Diskcopy Mode Problems

[ac911rn]

I ran into a few problems during diskcopy modes. The movie back-up is fine when I play it ond the Mac's dvd player, but once burned, the dvd kind of stutters around during chapter selection. The movie tends to just jump all around, and never palys right. It starts out fine up to the menus, but once the movie is played, it goes haywire! This happened twice already on a good TDK dvd-r disc. I make sure I restart the iMac after ripping and using DVD2ONEX to make sure everything is starting up clean before burning, and like I said, it plays perfectly fine on the Mac's DVD player. What could be wrong?

[WiseWeasel]

You let Toast verify the burn, right? If it passes verification, then it sounds like a problem of either:
1) your DVD drive is not reading the data fast enough to keep up on that particular media (different media have different reflectivity, affecting the speed they're going to be read at, or if they will be read at all). I'd say try different media. I've had the widest compatibility with Ritek media, though even those aren't infallible. I'd say buy a couple good brand discs and experiment. I'd try Ritek, Pioneer (not PioData) and Apple, in that order. Perhaps others can share brands that have worked well for them.
2) Your processor can't keep up with the DVD decoding, though if you have a computer with a DVD burner, that is rather unlikely to be the case.
3) Insufficient or sub-optimal CPU Cache or RAM for this task (also unlikely to be the case unless you really skimped on RAM).

I'd guess it's the former, but please give us more info on what DVD burner and reader you're using, your computer type and speed, RAM. None of these issues are likely to be the sole cause, but they might all contribute to a crappy playback. I'd say your best bet of easily fixing the problem is to switch media brands. Anyone want to comment on which brand they have found to be most compatible (or point to a discussion on this, cuz I'm too lazy to do a forum search )?

[ac911rn]

I have have a flat panel 15" iMac with an 800mhz processor and a total of 768mb RAM. My superdrive is a Pioneer 104. I've tried both Liquid and TDK dvd-r media, and seem to favor the TDK. Burns at a faster speed, even though I chose "BEST" record speed on Toast 6 Titanium. Film Mode seems to be okay once burned, but on these newer movies, I seem to have run into a snag. I have not tried burning the same movie on my new Power Book G4, so I have no idea wether it is just my system. I still have about 40GB of free space on hy hard drive.

[WiseWeasel]

OK, that answers the hardware limitations question. You are letting Toast verify the DVDs after burning, right? If so, and they passed, I'd say to try different media.

[ac911rn]

Actually, I skip the verifying process. I'd figure once the disc is burned, that's it, no sense verifying a wasted disc; however, I have contemplated on using dvd-rw media on questionable movies.

[WiseWeasel]

Always perform verification. There are sometimes bad discs that can have burn errors that don't show up until verification (or if you try to copy from the disc). It's a shame to lose a good movie because you had a burn error. Often times, if you fail verification, you can burn the same thing to another disc, and it will pass. Time-consuming, but worth it.

[ac911rn]

So far I have tried Liquid and TDK dvd-r brands. TDK seems to burn faster, but no change in quality. I'll try Riteks once I finish my current stock.

[galactica]

Always perform verification.

I do this for DVD burns on -r media only
no point in doing it for a -rw because if it looks funny or has problems, just reburn it

[WiseWeasel]

I do this for DVD burns on -r media only
no point in doing it for a -rw because if it looks funny or has problems, just reburn it

If you're deleting your material from HD after burning to -r or -rw, you should be verifying. Some DVD-Rs might play OK, but when you try to copy them, you can run into problems.

[galactica]

I never delete until playback has been verified on my settop player
but yes, verification is important