Dvd Burners

[TCH-Rob]

Hey gang,

 

I think I am goung to get a DVD burner. I need to start making backups of my video DVD's. It isnt what you think, my kids have a number of DVD's that keep getting scratched and rubbed all over. I figure a good way to save me from having to buy them every few months over again would be to buy it once, copy it and use the copy while keeping the master in a safe place.

 

So my question, what is a good burner? What should I pay for one? I know I can go to sites that give reviews but I trust my family to guide me to a good item.

[TCH-Don]

My question is will the burner let you copy a comercial DVD?

or will you run into a copy protection scheme.

I hope to get a DVD burner for backup too,

but it might be nice to copy the ones we watch a lot.

[TCH-Dick]

A burner is a burner, what determines what you can and cant copy is the software. I use DVD X copy platinum (who recently got sued by the motion picture assoc. and lost) Just about any dvd burning software will let you make a back up of the movie only, theres only a few that make complete back ups including all of the special features.

 

I have a NU technologies burner 8X dvd write, 42 X CD write, I can burn a DVD in about in about 10 minutes, and an audio CD in about 1.5 minutes

[TCH-Dick]

There are ways to copy commercial DVDs. But by the time you purchase the blanks that you can fit a standard movie on, you might as well buy a second copy. You can rip a movie to fit on a standard blank DVD, but the quality is going to be lower(most of the time).

My kids have a large collection of DVDs and have the same problem.

I bought a Skip Doctor and it fixed them 90% of the time.

[Madmanmcp]

WEll guys, you may be a minute too late. There was just a ruling made against DVD Xcopy which made them modify the program they sold. www.dvdxcopy.com

 

Their program allowed you to get around the copy protection and did a straight 1 to 1 DVD copy of most DVD movies.

 

But with the current ruling they have removed this capability and you can not copy copy protected DVD anymore (without another ripper). They have a forum and you can read about it there. forum.321studios.com

[TCH-Bruce]

MadmanMCP is correct. They had 7 days to remove the program from stores and cease selling it as of last Friday. But their forum said they will give the ripper to anyone that requests it. At least it did on Wednesday.

[TCH-Dick]

Personally I dont think they will 100% stop people from making copies of stuff they own, they tried with cassetes, then with VHS, then they tried again when CD burners came out, they may get a little further than they have in the past, but they wont stop it, just like they have failed miserably in stopping file sharring.

 

Yes 321 studios cant make dvd x copy with the ripper anymore, but i gurantee you theres 1000 other guys that can and will

[Head Guru]

Fair Use! Is what we are talking about.

 

If I spend $29 for the Monsters Inc. DVD for my kids why is it illegal for me to burn a backup copy for self use. Why? The DMCA simply states it is illegal to reverse engineer copy protections.

 

I say ^%$%$ the DMCA.

 

If I own the orginal I should have every right to make a copy of it. Ever see a 6 year old with a DVD? I have its not pretty.

 

I have several DVD Burners.

 

I think the LITEON'S are great bang for the buck!

[Head Guru]

DVD Shrink does everything that dvdx copy does and its free.

[james8547]

I highly recommend LiteOns. As previously stated, they are the best bang for the buck. But some people find it to be a bit noisy. Pioneer is my choice of DVD burners but is a bit more expensive. Sony is also good.

[DarqFlare]

Wow, I was under the impression LiteOn sucked. Oh well..

 

I have a Sony DVD/CDRW Combo drive. It's nice. I thinka DVD+/-R +/-RW will be my next acquisition.

[TCH-Rob]

Ever see a 6 year old with a DVD?

 

Like my 2 year old does when he wants to watch his favorite and not ask daddy. They dont look too good after being forced down a VCR either. And at $1 a blank I can make 15 or more of them before it is tha same as the cost of a new DVD. And as to quality, well a two and five year old dont complain too much about that.

[Madmanmcp]

I'll have to take a look at DVD Shrink, thanks HG. But is it truly like DVD Xcopy Express? With Express I can do 2 clicks and it is completed...but I have a DVD Burner and a DVD reader so there is no swaping or burning to the HD first.

 

Another thing folks will need to know is both DVD Xcopy and Shrink will need to have the "burning" software installed. Nero is my choice.

[arvind]

I have Sony's DRU-510A one of the best Dual burning ie + and - ! I use Nero Vision and in my opinion it does everything quite simply. IF you want to go more indept I suggest you use TMPEnc DVD Author and TMPEnc to convert the video files.

[TCH-Bruce]

We just bought a new desktop Sony RS-530 that has a DVD Rom and DVD +/- RW burner in it. I also picked up a copy of DVD XCopy Express last weekend after reading they had to stop selling it. haven't got the machine completely configured yet but close. Been working on it the last two evenings. Can't wait to try the DVD copy.

[Madmanmcp]

We just bought a new desktop Sony RS-530 that has a DVD Rom and DVD +/- RW burner in it.

 

Check the specs and make sure it also supports +/- R. From the burns I have done and from reading the forums over there for the last year there are issues with all the different formats and which drives will work with each one. You may be able to burn onto a +RW but you will have difficulity playing the movie later on a different reader.

 

Also be prepared to make a lot of coasters

[TCH-Bruce]

We just bought a new desktop Sony RS-530 that has a DVD Rom and DVD +/- RW burner in it.

 

Check the specs and make sure it also supports +/- R. From the burns I have done and from reading the forums over there for the last year there are issues with all the different formats and which drives will work with each one. You may be able to burn onto a +RW but you will have difficulity playing the movie later on a different reader.

 

Also be prepared to make a lot of coasters

Yes, it does. it will do DVD -R, DVD +R and DVD -/+ RW as well as CD-R and CD-RW.

 

I was told to try -R discs which seem to be the most portable format. What I was told, haven't burned any yet. Still trying to get the machine configured with what was on the old pc.

 

Now the same person is telling me +R is more compatible. Does anyone here know which is more compatible?

Edited March 1, 2004 by TCH-Bruce

[TCH-Rob]

Well, I got the Memorex True8X Dual recorder. It is 8X +-R, 4X+-RW, 12X read for DVD and 24X CD-R/RW and 40 read. I got DVD Shrink ad with Nero that came with the burner things work smoothly. One or two clicks and it is over. Now if I was smart enough and read the DVD blank labels, I got 1X. Sigh, oh well.

[borfast]

I've been thinking about buying a DVD recorder, too. But to tell you the truth, it will be the first DVD thing to enter my house. No, I don't even have a set top box on my living room to watch some movies, only my old VHS

 

Besides, I never looked much into this, so basically, I'm a complete ignorant when it comes to DVDs.

 

Let me ask you guys a couple of things:

 

1 - What's the difference between +R and -R?

 

2 - I've heard that a movie DVD has more data in it than you can fit into a regular blank DVD purchased at a computer store. Is that true? Is that why you can't make a copy of a movie DVD?

 

 

Thanks

Edited March 5, 2004 by TCH-Raul

[Madmanmcp]

Raul, the +/- R is just a difference in the recording format, two manufacturers decided to format differently...like German and English. For instance the 1st 4 bytes in +R are the recording speed whereas the 1st 10 bytes in -R is the starting block of data. This is an example.

 

Yes the DVD's that are made are actually burned at two layers, and upper and lower layer. The burners you buy at home only burn one layer so you do not get to fit as much on a home burned DVD. BUt compression is used to fit most of the movie on the home burners.

[borfast]

OK, so that means I'll buy a +R/-R so I can purchase any type of blank DVD without any worries.

By the way, is one of those formats better than the other?

 

As for the two layers, I do remember reading about that somewhere a long time ago but never associated the two facts.

 

Bob, how is that compression stuff done? Is it like ripping a DVD movie into a CD, meaning you'll lose the menus, language selection, etc? That's another are where I'm a complete ignorant: movie ripping, compression, etc but I'd like to know more about it so eventually I can make backup copies, just like Rob said.

[Madmanmcp]

Which is better, +/-R, not exactly sure if there is a technical reason for one being better than the other. I think its more of a what you have and need to use to make it work for you. I use the +R because I can get these to work in all the players I have. It works on My wife's Compaq DVD and my HP. It also works on the DVD player we have in the Family room and on my Son's EMachine and his PS2.

 

So I would suggest you start off not buying in bulk till you determine which format is best for you.

 

Compression. I don't want to step outside my expertise but I'll tell you the way I understand it, or "believe" I understand it . DVD XCopy at first was not able to fit a straight 1-1 DVD movie and we were stuck with 1-2 copy burn. They started to use a compression scheme a little while ago which has since fixed this issue and I get mostly all my copies to fit on 1 DVD, menus, headers and trailers. What the other programs do I don't know since I have only used DVD XCopy.

 

How its done. DVD XCopy uses a "ripper" which reads the DVD first and then strips off the DVD protection and copies the left over to the hard drive. It then reads this and runs it through the compression and burns the final output to the DVD. So its not a straight read from one and write to the other. All this ripping and compression takes a high end machine to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time.

[TCH-Bruce]

A good place for information

 

www.dvdrhelp.com

[TCH-Rob]

Raul,

 

I had to buy a new DVD player too. Mine was old enough that it would not read DVD R/RW disks. The one I got will read both DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW. If you are getting a DVD player, make sure it will read the disks as not all of them will. Some will read -R and not +R as well, check the DVD player and you will know what kind of disks to get.

 

I was making a back up of one of my kids movies with DVD Shrink, the freeware, and even with the compression I still had to kill a language file. It was ok though, I don't speak French so I removed it (France Surrenders!) and it was able to fit it all onto one disk fine. It has all of the menus and I really can not tell the difference in quality of the movie.