Pinnacle Instant Copy 8

[nickelzy]

Ok, due to some folks on this forum raving about the product and good reviews that I've read about InstantCopy 8, I decided to give it a try. I've been using DVD Shrink for the past month and have been pretty happy with the program, but if I can get a little better video quality with something else, I'm willing to make the switch.

Yesterday I took a disc to experiment with - an original version of Fight Club. I was excited to try Instant Copy 8, but that excitement soon died when I experienced problem after problem! Here's what happened in the 3 times that I tried using the program:

1. Everything seemed to work fine. Then I took the finished copy and put in my Toshiba standalone dvd player and it couldn't read it. I tested it out on my Sony dvd player as well and same problem. I decided to test the disc using dvdinfopro but my computer couldn't even read it. I chalked this up to possibly a bad disc and tried a second time...

2. The duplication process seemed to be going fine until 97% into the process it got hung up and wouldn't proceed. After waiting and waiting and waiting, I decided to quit the program. Hmmm, a little discouraged and a little frustrated with all of the time that this is taking, I still decided to give it another shot, which leads me to my third and final try...

3. This time I decided to use a disc from a different spindle which hasn't to this point given me any problems. However, same problem which occurred in #2, except this time at the 99% mark.

Later today I'll try another movie, but this is quite disappointing! For those of you who use InstantCopy, you know that the process is a fairly lengthy one, so I'll try one more time using a different movie and see what happens. However, even using a different movie, why would two other programs such as DVD Shrink and Intervideo work fine without any problems and only InstantCopy is the one which is having issues?

Anyone having any thoughts on this?

[northcat_8]

First let me say that I strongly advise against Instant Copy 8....IC7 is better in my opinion but that's just my opinion...

Couple of things...

Hopefully you rip with Decrypter and just have IC8 go from HD to HD rather than disc to disc. Always more reliable as your HD will feed and receive data at a faster rate than your DVD drives.

first do not burn with IC8. Instant Copy will sometimes screw up the structure and it is best to check it before you burn it.

I use pdi2iso to convert the pdi files to an ISO file.

Then burn with Decrypter.

Those are just some general "rules of thumb" that I use when backing up a DVD with IC7. Matter of fact, I ONLY burn with Decrypter.

That's about all I can think of without knowing your IC8 settings.

If you have been to Pinnacle's message board you will find that you have plenty of company with your IC8 issues. I have 2 Pinnacle products, Studio 8 and IC7. Studio 8 is very buggy and I have never gotten it to burn a DVD...so from that experience, I do not trust pinnacle to burn anything. I use for exactly what I need it to do and that's it. I use IC7 to transcode the video and that's it. I rip with decrypter, go HD to HD with IC7, covert with pdi2iso and burn with decrypter.

If you haven't yet, you may be able to find some answers at www.mrbass.org

[hudster]

The new version of DVD decrypter can burn the instant copy files directly, so you don't have to convert to ISO before burning.

But I'd agree with Northcat, never burn with instant copy, too many errors.