Back ups freeze

[sf49ers]

I'm not sure if its my dvd burner or if its the media I'm using. I seem to get a lot of freezing in some of my back ups that I've done. I use dvd shirnk and nero. I have a NEC3520 and the dvd media I have been using is some genaric brand 8x single layer. I turn off everything thats running in the back ground,defraged my hd and still no clue. anyone ever run into this problem before?

Thanks.

[ricky1756]

bad media

[steve2713]

Almost certainly bad media, as ricky suggests. Check the media code of the discs with DVDInfo and post back what the media code is. Often, cheapo generic media can be made useable with the right firmware.

[guns1inger]

Install DVD Decrypter and burn with that instead. Bad media is a bit of a misnomer. You could buy high quality media but find it is not compatible with your burner or player. The current favourite is TY disks, now that Ritek G04's have reduced in quality. On my burner I have a 50% coaster rate with TY disks, and 100% success with Ritek G04s.

Find the media code, then use it to search the DVD Media list to see what peopl eare saying.

[sf49ers]

Thanks for the help guys. It says its a TYG02?

[sf49ers]

on another note. I also back up my PS2 games and the playstaton 2 will not read these disks.

[steve2713]

Generic discs with TYG02 media code=fake Taiyo Yuden media code=bad media in this case.

I've heard of some people having decent luck with these fake TY discs, but the trouble is they may not even be the same fake discs, so it's hard saying what they really are. What speed are you burning them at? Three things I can suggest that may help make the most out of a bad situation with these discs: Look for a good modified firmware on CDfreaks.com forums for your 3520, sometimes a modded FW can at least make crap discs like these useable, as I suggested before. Also, if you're burning at 8x or 12x, try burning the discs at 4x and see if that helps. Lastly, give DVD Decrypter a shot at burning them instead of Nero - Decrypter only burns Image files such as .ISO and .NRG files, though.

[sf49ers]

Thanks Steve. These dvds are 8x I slowed it down to 6 and still no luck. I'll give 4 a shot next and check on the firmware.
Thanks again.

[steve2713]

6x and 8x burn essentially the same, at least with my NEC 2500, so that probably will make no difference. Try 4x as you said.

[cyflyer]

We are missing some important issues here guys.
Its obvious that sf49ers is a total newb, or has not been paying much attention to these forums since 2003 when he joined. Telling a newb to muck about with firmware can only make things worse, when all he has is media fit for the garbage bin.

Secondly, even if he manages to salvage something and write to these 'discs' there is no way he is going to get a full 4.3gig out of it, so he should restrict them to small projects, or shrink everything to around 3.5gigs, or less.

My personal advise would be to trash them and get decent discs.
Oh, and pay more attention to these discussions.

On my burner I have a 50% coaster rate with TY disks, and 100% success with Ritek G04s

you're a comedian, right ?

[cyflyer]

edit

[DarrellS]

I've discovered that every single backup that I've made, do the exact same thing.

I decided to check my back ups after trying to burn DVDs that I made from XviD files converted to DVDs and having them do the exact same thing. Some of the DVDs will play almost all the way through without a freeze up and some freeze up 30 or 40 times throughout the movie. A couple refuse to get past the opening DVD faze before they freeze up and refuse to play at all.

The disks I used for the back ups were Ritek 4x DVD-R (25 pack) and the Authored DVDs are Ridata 8x DVD-R (50 pack). I have a 5 pack of Memorex DVD-RW ($15 + tax) disks. After two burns that are all messed up and left the discs un-erasable and non reusable, have left me afraid to use the rest.

BTW, the DivX/XviD data DVDs that I made using the exact same discs, have no troubles playing at all.

Programs used for DVD back-up...

DVDdecrypter
DVDshrink
DVDdecrypter to burn disc

Programs used to author DVD from XviDs...

VSO DivXToDVD
TMPGEnc DVD Author to author and burn if using menus
DVDshrink and DVDdecrypter if not using menus

I have a Liteon 812S combo drive and a
Philips 642 DVD player

If anyone is using the same setup and are getting usable burns, I would like to know what media you are using because I'm getting tired of burning coasters.

[cyflyer]

Darrell, your problem is the Riteks/Ridata discs. They are the same thing. They are crap discs. Guaranteed coasters. I have a Liteon 851S. It is exactly as you descibed. Get your self some Taiyo Yudens. Get some Japanese made Maxells, Get some TDK with code TTG01/TTG02 and i guarantee you problem will go away. Don't skip on a few bucks.

Don't know about DivX, but i suspect they may appear ok because they are probably much smaller file sizes.
Unerasable erasble ? Not sure on that one.

[DarrellS]

Darrell, your problem is the Riteks/Ridata discs. They are the same thing. They are crap discs. Guaranteed coasters. I have a Liteon 851S. It is exactly as you descibed. Get your self some Taiyo Yudens. Get some Japanese made Maxells, Get some TDK with code TTG01/TTG02 and i guarantee you problem will go away. Don't skip on a few bucks.

Don't know about DivX, but i suspect they may appear ok because they are probably much smaller file sizes.
Unerasable erasble ? Not sure on that one.

I guess I should've asked questions before I just went out and bought the media but in the media reviews, Ritek seemed to be a pretty good option. The other thing was that Ritek was the only brand that I saw at PC Club.

What stores sell these Taiyo Yuden discs? They ARE what was shipped with my burner so it must be what Liteon recommends. I wasted the first disc (white one) because I thought it was a RW disc but it wouldn't erase eather so I guess it isn't an RW. I have one left (see through) so I'll burn a movie today and see how it plays.

With the DivX playing and DVDs not, it isn't the file size since I have 12 XviDs on one DVD. I suspect that it's the MPEG 2 file that is harder to read than a DivX/XviD file. When I try to read the Back-ups in my burner to remake the back-ups, my burner has a really hard time transferring the data back to my HD. It see the files alright but doesn't want to transfer them.

When I made the uneraserable RW discs, I just threw 4 or 5 short clips (of different file types) on to see if they would play on my Philips player.
I'm thinking that since I didn't make a full Movie DVD, that is the problem but I'm afraid to burn another $3 coaster to find out. I thought the whole idea of RW was to be able to make test discs and to store data that you could add to later or erase and use again.

[DarrellS]

Cyflyer, you were right about the Ritek media. I couldn't find the Taiyo Yudens' so I got some Fuji discs instead. So Far, I've done two burns with four episodes on each disc with menus and they both play flawlessly, all the way through.

I guess I can still use the Ritek as data discs since I have about 50 of them but I will never buy that crap again for burning movies. I'd rather pay a buck a piece for a good disc that I know will play than pay 50 cents a piece for 50 discs that are 100% sure not to play.

[cyflyer]

Cyflyer you were right about the Ritek media

Fuji's might be TY's anyway. Depends where you are, but if in the states you can get them from on-line places like www.supermedia.com, or www.rima.com etc. If the Fujis work, then fine. Stick with them. The Riteks, as you say, use them for data or a dvd a project that is less than 3.5gigs. Good luck.

[DarrellS]

Well, I had trouble with the third burn but I think it was a Windows 2000 problem and not the media. TMPGEnc DVD Author's DVD writing program spit the disc out and said that other programs running may have caused the failure. Windows 2000 shows no other programs running but under processes it shows about 30 processes. I don't know how to solve that since Windows loads them up at start up and I don't know which ones I can stop or if they even will stop if I tell them to. I installed msconfig but although it allows me to stop a couple of programs from loading, I can do nothing about everything else. Sure wish 2000 was user friendly like 98SE or that 98SE didn't have the GB limit. NTFS is supposed to handle memory better than 98SE but if it runs everything when it loads up, I don't know how that can be better.

The fourth burn was good so I'm happy with the Fuji so far.
I was crying all last week that it was taking forever and I hadn't burned one usable disc and in 4 or 5 hours time, I was able to edit, convert and burn almost 12 hours of XviD files to DVDs.

Thank's for your help.

[Rich86]

Singing the praises of TY media is all well and good (I am sure they are wonderful), but trashing Ritek media when so many of us use it flawlessly, constantly seems to be a bit off the mark. Anyone who has burned dvd's to any extent realizes that much of the troubles that occur have to do with compatibilty issues between the media and the burner and trying to burn dvd's at top speed.

My Sony 510a burns absolutely flawlessly on Ritek G04 media. I have seen absolutely no degradation in the quality of Ritek G04 media. On the other hand, my Sony 510a will not burn to Ritek G05 media at all, under any circumstances. Why? Because Sony is too lazy to update the firmware in the drive to deal with 8x media formulations.

Recommending TY media is a no brainer and I am not debating that. Trashing Ritek media across the board is misguided and inaccurate. Ritek media does very well for a lot of us out here.

[DarrellS]

Well, I don't know what G04s will do but I burned 25 Ritek G05s and 3 or 4 Ridata G05s and every single one of them were screwed up. With a 0% success rate, I can guarantee you that I will not go out and purchace 50 Ritek G04s to see if they will work better than the G05s.

My Liteon 812S burner would only burn the 4X G05s at 2.4 tops so speed wasn't the issue but the same burner burns the 8X Fujis at 8X.

[popeye1497]

Had the same problem with generic disk. Trashed the disk and sold the I/O drive on ebay. Bought me some japan made disk(TY, Ver., TDK) and a pioneer 107 and every disc plays flawlessly. Out of 100 made only two trashed cuz the buffer dropped low due to me multi-tasking the CPU..i'm a impatient picky focker :P

[Rich86]

It sounds to me like the LiteOn 812 firmware is not programmed to deal with Ritek G05 media (Ritek G05 is 8x DVD-R media). This is exactly the issue I have with my Sony 510a. If you've landed on a different brand media that works well - you should probably stick with it. This is how I landed on Ritek G04 - as I found it performs flawlessly on my Sony 510a.
Firmware updates are generally required for these burners to deal with newer dvd media formulations. Unfortunately Sony cannot be bothered with making these updates available (which is why I will never buy another Sony burner).

[cyflyer]

Rich we can carry on this debate for ever, but as far you thinking we are unfairly trashing Riteks, they are trash.

Here are a few lines from the interveiw by Tim Smith, sales and marketing of Ridisc:

Ritek DVD of every grade possibly was flooding into the market. Media of B quality, C quality, and even worse, was all being sold as Grade A Ritek media and very soon, customers began to lose faith in the dye and the brands that carried the codes G04 and G05.

It didn’t help that even Ritek themselves knowingly sold discs of lesser quality (even with their own brands) into the market to customers that didn’t care about quality just as long as they made money

Please keep using and praising Ritek manufactured discs !!!

[hech54]

Ritek's are my second choice right after TY's. I have had ZERO problems with naked/silver topped Ritek discs.

[steve2713]

I recognize that quite a few people have had issues with Ritek media, I agree that some of their media is certainly bad with some burners/firmware.

Having said that, I've had great results with G04 and R02 media, even at 8x. Burn quality is similar to TY and RICOHJPN media, I couldn't ask for anything more than that.

Discs that work poor on one burner can and often do work awesome on another burner, or even just by changing the firmware. That's just the reality of this hobby/business. Ritek has been great media for alot of people, if it doesn't work well with your equipment, bummer. Them not working well on your burner doesn't make Ritek crap.

[cyflyer]

If it was an issue of burner/media compatibility, then why are the problems always restricted to the last third of the dvd ? Why aren't the problems uniform throughout ? Why don't the decent brands have issues with certain burners or crap out at the last third ? Why do decent brands still work flawlessly with unchanged firmware ? Why did the marketing manager of Ridisc admit that Ritek knowingly sold discs of lower quality ?
Why don't they say on their boxes "our dvd's are crap if you own such and brand of burner with such and firmware ?" etc etc

[steve2713]

If it was an issue of burner/media compatibility, then why are the problems always restricted to the last third of the dvd ? Why aren't the problems uniform throughout ? Why don't the decent brands have issues with certain burners or crap out at the last third ? Why do decent brands still work flawlessly with unchanged firmware ? Why did the marketing manager of Ridisc admit that Ritek knowingly sold discs of lower quality ?
Why don't they say on their boxes "our dvd's are crap if you own such and brand of burner with such and firmware ?" etc etc

Why are they restricted to the last third? They're not, not with my discs and many other peoples' discs. No problems at all.

Why aren't the problems uniform? Well, my discs are uniformly great all the way to the edge, is that a problem?

Why don't 'decent' brands have issues with certain burners? They do - take Lordsmurf's praise of the excellent BTC burners , which he claims makes nothing but coasters with TY media but does fine with most other media.

etc., etc.

They work great for some, not for others. If they don't work for you, tough tittie. Don't buy them, buy what works for you. It's no secret they're not going to work well on all burners, NO MEDIA is perfect on all burners. I've got 4 burners, Ritek I've used has worked very well on all 4 of them (including 3 different brands). I'm happy with those results, if they don't work for you don't buy them.

[guns1inger]

Steve - here here !

cyflyer - I shit you not. G04s have never failed me. The TY's I have used are FujiFilm made in Japan and carrying the TY01 code. If I burn them at 2x, they are OK, If I burn them at 4x, the mis rate goes right up. I only bought them a.) because they were recommended highly here, and b) the shop had miss priced them at $3.95 a box, instead of $3.95 each.

Use what works for you. If something doesn't work, find something better.

[cyflyer]

Fine.

They work for you and others, and you will continue buying them.
They don't work for me and an ever increasing number of others, and I wouldn't buy them in my worst nightmare.

We all express our findings though on these forums, and let those wanting to buy media judge for themselves. Its their time and money.