files have to be in a video_TS file and all of your audio must be in an audio_TS file. These two files then go in the master file, which can either be a ZIP Archive file or an ISO-9660 file. Sounds hard right? Well, fortunately, there are many third-party software programs, including Nero (PC) and Toast (Mac), that are made just for this purpose. These programs will convert your files into an ISO-9660 disc image or VIDEO_TS directory. I recommend an ISO0-9660 disc image.

1. VIDEO_TS directory – If you only have a VIDEO_TS directory, you must zip it into a .zip file or convert it into an .iso file to upload it to Lulu. If the VIDEO_TS directory is not at the root level of the ZIP or ISO file, the disc created will be a DVD-Data disc instead of the DVD-Video disc you intended. You can test this by unzipping your .zip file or mounting your .iso disc image and checking to make sure you only have a VIDEO_TS directory at the root. The VIDEO_TS directory contains all of the video files and menu files needed for a component DVD player to recognize. If the DVD player cannot find the VIDEO_TS directory at the root of the disc, it will not be able to read the content.
2. ISO 9660 disc image – This is ideal if your software can create it. This disc image is what gets burned onto your DVD disc. The great thing about uploading an ISO file is that it gives you complete control over the formatting of your DVD disc. The biggest advantage to this option is the ability to add certain extensions to the formatted ISO file. Specifically, ISO disc images can have the Joliet & RockRIdge extensions added to the file format.
3. RockRIdge/Joliet ISO Extensions – The Joliet extension allows a Microsoft Operating System to recognize longer file names and special characters within the ISO file. The RockRIdge extension allows a Linux/Apple Operating System to recognize longer file names and special characters within the ISO. The Lulu converter only creates an ISO disc images with the RockRidge extension and will not include the Joliet extension. File names that have been truncated when Windows reads the disc can cause your DVD to fail.
4. ZIP Archive – ZIP files are used to turn your VIDEO_TS directory and files within the directory into a single .zip archive that is suitable to upload. This is necessary because Lulu cannot accept directory folders and enclosed video files in a single upload. The ZIP file allows you to compress your directory folder and enclosed video files into a single uploadable archive. If you upload a .zip file that contains a VIDEO_TS directory, our server will unzip the file and create an ISO disc image from your VIDEO_TS directory, which is why it is so important that you only upload a single .zip file that only contains a VIDEO_TS directory. If you upload more than one file your project will automatically default to a DVD-Data disc that simply contains your uploaded files.

I hope this has helped give a little more insight into how our free DVD service works. I know the language of file types and such can get confusing, so we’re evaluating services that we could offer to make the process even simpler. If you have suggestions on DVD and CD creation services that you’d like to see, please let us know here.

And if you have any questions for me about the DVD creation process, please add them, too. I’m happy to help!