DVD Burner Problem.

**Kodiak** · August 14th, 2005, 01:31 AM

A friend of mine is trying to burn DVD and (she live 80miles away) we have confirmed it will burn data but she is having problems burning movies. She is using Xcopy to do this and what she did to start this problem is she tried to burn the entire movie and that is when the problem started. I have walked her through installing new aspi drivers but appears to be doing no good. Any ideas what else we could try. We have uninstalled and reinstalled the program. Before reinstalling I had her remove the folder and reg. entries then reinstall.

**confus-ed** · August 14th, 2005, 07:00 AM

She is using Xcopy to do this

What, so huh ?, the dos command 'xcopy' ? or is there some product called that I ain't heard of ..?

The file system used by a cd\dvd is different to that of a 'normal' disk. You need something that realises this, & for all microsoft o/s's at the moment, that means some 3rd party utility, for instance nero, as xp which does have writing support 'built in' can only do cd's anyway & not a dvd..

**Kodiak** · August 14th, 2005, 12:01 PM

No noy the command line command. That would do nothing. You haven't heard of DVD Xcopy? More like X Copy. Anyway she is having a problem with it. I have it also and it is a excellent program. It worked great for her untill she tried to burn the entire CD (a option within the software program) and then the problem started. We have confirmed her setting's against mine and they are correct. Is there a way to test the burn capabilities of a DVD burner?

**confus-ed** · August 14th, 2005, 12:55 PM

... gotcha - you mean DVD X Copy XPRESS/gold/platinum 'reborn' !?! (3-2-1 studios who did that went bust, but a bit of googling tells me somebody else has taken over).

Originally Posted by Kodiak

.. Is there a way to test the burn capabilities of a DVD burner?

Its really tricky as there's so much can be 'not right' in windoze, which might stop matters - best practical approach is to stick it in another machine which you know works, but you are gonna need arms 80 miles long to do that with this one !

I use dvdshrink which is freeware, for this (DVD 'backup' I pressume ?), as it uses whatever standard burning product you might have already (nero in my case).

What's actually happening, in terms of it 'spitting the dummy' ? - have we got any clues ? error messages etc ? All I/we know so far from this thread is that it don't work..

**Kodiak** · August 14th, 2005, 10:30 PM

error writting disc.

Yes, yes she is backing up a movie. I will be goning down there in a few weeks so I will drag along my spare PC and put it in that. My arms aren't that long.

**pcgal** · August 14th, 2005, 11:11 PM

U say she was trying to copy a movie was it from another movie on a cd ( exsact copy) from another or did she down load the movie from the net? Lot's of times when I have got my movies from the internet and then tried to copy them to dvd I got the same error and it turned out to be a prob with the file down load. What file format is the movie in (if down loaded) not all programs will support all formats. I have also seen that certain types of cd,s and dvd's brands will not write to the disks. try another brand of cd or dvd writable disks. If you read your help files for the drive you are using you may even find they suggest certain brands of disks to use in your drive. I also found that when burning to your cd disks it's best to **** down any running programs eg. anti virus etc.. Maybe this will help!!

**Kodiak** · August 14th, 2005, 11:35 PM

She was copying a movie from a disc. Writes it then burns it. I have the same exact burner and program and she is using the same type of disc I have.

**confus-ed** · August 17th, 2005, 05:30 AM

Originally Posted by Kodiak

She was copying a movie from a disc. Writes it then burns it. I have the same exact burner and program and she is using the same type of disc I have.

So can your friend read/write 'ok' other than with this re-encoding program ? - we want to establish if the problem is with burning itself, or what is getting generated to get burnt

.

Most of these 'backup' programs strip out any copy protection mechanisms, & then re-render the images to reduce the frame rate, thus allowing you to fit 'more running length' onto a dvd & back it up.

If the machine can burn apparently normally 'straight data', I'd say your most likely fault is either the failure of your product to strip out the copy protection mechanisms (which really because of the AUP at this site, I shouldn't even strictly mention as its in breach of the DMCA or its variant in your country) or some rendering problem with the movie you are trying to re-encode, neither of which will be equipment related, but specific to this s/w ..

**Kodiak** · August 17th, 2005, 11:14 AM

We have verified it can burn normal data on a CDRW and it works just fine. She has now tried anydvd along with clonedvd2 and she may get one good burn out of 4 disks. Will a DVD burn CDRW but yet be no good for DVD. I know DVD will burn CDR.

**confus-ed** · August 17th, 2005, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by Kodiak

Will a DVD burn CDRW but yet be no good for DVD. .

That can & does happen quite a bit, when dvd's were first introduced, lots of 'combo' units got produced, & much was made of them having 'dual lasers' as a selling point - what the OEM's who were producing these forgot to mention was that having two lasers on the same arm leads to alignment problems, if you are too tight to accomodate function in your roms (& the extra components to do it) which could re-align both lasers to the right place, independently of each other... (quote me the model & I can maybe tell you if it is 'dual laser')

'one good burn out of four' (especially if this figure is changing slowly over time) would appear to back that up (however get her to write a 'datadisk' to make sure, as everything you are trying seems based on copying existing disks) - you can try better/different media, & also reducing the writing speed, to see if this improves matters.

**Kodiak** · August 17th, 2005, 12:45 PM

The device is a NEC 3520A.

**Kenteth420** · August 17th, 2005, 01:48 PM

I have the same problem with my ancient Panasonic dvd burner, I can create data dvd's fine but dvdxcopy fails everytime. (It worked fine for about 9 months) Then stopped working, I reloaded windows to clean up and it was working great again, then it just recently stopped working, I have tested teh drive in another machine and it works fine. I have not pursued the problem any further because I have another pc with a faster dvdr drive in it. I know this isnt much help but I would hate to see you throw away a drive that could be perfectly fine.

**confus-ed** · August 22nd, 2005, 02:16 AM

Originally Posted by Kodiak

The device is a NEC 3520A.

This is too new to be 'dual laser' like I mean, this one's apparently 16x speed & dual format (both + & - capable), so a red herring as far as my suggestions for 'wrongness' go...

Originally Posted by Kenteth420

I have the same problem with my ancient Panasonic dvd burner, I can create data dvd's fine but dvdxcopy fails everytime. (It worked fine for about 9 months) Then stopped working, I reloaded windows to clean up and it was working great again, then it just recently stopped working, I have tested teh drive in another machine and it works fine..

Welcome to windrivers forums kenneth .. thanks for your input, which would appear to say that this particular product doesn't like a particular windows update, but just which one ?

The bit of this product which caused it to be taken out out of business, was the 'ripping' tool which got around much stuff supposedly protected by internal mechanisms within windows, but I note this s/w is still being sold with it in ..

**RejectionMan** · August 22nd, 2005, 05:07 PM

copying a DVD eh...

couple of guesses:

copy protection
wrong media DVD+/- (DVD movies care, data does not)
dual layer DVD -> single layer DVD+/-

**Kenteth420** · August 22nd, 2005, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by RejectionMan

copying a DVD eh...

couple of guesses:

copy protection
wrong media DVD+/- (DVD movies care, data does not)
dual layer DVD -> single layer DVD+/-

Dvd Xcopy is made to copy movies to single layer dvd's, I have tried multiple movies including ones I have copied in the past, It is just a DVD- burner and I am using DVD-R's from the same spindle of disks that worked in the past.