Q: My wife bought Pinnacle Studio to burn home movies to disc. I am attempting this on a Dell Dimension computer outfitted with a CD burner. So far I have been unable to burn DVDs and obtain poor quality burning to CD-Rs.

Do I need to buy a DVD burner, and if so what would be the best quality burner for this application? Is the Pinnacle Studio a good system for converting home movies to disc? If not, what system would you recommend?
DAVE RASCATI, Pittsburgh

A: You do need a DVD burner to make DVDs. What you are creating on CD-Rs is Video CDs, not DVDs.

Video CD is a format that preceded DVD and achieved some popularity overseas, but not in the United States. It provides the convenience of a small disc-based storage medium with image quality approximately the same as VHS, which is far below that of a DVD.

It all comes down to storage space. A blank CD-R has about 700MB of free space. A blank DVD-R is 4.7GB, of which about 4.3GB is free space. Fitting an hour's worth of video on the CD requires a different digital storage format, MPEG-1, which limits video quality. DVDs use MPEG-2, a much better format used for HDTV and digital satellite broadcasts.

The easiest way to add DVD burning capability to your computer is with an external DVD burner. An external DVD burner connects to your computer via a USB 2.0 or FireWire connection, so it can be used with almost any computer. I have found them to be among the most useful peripherals you can own. Besides their basic usefulness, they can be kept and used as you upgrade computers.

I have had good experience with Lite-On external burners, which are available in many retail locations. If you are willing to purchase via mail order, my overall favorites are the Mercury Pro units from Other World Computing, located at www.macsales.com. The $129.95 Mercury Pro DVR-112 can be used with both Apple and Windows computers and offers incredible speed and reliability, and can record to the new double-layer DVDs, which offer 8.5 GB of capacity. Double-layer DVDs are great for storing double-length movies or a tremendous amount of data such as documents or digital pictures. Both FireWire and USB 2.0 connections are provided and it includes a thoughtful bundle of software, cables, and blank DVDs and CDs to get you started. Other Mercury Pro units are available, starting at $99.95

Pinnacle Studio is an excellent product, but my favorite Windows video editing software is still Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0. I recently compared several Windows-based video editors, and Premiere Elements 3.0 was the clear winner for its easy-to-use interface, features and the outstanding video quality of the DVDs produced. MPEG encoding, converting the digital video into the MPEG-2 format used by DVDs, is one of the hardest tasks these programs undertake. If a program does a poor job, the resulting DVDs look noticeably inferior to the original tape footage. The DVDs produced by Premiere Elements 3.0 were extremely clean, sharp, colorful and very impressive to watch.

Premiere Elements 3.0 lists for $99.99, and I have seen it sold for $79.99 at amazon.com. It's also available at Amazon in a bundle with Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 for $119.99, which has to rate as one of the best bargains out there for anyone who enjoys digital photography and digital video. Many retailers offer discounts as well, so shop around.