Windows Vista DVD burning software for windows vista

hey guys

i dont know if this is in the right section of the forum, or if the question has been posted before but im having a lot of trouble trying to burn DVDs on my Windows Vista Laptop. Before i bought the laptop back in December last year i was running an XP PC and the way i would burn a DVD would be to use a program someone recommended to me called 'DVD Shrink' which would somehow encode the original DVD to my hard drive where i would then burn the copy using Nero. the whole process took around 40 minutes (30 to 'decode' and 10 to burn)

Now with Vista, i dont have Nero (i dont think we kept the disc that came with the original PC either) but i have installed DVD shrink. but the 'shrink' files wont allow me to select them if i try to use 'Windows dvd maker' to burn. Is there a recommended product for Vista users to allow this? or am i going about it all the wrong way with the 'shrink' program?

Also - using windows DVD maker i have burnt a few AVI files (downloads) to disc, but it takes (literally) HOURS for a single disc to burn. This does not seem right.

If anyone can help it would be much appreciated! I am not very technologically minded though, so if any responces could be in simpleton terms, it would be better!!!

Thanks Guys!

 

okay thanks... but in the meantime... does anyone know why windows DVD maker burns so slow? (or, sorry, 'encodes' so slow?)

 

Free burner?
http://www.majorgeeks.com/CDBurnerXP_d4242.html
Worth experimenting with.

DVD Maker is for making video disks with it's own procedures, it is not a dedicated burning program, it is an ancillary program. It can do "the basics ". That would be my expectation. Note that it is called DVD Maker, I expect it's main purpose is to make video disks from camcorder recordings.

Matt