Newbie - problems burning DVDs

[adadof3]

Hi,

Am a newbie who has been struggling for some time to burn DVDs.

I am posting in this section as I am not techie at all and will only get bewildered by the terminology etc in the more advance forums.

About 18 months ago I bought a PC with a DVD writer. I burned many CDs, but never had any success with DVDs. I was using orange datawrite DVDs, and the software was Nero and Roxio.

I am fortunate to have more than one PC, so recently I decided to fit a DVD writer into one of my other computers. I purchased a brand new Sony AW-G170A10.

Last weekend I fitted the DVD writer and successfully burned my first CD.

Not being sure whether the previous DVD problems were due to the hardware, software or the media, I went out and purchased two different brands of DVD:

verbatim DVD-R 16x 4.7GB
imation DVD-R 8x 4.7 GB

I also read up on software and, as it seemed to be highly recommended, downloaded a trial version of Ones (version 2.0.330).

Tonight I tried burning a series of avi files onto both types of disc. On both occasions the process appeared to complete without error and the discs were ejected. However, on reinserting the discs and clicking the relevant drive within windows explorer, I get the message "please insert a disc in drive x". Similarly, when I try to open the burned files via media player or similar, it does not recognise that there is a disc present at all.

I have tried putting the discs into a DVD player and, while it shows the file names in the root directory, it is not possible to open any of them.

So, having ruled out hardware, software and media, I can only assume that the problem is with me. Please could someone advise what I am doing wrong as this is driving me completely up the wall!

Thanks in advance.

[steveryan]

Yes, it's you, do you have ginger hair? Seriously though ....are you running AnyDVD? I've known that to ruin burns. Try ImgBurn, it's the bollocks.

[Richard_G]

What is Ones? Never heard of that one. What is it you are trying to burn, a data DVD, video DVD, etc?

[A_51]

Welcome to the video hobby. By your remarks I can see that you are a bit lost. You need to read a lot to get really into this. This is a guide of what is inside a DVD Http://www.doom9.org/dvd-basics.htm You just can't burn your avi file into a DVD disk and make a compliant DVD. Basically you need to transform ( encode ) the avi file into a dvd structured file set. There are various tools to covert avi to DVD and a lot of guides. Take a look into the tools section.

Try this tool or one like it . https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=DIKO

Good Luck!!!!!!!

[adadof3]

Many thanks for all of the help received.

No I don't have ginger hair (in fact ginger hair would be preferable to the small amount of hair that I do have left after what I have torn out this week!).

Ones appeared to be recommended by a number of sites that I looked at last weekend. It is made by a company called Prassi, here is one of the links that I found to it last weekend:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software/cdr_applications/prassi_ones.cfm

Many thanks for the advice on conversion, I think this is a bit beyond me at the moment though.

Sorry if my original post didn't specify what I was trying to do, I was in fact trying to backup data from my PC onto a DVD, it just so happened that the files in this instance were avi files. I mistakenly thought that I had played avi files on my dvd player before when I had copied them to a cd, they were in fact mpegs. No wonder the disc didn't work.

Have done a bit more research into my DVD burner and wonder if I need to update the firmware, despite it being new. The drive is shown here, you will see that someone else has suggested updating the firmware:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=23436915013&action=c2hvd19wcm9kd...uct_uid=117877

Would poor firmware prevent burning DVDs while allowing flawless burning of CDs? If so, any suggestions as to where I can get the firmware from? Googling doesn't really give me any clues.

Many thanks for all of your patience with me, look forward to further advice.

Thanks in advance.

[Jim44]

Sorry if my original post didn't specify what I was trying to do, I was in fact trying to backup data from my PC onto a DVD, it just so happened that the files in this instance were avi files.

I'll just add to steveryan's advice and suggest using ImgBurn. I've just gotten done doing exactly what you are trying to do: backup some AVI files onto a "data" DVD. The "Build" mode that was introduced in Ver2 makes this very easy.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to check for updated firmware for your burner. New firmware typically adds burning capability for newer discs, so that could be an issue.

Jim

[normcar]

The problem I had when I first began to burn DVD was to set the IDE controler Advanced Settings to "DMA if available". This is found by selecting System Properties from My Computer, and then Hardware Device Manager. Then select IDE Controllers, and Properties, then Advanced Settings. After I made this change, my burns were good. (There is a FAQ about this somewhere on videohelp.com, that also includes other tips on getting good burns.)

But make sure that your DVD files are either Data or Video. Video files are similar to what is on a purchased DVD, but Data files are just MPG's or AVI's or similar video files burned to a DVD like they are on a harddrive.

Use Nero or IMGBurn to burn the files. If you are creating a DVD from an AVI or similar file, you must Author the file to make it into Video files similar to a purchased DVD.

If you are backing up a purchased DVD, then use ripping tools to rip the files from the DVD, which also gets rid of copy protection. You cannot just copy files from one DVD to another with out ripping the original DVD.