No question is too big--or too small. This week I've compiled a list of five of the most commonly asked questions from readers. If you don't see an answer to your own burning query, drop me a line and let me know what's on your mind. I'll be cherry-picking letters to answer in an upcoming column, so in your e-mail please include your place of residence and permission to run your question online.

If I Buy a DVD Burner, Do I Still Need My CD Drive?

No, you don't--but there are reasons you might want to keep two drives.

It's not a question of whether your DVD burner can also burn CDs--it's a question of the speed in which it does it. For a long time, having two drives made sense, since DVD burners started out with CD write speeds that were significantly slower than what you'd find in a dedicated CD-RW drive. However, as I noted in "Good-Bye CD-RW, Hello DVD," you really don't need two drives anymore. Today's DVD burners can burn CDs at 12X and 16X speeds, which are quick enough for most purposes.

Still, I can come up with three reasons you'd want to have multiple optical drives. The first, and most obvious reason, is for easy disc copying: Pop a CD into one drive, a blank disc into the other, and poof! You're off and running, copying disc-to-disc. The second is for testing: If your second optical drive is a combination DVD-ROM and CD burner, then you have a quick means of vetting those DVD movies you've made on a drive other than the one you burned the disc on. Third, lots of games are coming through with multiple CDs. If you have two optical drives, you can minimize your disc swapping with multi-CD games--or applications, for that matter.

What Are the Best Formats for Video, Music, and Data Discs?

As a rule of thumb, write-once media--be it DVD or CD--is your best choice for compatibility with consumer electronics devices, be it your high-end audio CD deck or your $50 Costco-special DVD player. Write-once discs have a higher reflectivity, which tends to make it easier for the devices' laser to read the data.

Use DVD-R or DVD+R for video projects. It shouldn't matter which you choose--although some players (Toshiba models, for example) don't officially support DVD+R, so it's a crapshoot as to whether the disc will play. My advice is to check online and see if you can find sites that note whether other folks have had success with DVD-R or +R on your player--and then go with that media. Long-term, either format should be fine for archiving; I believe both formats are entrenched enough that you'll find support for them long after your $50 player conks out.

For audio projects, pick CD-Rs. CD-Rs are the best way for you to create audio CDs, the format recognized by CD and DVD players. If you want to pack more music on a disc, convert your audio files to MP3 before burning them to a CD-R. But note that they're stored as data files, not as music per se. That means the player you're using needs to have a built-in MP3 decoder, as many DVD players and portable CD players do--but not car stereo and living-room CD players.

Burning music to a DVD is more complicated. Most DVD players cannot recognize MP3 files stored on a DVD, even though they can recognize MP3 files stored on a CD. And do-it-yourself DVD-Audio isn't available in mainstream burning tools. I've not heard any timeline for adding this feature, but I give advance props to the first software maker to allow you to burn two-channel audio to DVD. Just think of the greatest hits collections you could create on the fly!

For data, go with rewritable media. Rewritable media such as DVD-RW, +RW, -RAM, and CD-RW are best for backing up projects that are in progress. For example, you may expect to add data to a folder, or you're experimenting with different DVD menu design options before finalizing the disc; or you're performing a regular backup, and can reuse the disc time and again. Rewritable DVD is also good for temporary recordings; for example, say you're the sort who wants to record a Law & Order episode, watch it later the same night, and then record another episode the next day.

Can I Record Streaming Media, Then Edit on Disc?

Yes, various living-room recorders or PC software/burner combinations let you do this...but, the better question is, do you really want to?

I have trouble condoning this practice--be it that you're using software to capture a live streaming recording, or you're using software to write or edit content directly on disc in VR mode, a "video recording"-specific recording mode you can select when burning video to DVD+RW or DVD-RW. VR mode enables editing on disc, but makes the disc less compatible.

First and foremost is the risk factor. By recording to optical media, you run a greater risk of failure than if you're recording to your PC's hard disk. Any hiccup during recording--be it due to a rare yet plausible buffer overrun, or due to a problem with the disc, the recording software, or the PC itself--will leave you with an unplayable disc that may not be recoverable.

My take is, if the recording is important enough that you want to retain it in the first place, why take that risk at all? I'd suggest recording to your hard disk--which is less error-prone, and affords you virtually infinite space to capture your desired content (not to mention built-in redundancy to act as your backup copy). Then archive your content to disc, so you can view or listen to it wherever you choose.

If you're using VR mode to edit on a rewritable DVD disc, I recommend copying the disc's content to your hard drive before you start futzing with the recording. Copying to and from a DVD to hard disk doesn't take long with the latest burners (under 7 minutes with a 12X burner), and it's a worthy precaution in case you're hit with Windows' infamous blue screen of death.

What Format Should I Archive My Videos In?

As I mentioned earlier, DVD-R and DVD+R have the greatest compatibility around, so if you're archiving your video, I'd pick one of those disc types to start with.

That's the easy part. Harder is deciphering from among the various bit-rate settings and presets you might encounter in your software, and what video encoding format (VCD, MPEG-2, WMV, MPEG-4) to choose.

These originals are your babies--so treat them with as much TLC as you can. If you're archiving for posterity, maximize your image quality by recording in the highest bit rate you can--which typically translates into fitting just 1 hour of video on a DVD. It may cost an extra few bucks, and an extra few DVDs, to record at the highest quality mode, but it's the best course of action.

For maximum compatibility, stick with tried-and-true MPEG-2. This is the same format that your gargantuan Hollywood DVD collection is encoded in, and this format is guaranteed to be around for the foreseeable future, since both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc camps have agreed to make MPEG-2 support a staple of their respective next-generation optical formats. MPEG-4, WMV, and a host of other formats can provide quality varying from acceptable to great, but none offer the cross-compatibility of MPEG-2. And when you're archiving precious memories, compatibility is critical.

How Can I Copy My Videos?

Okay, admit it: You perked up at the question, wondering how you can copy your store-bought DVDs. But I'm not delving far into that murky water, fraught as it is with questions about the legality of copying movies on DVD. The court ruled in favor of Hollywood earlier this year when it shut down 321 Studios, maker of DVD X-Copy software. If you do a Web search on DVD rippers or DVD copy software, or dig around on sites dedicated to DVD burning (such as CD-Rinfo, Doom9.net, and others) you'll see shareware and freeware DVD "rippers" out there. What you choose to do with that software is up to you.

Now, for the alternative, so you can make a copy of a video for personal use: Use an external encoding box to copy just the video portion of your DVD. For example, ADS Tech's $199 Instant DVD 2.0 box provides the intermediary you need to take analog output from your DVD player, encode it to MPEG-2, and save it on your hard drive (the box connects to your PC via USB 2.0). From there, you can burn the video off to disc again. ADS doesn't market its box this way; and on its home page it clearly requests that its users respect copyright owners' rights. Still, the company acknowledges the decoding/encoding chip in Instant DVD doesn't recognize DVD copy protection, which means one could conceivably use the device to make a personal backup of video to DVD. Will you get a perfect digital copy? Absolutely not. And gone are the extras, the menus, and the cool navigation buttons. But this approach does provide a reasonable stopgap so you don't have to see your kids mangle yet another copy of their favorite cartoon flick.

Hardware encoding boxes such as the aforementioned model from ADS, and similar ones from Pinnacle and Plextor, provide the best intermediary between a PC and your video source. Stay away from software encoders if you can help it; they produce lower image quality and lack the real-time performance of hardware encoders. I don't know about you, but sitting at my PC waiting for a software encoder to plod through an hour of video is not my idea of a good time.

If you have home movies on videotape, and don't anticipate doing lots of creative cuts or editing, I strongly recommend you skip the PC entirely and go with a dual-deck VCR/DVD recorder. Such recorders are available from major DVD player manufacturers such as GoVideo, Pioneer, RCA, and Samsung. Or, pick a DVD recorder with a hard drive if you want to leave open the option to do some basic editing. If you have a digital video camera, or you're thinking of getting one, make sure the DVD recorder has a DV input to capture video from a digital video camera.

Have a question or comment? Drop a line to Melissa J. Perenson.