text: how do i copy film clips to dvd? i am a novice at doing this. are there special things that i will need or will r-rw cd work as well.  what makes the cd and dvd different. dvd (sometimes known as "digital versatile disc" or "digital video disc") is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. dvds resemble compact discs as their physical dimensions are the same (12 cm (4.72 inches) or occasionally 8 cm (3.15 inches) in diameter) but they are encoded in a different format and at a much higher density.  a compact disc (or cd) is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. it is the standard playback format for commercial audio recordings today.  a standard compact disc, often known as an "audio cd" to differentiate it from later variants, stores audio data in a format compliant with the red book standard. an audio cd consists of several stereo tracks stored using 16-bit pcm coding at a sampling rate of 44.1 khz. standard compact discs have a diameter of 120 mm, though 80 mm versions exist in circular and "business-card" forms. the 120 mm discs can hold 74 minutes of audio, and versions holding 80, 90 or even 99 minutes have been introduced. the 80 mm discs are used as "cd-singles" or novelty "business-card cds". they hold about 20 minutes of audio. compact disc technology was later adapted for use as a data storage device, known as a cd-rom.  to simplify your answer..   cd hold a storage space of 700mb  and has standard quality and  dvd hold up to 4700mb  maximum quality on both sound and video  on standards