Creating DISC IMAGE File or VIDEO_TS File for backup

[alaskamovieguy]

Can someone tell me if the file exported from PE7 as Burn to Folder ( Video_TS), is the same as, or as good as, a Disc image file ( IXB )
created by MovieFactory 7 Plus. I have been creating the Disc Image File ( IXB ) directly from a finished and tested DVD as it is suppose to be a perfect clone of whats on the original disc for making later copies. That works just fine but I'm wondering if I'm just creating extra work for myself when perhaps I could just skip that step and save the Video_TS file I exported from PE7 ?
Bob Mitchell

[Bob]

The Video_TS folder you get from PE7 burn to folder is all you need to make as many DVDs as you wish. You don't need to make a disc image.

If you look at a burned DVD, you'll see it contains a Video_TS folder. This is exactly the same as the Video_TS folder on your hard drive. The only difference is that your hard drive and the DVD are using different file systems to store the files. Your Windows PC is probably using NTFS while your DVD is probably using ISO9660+UDF. When you make a disc image of the DVD, you are making a bit by bit copy of tracks on the DVD. That is, you are storing a copy of the file system and the contents. It's like cloning your hard drive. And, just like you don't need to clone your hard drive to copy a file to another drive, you don't need a disc image to make another DVD. You can easily burn the Video_TS folder to a DVD to make as many copies as you wish. All you need is a program to read the Video_TS folder and burn it to the DVD disc using the proper disc file system. There are many programs, both commercial and free, that can do this. The free utility ImgBurn is excellent for this.

[alaskamovieguy]

Thanks Bob. I suspected I was being redundant there, at least with my standard def projects. What if I'm doing a HiDef project where I'm exporting out of PE7 a H264 1920x1080 file for the purpose of burning avchd on a DVD disc. In that case, wouldn't it be better to do a disc image copy of the finished disc since the exported H264 file isn't really a 'proofed' version? Bob
Edit 1/1/10 On having a second look, using PE7 it doesn't appear I can do a 'burn to folder' when exporting H264 for the purpose of burning avchd to dvd?