Help me build DVD Duplicator

[rob3rtz]

hi i'm planning to build DVD duplicator myself

i curently looking at acard or wytron controller card
probably i will build 1-3 or maybe expand to 1-5 (if i'm going to wytron)

should i buy the latest acard for more buffer and compatibility?
or the old version is fine

for my writter it will be pioneer 108 and i need sugestion for DVD ROM
since i want most compatible, mostly i'll burn 4X or 8X (no hack firmware)

and for the case, i only need cheap one..any sugestion where i should get this from

i got PS 400 watt that i don't use, so probably i can save by using that

any sugestion is appreciated

Thanks

[jtoolman2000]

I have not made a tower duplicator but I have done something that works the same way. I stacked 5 FireWire External Sony DRU 530ul drives, daisy chained to eachother and the bottom one plugged to my PC. Nero and Alcohol allows burning to multiple drives. Alcohol can only burn from mounted Image FIles but Nero will burn both from images and in file mode. It works so well that I can even choose to burn to the 5 externals as well as to the internal NEC2510. I can copy on the fly to 6 DVD drives from a disk on my DVD rom or from files. Why do I do this? I produce and sell instructional videos covering various miniature hobbies. I can burn 1-6 DVDs every 9-10 minutesn whicvh really helps to expedite production. Add printing on the Epson R300 and you can easily produce 50 disks in an evening session. The warning is, you better not be doing anything else with your pc during such multiple burns. You are assuming that all drives are perfectly synched as they do the lead-in and start to burn. Sometimes, no matter what you do you will get a failed burn on one of the drives. That however, seems to be a very rare occurance.

[chas0039]

The AOpen AAP 1648 is a very fast ROM drive with very good error correction. I am pleased with mine.

[Blazey]

I have not made a tower duplicator but I have done something that works the same way. I stacked 5 FireWire External Sony DRU 530ul drives, daisy chained to eachother and the bottom one plugged to my PC. Nero and Alcohol allows burning to multiple drives. Alcohol can only burn from mounted Image FIles but Nero will burn both from images and in file mode. It works so well that I can even choose to burn to the 5 externals as well as to the internal NEC2510. I can copy on the fly to 6 DVD drives from a disk on my DVD rom or from files. Why do I do this? I produce and sell instructional videos covering various miniature hobbies. I can burn 1-6 DVDs every 9-10 minutesn whicvh really helps to expedite production. Add printing on the Epson R300 and you can easily produce 50 disks in an evening session. The warning is, you better not be doing anything else with your pc during such multiple burns. You are assuming that all drives are perfectly synched as they do the lead-in and start to burn. Sometimes, no matter what you do you will get a failed burn on one of the drives. That however, seems to be a very rare occurance.

Dosen't burning to all those drives at once slow your machine down to the point that it would be the same time-wise to just do one at a time?

[mumubunnylips]

I built a duplicator based on the Wytron DVD-3000 controller. It's the 1 to 9 burner model and it's worked very well. Just mount the controller and drives into your tower, connect them and turn it on.

As there's literally nothing to configure, I don't understand why anyone would pay to have someone else assemble the components for them.

Ily.com carries a good variety of inexpensive towers. I bought both controller and tower from them.

[jtoolman2000]

Dosen't burning to all those drives at once slow your machine down to the point that it would be the same time-wise to just do one at a time?

Nope! Works the same as a single drive. I burn 5 disks in about 8-10 minutes per batch just as in a multidrive duplicator. Been doing this for quite a while in my home bussiness.

[Blazey]

Huh. I wonder if running multiple instances of DVD Decrypter would produce the same results.

[jtoolman2000]

No- Burning different movie files at once with ,ultiple instances of any burning program will slow down the process pretty much proportional. This only works for burning the multiples of the same file to several drives. I have to often burn 40-50 copies of my production so rather than doing them one by one I can do 5 at once in about 8-10 minutes. Your burning program has to be able to burn to multiple drives for this to work.

[rob3rtz]

hmm, i'll tried that method first, maybe can save me some money

waiting for my second Burner (pioneer 108) will try dual instance of DVD decrypter.. hopefully they work fine since i got dual proc

and also do you guys know other program that work for multiple burner other than nero?..

i tried nero before but got lot of prob, and coster with liteon burner
so if possible i want to stick with dvd Dycrypter ( I heard this method also give most compatible with DVD stand alone player)

never tried alcohol before, any info about compatibility on DVD burned with this program?

[jtoolman2000]

The only two I know of are Nero and Alcohol120%. The latter only burns from Images. If anyone else knows of others than can burn to multiple burners, please let us know.

With Nero, you chose DVD /Movie mode, load the DVD files onto the VIDEO_TS folder that Nero creates, Click on the Burn icon and choose Multiple Burners option. Now while holding the shift key, click on the drives you wish to actuate and burn to. Continue by pressing Burn. Do not do anything else while you are burning or the buffer may empty on one of the drives and that drive's burn will fail. I find no change on the length of time required to burn one or many.

I find that external firewire drives, daisy chained to each other seem to work best. although I have three external and two internal at this time. In other words, drive 1 is connected to the computer's firewire port. It is also connected by the second firewire out port to drive 2's in port, and 2 is then connected to 3 and so on. You could connect as many as the firewire interface allows and you have electrical outlets for. As long as they begin to cache the files and write the lead-in at the same time, they will proceed to burn in unison. The most I've seen one of drive lag is a only few seconds where say, the other 4 will finish and the 5th will finish in about 4 seconds later.

[rob3rtz]

hmmm getting interested to try this, but i have bought the case for my duplicator and can't cancel it. i should ask you guys for alternative Duplicator first, rather then buying all the part, now its too late

anyone interested for it?...

oh also do guys know if nero will produce good compatibility, i got bad experience with nero... and It doesn't bother me using image or DVD folder

or should i try alcohol first..

oh yeah, i have dual proc is this will help?

[jtoolman2000]

Like I said, I produce inistructional videos and sell them to my distributor in batches of 50-100 a month. I burn all of them with the latest Nero, and as you probably are aware, Nero updates just about every two weeks. Customers buy my DVDs through the distributor and you can only assume that they are being played in a multitude of diferent types and makes of DVD players. So far and I conservatively estimate, about 1000 DVDs sold, I've had to replace 3. Those three actually played perfectly on my DVD players. I've had a worse average with VHS returns for cassete mechanical problems.

If you use alcohol, you must create your compilation as an ISO image which can be burnt in Alcohol 120% as a single or multiple burn.

Nero burns form files or from image. Some folks definitely prefer Iso images to burn from.

ALthough I have not yet proven it, I've read here that Copy2DVD, creating an ISO and Burning with Copy2DVD will produce a very compatible disk, specially when you are using DL burners and making a full backup from a full DVD-9 movie. Has to do with the layer change flag and how it is recognized by your set tp dvd player. It apparently keeps it as the original. I may be wrong here, but it's just something I read a while back

All in all, I;ve had very good compatability with Nero, Alcohol for multiple burns and DVD Decrypter ( write mode ) for single burns.