Encoding is the process of changing the format of your movie (if you downloaded from p2p usually DIVX/XVID or mpg) to the DVD format. Depending on the processing power/RAM/length of the movie and whether you are trying to join multiple files in one stream, it can take anywhere from 1 hr to 24 hr. This will be most of the time playable in normal dvd players. However if you just want to back them up, you should create a data disc instead and simply add files to it using explorer. Also there are players which can directly play divX/XVID encoded files. Most of them have troubles with soft subs though. Cheers