Strange burning experience?

[FussyBob]

I have a home recorded VHS tape that is 2 hours long. I recorded it to my Pioneer 220S DVR set at 2 hours and everything went fine and the -R disc was compltely filled to the edge(100%) as expected. It played fine.

I then wanted to make copies of the disc using my computer system which usually doesn't have an problems making copies. The set up is a 16X I/O Magic DVD writer(source) and a Pioneer 108 DVD writer(target). I normally use the one to one disk copy function of Roxio Easy DVD Creator 6. Again, I normally don't have any issues with this harware or software.

Here's the strange thing that I can't comprehend. I take the DVD disc that was recorded in the Pioneer 220S (remember this disc had all space used, 100%) and put that disc in the I/O Magic writer, and burn to a blank disk in the Pioneer 108 writer using Roxio. The burn completes and is successful, but the copied disk from the Pioneer 108 used only 50% to record the exact information from the source disk that used 100% of the capacity. The video runs 2 hours from each disk and looks fine.

The question is how can a one to one disk copy result in the target disk only using 50% of disc capacity when the source used 100%? It's almost looking like Roxio adds a compression on the fly, I won't sleep until someone tells me what happened!

[louv68]

It does sound like Roxio is transcoding the video. Use ImgBurn for 1:1 copies.

[hech54]

Or use the older version called DVDDecrypter. It might be a bit easier to use.
Original disc in drive:
Open DVDDecrypter
ISO Read mode
Place the ISO image of the DVD on your hard drive.

New blank disc in the drive:
Open DVDDecrypter
ISO Write Mode
Select the image you just placed on your hard drive
as the one that you want to burn to the disc.
Select your burn speed to match your media.
Burn a new disc.

Check it for playability
Delete the image from your hard drive.
Done
Easy

[FussyBob]

I ran some more tests including IMGBURN.

The recorded discs (16X Verbatim) burned at 12X, play fine. Disc properties indicate that the disc capacity is used up 100%, but when looking at the burn side of the disc one can see heavy color change out to approximately 60% of the disc from center, and then it looks like no burn took place for the remaining 40%. Could this be where the the speed changed over to 12X and then the laser just about burned the surface to where it looks like it wasn't burned (but was) compared to the first potion of the disc?

I aways thought the burned side looked the same all the way through the burn when doing a 100% of the disk.

Burning results was the same using Roxio, CloneCD, and IMGBURN.

My Pioneer 108 laser may be getting weak?

[budz]

I don't think it's something to worry about. If the discs playback fine then your drive should be fine. On the other hand if the discs couldn't playback at all then yes your drive may be dying. Dvd burners are cheap these days.

[ntscuser]

I ran some more tests including IMGBURN.

The recorded discs (16X Verbatim) burned at 12X, play fine. Disc properties indicate that the disc capacity is used up 100%, but when looking at the burn side of the disc one can see heavy color change out to approximately 60% of the disc from center, and then it looks like no burn took place for the remaining 40%. Could this be where the the speed changed over to 12X and then the laser just about burned the surface to where it looks like it wasn't burned (but was) compared to the first potion of the disc?

I aways thought the burned side looked the same all the way through the burn when doing a 100% of the disk.

Burning results was the same using Roxio, CloneCD, and IMGBURN.

My Pioneer 108 laser may be getting weak?

It is far more likely that your Pioneer 220S is reporting false information. It is saying the disc is 100% full when it is nothing of the sort.