In the case of DVDA, it simply means putting the files that comprise your DVD on your hard drive instead of writing them directly to DVD. DVDA calls it “preparing your DVD Folders”. If you look at any DVD from a Windows perspective, say using Windows Explorer or My Computer, you’ll see that there are two folders on the DVD. [VIDEO_TS] and [AUDIO_TS]. The VIDEO_TS folder holds the actual DVD data, the [AUDIO_TS] folder is empty – but must be present anyway.
There are advantages to writing your DVD to hard disk before you burn the DVD media. First, it’s much faster, since hard drives write faster. You can ‘test drive’ the DVD on the hard drive to make sure everything is cool, to avoid wasting DVD platters. You can use dedicated burner software (e.g. Roxio CD/DVD Creator) to copy the two folders directly to a DVD (much faster than using DVDA to do it). This is especially significant When you have to make multiple copies of the same DVD. You can store several DVD folders on your hard drive(s) and then select and burn them as needed.
I should point out that the term ‘disk image’ also refers to a ‘carbon copy’ of a CD created on your hard disk. It is usually in the form of a single large file (say, 650 Mb), with an extension of .iso. For example myaudio.iso. This is a true ‘carbon copy’ of a CD, that dedicated burning software can both create on your hard drive (if you’re copying or writing a data CD), and transfer to a CD platter, using the appropriate command in the burner software.
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