Sonic MyDVD

[Bob Holmes]

Newbie here, even though I am social security age (so not a "newbie" in all respects). I recently bought and installed a LiteOn SOHC 812S burner. Along with it came MyDVD Version 4.0 and PowerDVD. I installed them both. Yesterday, I noted on LiteOn's site they offered a free upgrade to MyDVD Version 5.2. Got it, installed it, and after I did my CD Rom (LiteOn) and the burner had "disappeared" when I went to My Computer. In Device Manager my PC told me something like the drivers were there but there was no hardware, and there was a yellow exclamation point on each drive. Doing a search I have gathered that most folks here don't care much for Sonic stuff, but I'm trying to be as frugal as possible and so I'm trying to use software that comes with hardware. Has anyone else had my problem? I kinda think that I may have screwed something up, but I can't figure out what. I went back to an earlier restore point and reinstalled Version 4.0 and that seems to have fixed it (for now), but I'd really like to get the upgrade. Heck, I haven't even burnt a CD or DVD yet. This software thing has got me beat. Thanks for any help/suggestion.

[teegee420]

This isn't very helpful but you really ought to contact LiteOn and notify them of the problem. Even if you manage to fix it yourself. Good luck, and welcome to the forum.

[bottle-necked]

I got Sonic V4.0 with my burner a while back and installed it. What a crap program. It always tried to 'reencode' my video and it wouldn't use anything except PCM audio that was taking up an extreme amount of disk space. Creating menus in the program was kinda lame I thought and after examining my burned dvds I found that Sonic was putting a bunch of 'work files' on each disk that was taking up even more space. I decided the program just wasn't what I was looking for so I uninstalled it.

Awhile back, while at the Sony site, I stumbled across an update for SonicMyDVD that offers many improvements so I got it. I installed it and the only difference it made, as far as I could tell, was they added an option for AC3 audio and that now the capture command would work. I played around with the program for awhile then 'uninstalled' it too. It just wasn't the kind of program I was looking for and I though then, and still do now, that the program was crap.....

There are far better applications available that Sonic MyDVD so I wouldn't feel too heart broken over this. Besides, you have already gotten a good dose of just how crappy it is already.

Good luck.

[sacajaweeda]

Count mine as another vote for discarding the bundled Sonic software in favor of the free stuff available here.

[Jayhawk]

Sorry (also) Bob but my experience with Sonic MyDVD has also been very bad. God only knows what driver games Sonic is playing that could mess up both drives, especially Liteon's.

If you are fortunate enough to have a CompUSA in your neighborhood, they are selling Ulead MovieFactory 3 Disc Creator for $29 after rebates. There's a $15 instant rebate, a $15 mail-in to Ulead, and a $20 Competitive Upgrade mail-in to Ulead (you're Sonic MyDVD would qualify). It's limited to this week only (the 8th, I think) for the instant rebate but I believe the $20 rebate and maybe the other $15 is good till the end of the year. It's a much better package than MyDVD.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

[razadazza]

this is your answer:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314060

[PIntag]

I updated successfully to MyDVD 5.2 (I got it with a Sony burner) and the AC-3 support is very useful. I encode using TMPGenc and use MyDVD 5.2 to burn the DVD. It doesn't re-encode the video but it does encode the audio to AC-3. VERY useful for those of us who don't want to pay for an AC-3 solution. It seems to work very well in this limited capacity.