What Am I Doing Wrong?

[wayneb7729]

Technical Stuff:
Brand new Lite-on SOHW-812S with most up-to-date firmware.
AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 512 MB DDR333 RAM.
80GB HDD.
Using Infiniti DVD-R 4x
DVDXCopy platinum

The Problem:
Backed up two of my personally owned DVD's (Love Actually and Minority
Report) using DVDXCopy Platinum.
No error messages, no apparent problems.

However neither back-up would play in my Scan SC2000 DVD player (it
plays DVD-R). They play for a couple of seconds and then skip forward and play for another couple of seconds.
The display that indicates time played etc seems to lose the information every few seconds or so (when the movie skips forward the display goes blank).

Both will play in my PC DVD player.

Today, I visited a well known electrical store and tried both DVD backups in their most modern players (when no-one was looking of course).
They just about played but the picture kept deteriorating into small blocks (the same as when a digital tv signal is not being correctly received).

So my first attempts to back my stuff up have not gone too well.

What am I doing wrong? Advice would be appreciated - thanks.

[ricky1756]

sounds like a media issue, have you tried different media?

[wayneb7729]

Ricky 1756 - thanks for the suggestion.

No i've not as I wasn't sure if it was a media thing and it gets expensive.

Any recommendations?

[equinox137]

Memorex has always worked well for me

[ricky1756]

ditto, i like memorex for dvd+r, but i've heard bad things about memorex dvd-r.

[loughary]

I would agree that it is probably a media problem; I’ve had great success with memorex and TDK as well. That’s the problem with using a program like DVDXCopy you can’t save it to the hard drive first and check the file to confirm that it is the media. That’s just one of the million reasons why DVDshrink is superior.

[ricky1756]

actually you can save it with dvdxcopy. make a folder with the name of your movie. use that as your temp folder. when dvdxcopy says to insert disc to burning, copy that folder to another folder. dvdxcopy does suck tho

[wayneb7729]

All

Thank you very much for your input / advice. I will try different media and perhaps a different programme.

Can somebody please explain why saving it to the hard drive first will indicate a media problem? (if this question is in a faq somewhere forgive me and direct me to the right place).

[ZippyP.]

Can somebody please explain why saving it to the hard drive first will indicate a media problem?

Because you can play the files before burning and see if they look and play OK, thus eliminating the ripping/transcoding stage as the source of your problem. The point is you already said:

Both will play in my PC DVD player.

Which means your DVD rom reads it OK. DVD roms are more forgiving of bad media and you never did say the brand of disks that you used.

[wayneb7729]

ZippyP

Thanks for the explanation. I did say what media I was using [Infinit DVD-R 4x] inj my original post.

[bdf24]

You may want to try different methods of ripping and writing as well. For instance if I rip with DVDShrink and burn with nero my player will skip and stutter on most movies wether I burn at 2X or 4X (it's much worse burning at 4X though). But if I write to an ISO image file then write to a DVD with DVDDecrypter it will play perfect no matter what speed I write at(and this is with the same media).

So you have a lot of experimenting to do to find out what works for you. I just bought a 50 pack spindle of Ridata DVD+RW's. That way I can play around and erase and redo if I need to.

[e1miran]

What speed are you burning at? I had some similar blocking occuring on discs that were burned at 8x (even though they were rated 8x). But I can burn with confidence at 4x. Try downgrading speed to see if it helps.

[ZippyP.]

I did say what media I was using [Infinit DVD-R 4x]

Oops, you're right. Infinit 4x gets pretty good reviews in the DVD media section too. bdf24 has a good suggestion., get some rw's and experiment.

[wayneb7729]

All

Thank you very much for all of your help / advice. I've a lot to learn and will enjoy doing it.

Regards

[wayneb7729]

All,

I followed your advice. Bought different media (Ritek DVD-R x4) and used DVD Shrink. Perfect result. Many Thanks

[ZippyP.]

Thanks for letting us know!