Why isn't there any useful software?

[MackemX]

@priapos, is your DVDROM on the same Master channel as your HD?

what is your setup?

[gitreel]

Ok, well you still need to ensure that the ripping isn't going slow, since that is still the most likely culprit. On that system something like DVD Shrink shouldn't take that long at all.

Make sure your IDE channel is set to DMA. If not then your ripper relies on your CPU to rip and even with the fastest of computers its still slow as hell. Try ripping a DVD in DVD Decryptor and looking at your task manager. If your CPU is hitting 90-100 then DMA is either not enabled or not working.

Check out the reported rip speed in Decryptor as you do this. Lots of 16x dvd-roms still only rip at around 1x-2x. Who knows why.

Adam,

I think I may have found part of the problem. My primary IDE channel is set to pio. I am not able to change it to dma. I have 'dma if available' checked, but it is still in pio. Do I need a driver update?

The secondary ide is fine, in ultra dma.

I should add that 'device 0' is fine as well. It is only 'device 1' of my primary ide that is stuck in pio.

Go into the device manager in the my system part of the control panel.
Go into the Ide/atapi controllers
Right click whatever channel you have the burner on and hit uninstall.

Let the computer reboot and redetect that channel, and it will go back to DMA mode.

[solarfox]

Make sure your IDE channel is set to DMA. If not then your ripper relies on your CPU to rip and even with the fastest of computers its still slow as hell. Try ripping a DVD in DVD Decryptor and looking at your task manager. If your CPU is hitting 90-100 then DMA is either not enabled or not working.

You know, I'd be willing to bet this is part of priapos' problem... Some programs seem to cope better with this issue than others, which can fool you into thinking your system's OK when it isn't.

Example: I inadvertently had DMA turned off on my DVD burner for ages, and never realized it because Prassi PrimoDVD and ULead DVD Workshop both burned DVD-R's in about the amount of time you would expect for the media type being used. When I recently upgraded from the Pioneer A04 to the A07, I still didn't realize anything was amiss because DVDWS would still burn 4X media in the right amount of time; about 15 - 20 minutes for a full disc.

Then, one day, I needed to back up some data files. Since DVDWS doesn't do data discs, and since the copy of Prassi that came with the A04 wouldn't recognize the A07, I went out and picked up a copy of Nero 6. (Fry's had a good sale. ) Nero 6 took well over an hour(!) to burn 3Gb of data to a 4X DVD-R, while the buffer-level bargraph kept hopping up and down every few seconds, and I was all set to blame Nero for being screwed up when some voice in the back of my head suddenly suggested that maybe that hopping bargraph meant the drive wasn't getting its data fast enough and kept buffer-underrunning...

So I checked the system settings, and SURPRISE! Apparently, ULead's burning engine doesn't care, and can keep the drive adequately fed with data even without DMA enabled, but Nero's engine chokes without it.

Check out the reported rip speed in Decryptor as you do this. Lots of 16x dvd-roms still only rip at around 1x-2x. Who knows why.

Maybe they're starting to lock DVD-ROM drives the way they lock DVD burners? After all, there's no legitimate reason why you'd need to be able to read a DVD-Video any faster than 1X anyway, right?

[solarfox]

Ha -- looks like the thread moved on while I was writing. (The hazards of trying to do "real" work and post at the same time, I suppose!)

I should add that 'device 0' is fine as well. It is only 'device 1' of my primary ide that is stuck in pio.

Device 0 would be your boot hard drive, then, and Device 1 would be the DVD burner?

It's possible these two devices just don't get along. Try Gitreel's suggestion, and if that doesn't set things straight, you might have to move the DVD burner over to the secondary IDE channel. (If so, make it the secondary master if you can.)

[MackemX]

Maybe they're starting to lock DVD-ROM drives the way they lock DVD burners? After all, there's no legitimate reason why you'd need to be able to read a DVD-Video any faster than 1X anyway, right?

I'm sure they started restricting some DVD-ROM's rip speeds long before burners arrived

@gitreel & solarfox, didn't he state he's using a DVD-ROM and not a burner to rip the DVD when Adam told him to get one?

Adam,

I am using a dvd rom.

I was confused so that's why I asked what his setup of his EIDE's but I'm still lost

[FOO]

Well ,the obvious question now is what IS on the IDE0 slave ?
Your DVD rom ?

[Thomas Davie]

I'm running a p4 northwood, so I don't believe that is really the problem. Further, the fact that certain software is able to do the job in a fraction of the time, is proof enough that it aint the processors fault. I also have 2 gigs of ram. I blame the software.

Ok, I have something to work with here. You've got a similar system to mine (P4 Northwood OCd to 3 Ghz, 533 bus, AIW 8500 video card). I'm using a Nec 1300a to rip (hacked firmware), and get 3.1-3.5x ripping speeds normally, but have seen it occasionally got to 5.1x. This is with using DVD Decrypter.

Using DVD Shrink 3.2 on my laptop (Athlon 2500, 512 mb ram, shared video), it takes 1 hour to rip/encode.

You've got a bottleneck somewhere on your system, and it isn't the software. Try searching for hacked firmware for your DVD drive perhaps (www.cdfreaks.com and search the message boards).

Tom

[Kool_Aid]

Never, ever, ever, put a removable media drive (ie: cd/dvd) as a slave on your primary channel, behind your C:\ drive.

It's better to never share any channel with hard drives and removable media drives.

The removable drives will slow down your hard drives to whatever mode your removable drives run at.

Keep you hard drives on one channel, and your removable drives on another.

Make your DVD burner the master, on the secondary channel.

If you run out of options, you can always get IDE add in cards, so you can add as many channels as you have IDE slots available.

I run 9 drives in my PC, and the only thing on the primary channel, is my O.S. (WinXP).

[FOO]

The removable drives will slow down your hard drives to whatever mode your removable drives run at.

I'd be interested in knowing why that is. I don't think I believe it

[johns0]

I got my dvd burner on primary slave and my primary hdd runs at full speed.I did have a motherboard back in 1998 that slowed down the ide with different speed devices.

[Kool_Aid]

A quick google turned up this.......
.
.

Hard Disk and ATAPI Device Channel Sharing: There are several reasons why optical drives (or other ATAPI devices) should not be shared on the same channel as a fast hard disk. ATAPI allows the use of the same physical channels as IDE/ATA, but it is not the same protocol; ATAPI uses a much more complicated command structure. Opticals are also generally much slower devices than hard disks, so they can slow a hard disk down when sharing a channel. Finally, some ATAPI devices cannot deal with DMA bus mastering drivers, and will cause a problem if you try to enable bus mastering for a hard disk on a channel they are using.

.
.
If this is not true anymore, it's news to me.

[gitreel]

I have got my dvd burner as primary slave as well and it does not slow down my hard drive....Me thinks Kool_Aid is full of s**t.

[johns0]

A quick google turned up this......

1. All modern motherboard chipsets support independent device timing...this means an ATA100 deivce can share a cable with an ATA33 device & they'll run at their respective speeds, independent of each other. In other words, the ATA100 will run at 100mb/sec, & the ATA33 will run at 33mb/sec when sharing the same cable...the slower device will NOT effect the speed of the faster device.

2. Data transfers are more efficient between channels (primary to secondary, or secondary to primary), rather than between devices sharing the same channel.

This is true and not news to me.

[Kool_Aid]

This is true and not news to me.

And what does that have to do with sharing IDE and ATAPI drives, on the same cable/channel?

You are trying to compare apples and oranges.

[lordsmurf]

This is true and not news to me.

And what does that have to do with sharing IDE and ATAPI drives, on the same cable/channel?

You are trying to compare apples and oranges.

It is the same thing.
Most new boards have independent timing on the same cable/channel.

My new AMD system (which by the way, AMD sucks) has ATA133 and devices are timed independently. Same for the Promise cards I use in various systems. A hard drive and a optical drive on the same cable will still result in the HD running ATA100 and the DVD running ATA66.

Only older systems had limitations. New ones do not.

[freestyler]

Update the drivers to your IDE controller and check to see if you're using 80 pin ultra ide cabling as opposed to slow 40 pin cabling.

[FOO]

A quick google turned up this.......
.
.

Hard Disk and ATAPI Device Channel Sharing: There are several reasons why optical drives (or other ATAPI devices) should not be shared on the same channel as a fast hard disk. ATAPI allows the use of the same physical channels as IDE/ATA, but it is not the same protocol; ATAPI uses a much more complicated command structure. Opticals are also generally much slower devices than hard disks, so they can slow a hard disk down when sharing a channel. Finally, some ATAPI devices cannot deal with DMA bus mastering drivers, and will cause a problem if you try to enable bus mastering for a hard disk on a channel they are using.

.
.
If this is not true anymore, it's news to me.

The quick Google search turned up nothing and we can't tell if it's true
or not because it contains zero information. Drivel.

1. WHY does a different protocol affect the other device ? It's not
talking to the other device.

2. WHY does a slow drive on one channel affect the other one ? Again,
the optical could be completely dead and we could talk to the hard drive.

3. What does "cause a problem" mean. WHY can't you have DMA on one,
and PIO on the other ?

4. Why can't people tell the difference between information and bullshit
from people that don't know and don't know that they don't know ?

[sammie]

Sorry, but just had to laugh at how far we've come from when early TMPEGenc was a "fast" encoder and it took somewhere between 2 - 4 DAYS to do a movie, and you didn't dare touch the computer the whole time or it would crash. Now we are quibbling about an hour or less.

I agree, sometimes it's slow, but I backed up 5 movies in one evening recently, just before leaving for vacation. Admittedly running two computers, but I still had time to cook dinner and pack, and I pulled up some maps and reservations for the trip while programs were running, even with disks burning without any issues.

[Kool_Aid]

The quick Google search turned up nothing and we can't tell if it's true
or not because it contains zero information. Drivel.

Is it possible that this was once true, but now technology has been improved, so it does not apply anymore?

Do you think that might be possible?

Huh?

I did another search and came up with this, from the "[hard]ocp" site...
.
.

there is a myth about putting optical drives on the same channel as HDDs, it is just that a myth, but it keeps getting reinforced by the way Windows deals with ATA\ATAPI issues
basically with Independent Device Timing two devices (master\slave) both transfer their data at their own highest speed, but, they both either have to be PIO (which is glacially slow) or UDMA, if one defaults to PIO because of some issue, Windows will default the other as well. There was a time when CDROMs where only PIO, and HDDs where DMA, for that period of history you didnt want to share a channel, but modern opticals are UDMA mode2 so there is rarely any issue

[Kool_Aid]

Whatever......

[solarfox]

they both either have to be PIO (which is glacially slow) or UDMA, if one defaults to PIO because of some issue, Windows will default the other as well.

Now that I would be inclined to believe. Windows is depressingly incompetent at managing hardware.

[US Guy]

I have been using a number of the local favorite software including dvdshrink/dvd2one/decrypter/fab/santa/nero/dvdcopy/clonedvd/etc... I try almost every new product that comes out.

There is still one terrible problem, the process is just way too slow. Computers have more than enough computing power to make the process faster, but software seems to lag. 45 minutes to an hour is just too long. Even with faster burners, the ripping takes forever. Further, most of these software titles tie up the processor rendering the computer unusable for hours.

The only software that I have found useful is dvdcopy2. It is much much faster than anything else out there. It also doesn't tie up the processor. You hardly know its running. Problem is that you get pixelation from time to time. I am watching this developer closely, since they seem closest to perfection.

Does anyone else find the copy process too cumbersom, or is everyone more patient than present company?

Thoughts?

I can offer you 3 solutions, take you pick:
1 - buy a new and super fast computer with fastest interfaces and peripherals
2 - buy the original DVDs
3 - forget it, you aint worth it

You deserv option 3.

[MackemX]

3 - forget it, you aint worth it

You deserv option 3.

lol , I see you have also been to the videohelp school of pathetic attitudes