Newbie: Looking for reliable DVD-R Writer

[Sam]

Sorry for cross-posting, just looking many opinions to transfer home
video to DVD.

My Toshiba dvd plays only -R DVD's so I am looking at getting a burner
that records -R's, but the only caveat (I think) is that my system is
an older BH6 BX Motherboard P3 800 mhz (the board officially supports
upto 500 mhz), but if necessary I can hook-up the burner to my
sister's Celeron 1.8Ghz but the hard drive is slow (old 20 gig 5400
rpm). If I can get a -+R that probably would be better.

Any opinions on which burners effectively burn @ -R with my [hardware]
limitations? Would I have to burn at 1X?

Thanks

 

[Dave C.]

Sorry for cross-posting, just looking many opinions to transfer home
video to DVD.

My Toshiba dvd plays only -R DVD's so I am looking at getting a burner
that records -R's, but the only caveat (I think) is that my system is
an older BH6 BX Motherboard P3 800 mhz (the board officially supports
upto 500 mhz), but if necessary I can hook-up the burner to my
sister's Celeron 1.8Ghz but the hard drive is slow (old 20 gig 5400
rpm). If I can get a -+R that probably would be better.

Any opinions on which burners effectively burn @ -R with my [hardware]
limitations? Would I have to burn at 1X?

Thanks

Well, I just chose a random burner to review the specs. It happened to be a
Plextor 12X retail box burner that is on sale at Newegg at the moment.
(looks like a good deal, too)

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=27-131-327&DEPA=0

Reading the system requirements, I think you should be OK if you have more
than 128MB of RAM and a fast hard drive with about 20Gig or more of free
space. The official specs list 128MB RAM, but you need more than that for
the OS alone. The official specs list (6GB?) of hard drive space, but that
would leave no space for a large swap file, unless your swap file is fixed.

I think you'll be OK, as your system barely meets the requirements for a 12X
burner. Therefore, I'd be surprised if you couldn't burn at least 4X speed
on it. I'd recommend Ritek G04 DVD-R media for it. Most people report
burning this media at 6X or 8X with no problem at all (I can verify that, as
it burns at 6X on my NEC 8X burner), and you can find it CHEAP, if you look
around. Newegg has the (ritek) ridata branded 50-pack spindle for $25, but
I've seen 50-packs for less than $20. -Dave

 

[Richard Hopkins]

Sorry for cross-posting, just looking many opinions to transfer
home video to DVD.

My Toshiba dvd plays only -R DVD's so I am looking at getting a
burner that records -R's,

The burner is the easy bit, there are plenty of good ones around, and most
(all?) PC DVD writers will burn -R/RW as well as +R/RW so compatibility
shouldn't be an issue. FWIW the Pioneer DVR-A08XL is excellent, as is its
cheaper, non dual-layer record capable older brother the A07XL.

but the only caveat (I think) is that my system is an older BH6 BX
Motherboard P3 800 mhz

The problem you will have with that is capturing and encoding your video in
the first place, before you even get to the burning stage.

Any opinions on which burners effectively burn @ -R with my
[hardware] limitations?

The burner is effectively a non-issue, as all the ones you're considering
will have throughput linking and buffer underrun protection, so the drive
will throttle itself back if it can't get the information quick enough.

Would I have to burn at 1X?

The limitations of your hardware would almost certainly prevent you encoding
and burning on the fly at all, unless you have a hardware based capture
solution you haven't told us about. If not, and you're planning to stick
with your current PC, a hardware MPEG solution would seem to be the best
bet. However, if your own hard disk is of the same vintage as your
motherboard, it's a fair bet that you'll also be needing a new hard disk to
store the files prior to burning.
--


Richard Hopkins
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
(replace .nospam with .com in reply address)

The UK's leading technology reseller www.dabs.com
Get the most out of your digital photos www.dabsxpose.com

 

[Sam]

:
: The burner is the easy bit, there are plenty of good ones around,
and most
: (all?) PC DVD writers will burn -R/RW as well as +R/RW so
compatibility
: shouldn't be an issue. FWIW the Pioneer DVR-A08XL is excellent, as
is its
: cheaper, non dual-layer record capable older brother the A07XL.

Really? I have read reviews on Liteon DVD -R/RW, +R/RW where burning
the +R/RW was very good but using - resulted in considerable coasters.
One burner +R/RW, Khypermedia DVD Burner that I was looking at had a
firmware upgrade to allow -R/RW, but even with the upgrade most got
coasters.


: > Would I have to burn at 1X?
:
: The limitations of your hardware would almost certainly prevent you
encoding
: and burning on the fly at all, unless you have a hardware based
capture
: solution you haven't told us about. If not, and you're planning to
stick
: with your current PC, a hardware MPEG solution would seem to be the
best
: bet. However, if your own hard disk is of the same vintage as your
: motherboard, it's a fair bet that you'll also be needing a new hard
disk to
: store the files prior to burning.

I don't think hard drive is an issue it has been upgraded to a WD 7200
rpm 120 G drive. I am not familiar with hardware MPEG. Please tell me
more.

 

[Ed Coolidge]

Well, I have an old AMD 750MHz PC and just recently got an NEC ND-3500A 16x DVD
DL burner. So far I've used generic 4 4x DVD-R and Memorex and 2 4x DVD+RW with
out any problems and only once I got a buffer underrun.

As for hardware MPEG, he's talking about a video capture board with an MPEG
encoder chip. Otherwise, your processor has to do the encoding. It depends on
the type of compression your using and the resolution you plan to capture.

 

[Sam]

What speed(s) are you burning the DVD's? I really have no idea what
resolution and/or compression I will need as the movies are on digital
high8 and I wish to burn them to PAL and also to the regular NTSC for
safekeeping.

: Well, I have an old AMD 750MHz PC and just recently got an NEC
ND-3500A 16x DVD
: DL burner. So far I've used generic 4 4x DVD-R and Memorex and 2 4x
DVD+RW with
: out any problems and only once I got a buffer underrun.
:
: As for hardware MPEG, he's talking about a video capture board with
an MPEG
: encoder chip. Otherwise, your processor has to do the encoding. It
depends on
: the type of compression your using and the resolution you plan to
capture.

 

[Ed Coolidge]

So far only 4x because I got the 4x DVD-Rs with the drive and I bought the 4x
DVD+RW for backus (which is the fastest for rw media right now). Just bought 8x
DVD+R but haven't tried them yet.

As for encoding video, I have been able to do real-time encoding with my Radeon
video card at standard NTSC resolution with MPEG2 compression. I'm not sure if
it has any hardware encoding support, but if it did it's probably not much.
Unfortunately, if the compression was too low my hard drive couldn't keep up and
my dropped frames was 5% or higher. Since your's is probably faster this would
be less of an issue.

The problem with real-time video is that if the CPU isn't fast enough to encode
it, frames will be dropped from the source. This depends on the resolution of
the source and the compression used. Higher resolutions require more data to be
encoded. Higher compression requires more power to encode it, but requires less
space to store. This is where a faster CPU or hardware encoder can help. Once
the video is encoded it's written to disk, but if it can't keep up frames will
be dropped.

You said that you would be recording PAL and NTSC, which would be the resolution
and frames/second. I'm assuming that the source on high8 was recorded using one
of those. I also assume that you would be using MPEG2 compression, which is
standard for DVD video. Others such as DivX however would require a much faster
CPU for real-time encoding. You should be able to do it. If you have problems
with dropped frames, try increasing the compression ratio. If that doesn't
reduce the precent of frames dropped then you'll need a hardware encoder.

 

[Richard Hopkins]

I really have no idea what resolution and/or compression I will need
as the movies are on digital high8

I wish you'd told us this stuff at the beginning, it would have made it a
lot for us to work out your requirements. There's no such thing as "digital
high8", BTW, there's "digital8", which is a digital system, and "hi8", which
is an analog system.

Are we to take it you have a digital8 camcorder, and use a firewire
connection to get the video across to your PC. In this case do you already
have a firewire card in the PC?

and I wish to burn them to PAL and also to the regular NTSC
for safekeeping.

Why do you wish to use PAL *and* NTSC? If you are in a PAL country, it would
be easiest (and best from a quality standpoint) to do all your work in PAL.
If you live in an NTSC country, and your source video is NTSC, there is no
point at all converting to PAL. Where do you live, what format is your
source video in, and who do you want to be watching it (i.e. will you be
sending it to relatives overseas or something)?

Again it would be helpful to have greater knowledge of what your exact
workflow will be here, as to a large extent we are being forced to advise
you on the basis of an incomplete knowledge of what you are hoping to
achieve. Assuming you have a D8 camcorder and a Firewire card in your PC,
you will then need a method of transcoding the DV source video into MPEG2
for burning to DVD. As stated up top, if you want to do this reasonably
quickly, without loads of dropped frames, you will either need some sort of
hardware encoder, or alternatively need to trade up to a system with a
considerably faster processor.
--


Richard Hopkins
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
(replace .nospam.co.uk with .pipex.com in reply address)

The UK's leading technology reseller www.dabs.com
Get the most out of your digital photos www.dabsxpose.com

 

[HAC Brown]

Get yourself a SONY DRU 700a. It will burn anything and has the new
NERO software bundled with it. If you have another CD drive in the
puter it will burn from drive to drive.

HAC

 

[Sam]

:
: I wish you'd told us this stuff at the beginning, it would have made
it a
: lot for us to work out your requirements. There's no such thing as
"digital
: high8", BTW, there's "digital8", which is a digital system, and
"hi8", which
: is an analog system.

Sorry for the confusion.
:
: Are we to take it you have a digital8 camcorder, and use a firewire
: connection to get the video across to your PC. In this case do you
already
: have a firewire card in the PC?
:
That is correct.

: > and I wish to burn them to PAL and also to the regular NTSC
: > for safekeeping.
:
: Why do you wish to use PAL *and* NTSC? If you are in a PAL country,
it would
: be easiest (and best from a quality standpoint) to do all your work
in PAL.
: If you live in an NTSC country, and your source video is NTSC, there
is no
: point at all converting to PAL. Where do you live, what format is
your
: source video in, and who do you want to be watching it (i.e. will
you be
: sending it to relatives overseas or something)?

Yes, I will be sending the DVD overseas to relativies. Unlike
televesions there, they are not sure if their dvd can play NTSC. The
source is in NSTC.
:
: Again it would be helpful to have greater knowledge of what your
exact
: workflow will be here, as to a large extent we are being forced to
advise
: you on the basis of an incomplete knowledge of what you are hoping
to
: achieve. Assuming you have a D8 camcorder and a Firewire card in
your PC,
: you will then need a method of transcoding the DV source video into
MPEG2
: for burning to DVD. As stated up top, if you want to do this
reasonably
: quickly, without loads of dropped frames, you will either need some
sort of
: hardware encoder, or alternatively need to trade up to a system with
a
: considerably faster processor.

I appreciate the advice. A while ago, I recorded some home movies
onto the VCD format to playback on my DVD. I was not happy with the
result. I don't need speed and I don't wish to shell out any more
money, if possibel. I would like to accomplish something similar to
an eariler post by Ed who has a similar system. The other option is
to run it on another computer: P4 1.8 Gig Celeron w/256 megs of ram.
However, I would need another hard drive for that machine, the other
option is to do the video on my laptop: Dell P4 2.8G with 512 ram.
But, I would have to get a firewire adapter and either DVD writer
(internal or internal), but that would add more cost to the equation.
Also, buying anything used is not an option as when I do, the product
is always a dud (or soon becomes one).

 

[Sam]

Thanks, but I don't believe I need dual layer as my dvd player doesnt
play +R dvd's. They dont have a -R dual layer writer yet, do they?

: Get yourself a SONY DRU 700a. It will burn anything and has the new
: NERO software bundled with it. If you have another CD drive in the
: puter it will burn from drive to drive.
:
: HAC

 

[Ed Coolidge]

I've heard that they're working on it, but I don't know when it would be out.
Kinda sucks considering that I just got a dual-layer drive.

 

[Laurence Payne]

Thanks, but I don't believe I need dual layer as my dvd player doesnt
play +R dvd's. They dont have a -R dual layer writer yet, do they?

Well, get one that does They're cheap enough.

Sadly, the best advice to someone who paid big money for a DVD player
when they first appeared is - bin it and replace with a cheap, modern
unit that plays all formats.