Windows XP No software can handle two DVD burners

[Raje]

OK guys.. here is whats up.... just picked up a Liteon Dual layer DVD+/-RW drive.. its sweet and fast... moved my orignal DVD+RW drive down and left it as cable select. But it appears that none of my software will allow exact DVD copies...Sonic Record Now says the the source file is too big... and Nero nor most of the other software won't even let me choose my Lite on as the target... its really weird I think. What I was hoping was that I could use DVD shrink... place in the DVD title i want to archive into the slave drive and a blank into the liteon.. then let it run... hoping it would convert to the temporary file then burn to the blank DVD.. I don't want to have to come back and wait for it to eject the movie and put a blank disk in the same drive... thats why I got a second drive... am I wrong to think I could do this in the first place ? (all movies are for personal archiving to protect the originals which are now a collectors item)

 

[muckshifter]

It is called "on the fly" burning, and I don't recomend it, it is prone to errors ... reset jumpers to master & slave, try again ...

 

[Raje]

did that.... but stupid DVD shrink will just not recognise the new drive... about to unplug old drive... uninstall software and resboot... reinstall and see what happens

 

[Quadophile]

Mucks is correct in what he says.

First of all if anyone wants to use the feature of "on the fly" burning one should ensure that the source drive is at least 25% faster than the destination drive otherwise buffer underruns occur, secondly the high speed of data must be handled by the system system, there are many issues to confront with. Secondly two burners are never a good idea since burners cache data and roms don't, caching data is never favoured for such applications. The best reader is the one which does not cache data.

 

[Raje]

hmm so what do you recomend.. is their a way to make old drive read only... at this point i just want dvd shrink to recognise the faster drive

 

[Quadophile]

One can change file attributes from hidden>read only>archive but changing the attribute of a burner is new to me

If you wish to do this on a regular basis I suggest you get a DVD ROM which are now very cheaply available and will do the job nicely.

 

[Raje]

i see... wonder if i can trade this DVD+RW drive in towards one... its still a very good 4x drive. But like I said I'm gonna try to disconnect reboot and reinstall and pretend its not there for a while... then reattach and hope for the best. I'll also have to check the proerties... I may be able to disable the burn feature ... will let you know.... buts its 522am here i need sleep.. will worry about this later
thank you Mucks and Quad

 

[Quadophile]

You are welcome

I like the idea of your giving us feedback, please do that

 

[muckshifter]

I concure Quad ... Raje, I have a DVD 'Combo' (DVDRom CDRW) as a master and a DVDRW as slave and did "on the fly" once, just to see what the outcome would be. It did burn and I had no problems, but it took 17mins. Ok I was not burning a movie just some data off a DVD ... now here is the intersting part ... I repeated the process "as normal" ie, copy to HD then to DVD, it took 23min. Wow, I can live with that.

If you have two DVDRWs I think you will find only one will ever get used or "seen" correctly, I could be wrong.

DVD Rom drives and DVDRWs do not run at the same speeds as CDRom drives, it's all different, and confusing.

 

[Raje]

OH Yea check this out... so i disconcted the older DVD +RW drive. Rebooted the computer and then went to the LITE-On site and got the updated drivers... I even flashed the drive. Uninstalled DVD Shrink and rebooted. Reinstalled DVD shrink and now it see NO OPTICAL DRIVES... the only target now is HDD.... this is ******* bull**** . Edit that how you may. Why won't this stupid program see the drive. Mucks... new drive can make a burn of this size in 7mins... old drive in 35min... I cannot live with that

here is where I got flash
http://www.liteon.com/prod/getDriver.do?action=driver

 

[Raje]

Trying new program

OK trying a new program.. Just downloaded Amazon DVD shrinker... so far it seems that it will do the trick.. it allows me to choose Drive L: (older DVD drive) as the source and drive K: (new drive) as the target. It compresses the file into whatever size I choose... for DVD I have chosen 3600mb figuring I can't use all 4.7 GB. So as the program states it is encoding the original media and compressing it to the required size in a temp folder... then should* burn it to disk...

So far I've failed twice.. had used full disk copy, then lowered size to 4600mb and said not enough disk space.. so will try again with 3600mb and see what happens... Using 8x DVD+R with 4.7 GB... I hate how the numbers game works... but 3600mb should fit right??

And totoal process is just over 1:15 ...that from original media to blank.. if the blank could fit the movie.

 

[Raje]

Well new program does work at a file size of 3600MB... but I have to say it was not an acceptable quailiy. Now here is what I don't understand... I made the movie at 3.6GBand it played in DVD player... then I tried 4.2GB and it fit on the disk but did not play... I assumed I just crammed too much... so now I tried it at 3.8GB and DVD player still said wrong disk... trying again at 3.8GB after rebooting and clearing out the Temp file. This has basically turned into a log of my attempts to succesfully burn a DVD "on the fly" using 2 DVD RW drives. Now I have suceeded once... and I'll say it took a total of 1 hour 15 mins. Which is not bad in my opinion considering i'm using a AMD XP 3200+ , and 1GB of Kingston Ram. Wish I had a stronger processor to cut down the conversion time. Every test subject takes an hour.. not that I sit here the whole time... but its still frustrating. Well wish me luck... I'm gonna see what happens next.

 

[muckshifter]

I admire your persistance, and I may just borrow a DVD off my brother to 'test' out on Linux ...

 

[Raje]

Recomend a program please

Well don't be too happy for me... Finally found a program that did *almost exactly what I wanted it to. Loaded the Movie in... loaded in a blank and in about 1 hour both drawers pop open stating process complete. Removed the movie and reinserted the DVD and my pc recognized it as a DVD movie. Now comes the real test... will it play on stand alone player.... answer: NO player states wrong disk.... parents DVD player states wrong disk.

At this point I have tried
DVD Decrypter* *( files never fail when used together but process takes up to 3 hours)
DVD Shrink*
Easy DVD Shrink 5 failed attemps
Amzon DVD 1 succesfull attmept(bad quality) 5 failed
DVD GUI5 1 horrible failed attempt
and one or two more that got uninstalled quicker than the time it took to download

any recomendation for a program that can perform "on the fly" DVD burns ?? It doesn't really have to be on the fly.. all the before mentioned programs would actually write files to a Temp folder first. If the program works ( makes DVDs from DVDs that can play on standalone device) I would even purchase it at this point.

 

[Raje]

Although no one ever did recomend a program I just wanted to state that I have finally become sucessful. The LiteOn drive comes with a program called PowerDVD PLayer. I found it very funny to stumble on a program called PowerDVD Copy.

Loaded DVD Movie in lowerdrive, loaded Blank DVD+R in top drive. Press start. In under 1 hour it produces an exact copy of the original. It gives you the option to remove some things from original to avoid some of the compression. The newly made movie will play on all of my stand alone Dvd players. And quailty was very satisfactory. Originals are back in original packages and are being store... watching the backups now... very satisfied.. still have 28 days left to software trial version. I may even purchase it.

 

[muckshifter]

You don't give up, do you ... well done!

 

[Raje]

When I first joined this forum I had a different signature, it said... "Tell me I can't, and I will die trying"
I just wish it would fit on a license plate.

 

[muckshifter]

"You can't strike a match on butter"

Get a bigger license plate

 

[Quadophile]

That shows how persistant you really are

A job well done!