I finally picked up a DVD burner. After hearing that Pioneer was the way to go, I got a DVR-A09XL. It reads DVDs and CDs fine, but whenever I put in a blank DVD (Memorex, so it isn't a cheapass generic brand), it looks like this.



Whenever a blank CD is put in, it looks the same, only replace "DVD-r" with "CD" in the picture. The other drive, which is a CD burner, reads the same blank CD fine. Any suggestions?

thats the way windows works, if you go into nero, then disc info, it will tell you the proper thing...




/me bursts out laughing
I found this quote by entering memorex and dvdr into to google, which should make you headbutt the desk:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/171008


G05 dye next time, try a datawrite. They should be cheaper and will be better.

Another disc worked. Note to self: buy better blank media. That was the only name I'd heard of while at the store, come to think of it, it probably wasn't the only one I'd heard of for a good reason. I tried another disc, and that worked. I guess I'll have to make the next 38 burns of relatively unimportant shit.

I've also searched around for this one, but haven't gotten a clear answer: burning VOB files decoded by DVD Decrypter with Nero's "Photo and Video - Burn DVD-Video Files" will produce something readable by competent DVD players, correct? If not, what's a good program for burning VOBs (I no longer have the DVD on hand, so can't re-decode)?

If dvddecrypter has touched it it is encryption free, it can be burnt in anything.

My prefered option is to construct the right DVD folders inside whatever you want the dvd name to be:
Audio_TS
Video_TS

audio_ts is just blank anyway, but older player like it. Then use a program called imgtool to make a highly compatible image. Then burnt the image off in dvddecrypter

http://www.coujo.de/
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video ... lassic.cfm

That's only going to work with DVD5s though, but if you have a dvd5, why don't you use DVDdecrypter iso read mode? That just makes a .iso file, then you switch it to write mode and burn.

If you mean you have a DVD9 as vobs, then that's not the best way of doing things in my opinion. I think the best thing to do is to create an iso, then mount that image in daemon tools. Then use a program called DVDrebuilder (frontend for CCE) to re-encode your video. You then use the above imgtool option i posted upa bit on the re-encoded movie. I don't think nero is really ratable in quality comparison, some people seem to disregard this and use it anyway.

Other plus about DVDrebuilder is you can distrubute encoding across many pcs and make a batch encoding farm if you have a decent network. You can then encode lots and lots and lots in a very short space of time. Handy if you do one of these dvd rentals pnline, like i do,

Thanks for the tip on DVD Decrypter, spud, tried a DVD5 to DVD-r and it worked great.

Hmm, followed two different guides and tried three different times to get a DVD 9 (original size 7.02 GB) to fit on a DVD 5 with DVDrebuilder and CCE basic, but the end results ranged from 3.17GB-3.30GB. I tried burning one, and it refused to play in my DVD player (which supports DVD-r, a DVD5 to DVD-r worked in it just fine).

I remember reading at the official site that it isn't able to encode EVERYTHING, so what would you recommend doing? Scrounging around here, I've noticed that test between 7 different progs and InterVideo DVD copy won, but many still use Pinnacle Instant copy - what program would you guys recommend using?

well, older versions had trouble with the odd episode disc, and mine wouldn't copy monkey (although the newest version does).

However, my setup is this:
CCE SP downloaded from emule. Its better than basic. Then you get a crack (normally in the same rar), which is called eclcce or something like that. Basically its just a loader for it.

Then you need to grab something that is a bit hard to get hold of. Basically its a dll file that goes in your avisynth folder. It doesn't actually come with avisynth, and the link on doom9 to it is 404, but it won't do squat without it.

Should look like this:


Then under the CCE settings you choose how much time you want to spend.

I've never had anything overly undersized, except when its only just over one layer and had a DTS track, so all it did was remove the DTS track and didn't bother encoding. Normally, its 4.38GB everytime, which is absolutely bang on the maximum capacity... oh and Butch Cassedy came out at 4.39GB one time, but i think that was because I was messing about with CPU priorities and my computer hung half way through since i put CCE on very low.

oh and just to cover out why its the best route. What it does is get the DVD, then just creates lots of avisynth scripts. It then takes the avisynth scripts and puts them into CCE. CCE is well... its industry standard mpeg encoder, there's not much to say. You get 3 folders, audio_ts, another one i can't recall the name of, and the all important video_ts. Delete the nameless one , then go back out of that directory and create your image of that folder.


The folder should be about 7GB, you delete the extra one and it goes down to 4.38GB. Then use imgburn and create an iso

edit: oh yes, i nearly forgot, DVDrebuilder sometimes has a bit of trouble with mixed content dvds, or at least it used to... you know the ones with screensavers and shit on.

Read up on numerous guides and sites, got all that down.

I stopped using CCE SP because it was causing problems - I'll try the CCE version with the ECL (btw, it looks like you're running an older version of DVDRebuilder, 0.79 is the latest I think).

yup, they keep updating it every two minutes

Excellent. Just tried the new version of CCE SP, and the DVD9 -> DVD5 went smoothly (if not tediously, but the 4 passes make the quality worth the wait).

Hopefully it'll work well on the other one that was giving me trouble.

Spud which file were you referring to? MPEG2Dec3dg.dll. If anyone needs that it's here:

http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=517471

yup, that's the one, I just searched google, but i first tried doom9 on their frontpage which is a 404. Make sure you have that file

damn, damn, damn.........I've just reread this. I was getting errors using ImgTool when it gets to the part to write to DVD with DVDdecrypter, because the iso was like 7 GB. So I used to just use Nero on the Video_TS folder, which did work OK.

But now I realise that by deleting everything bar the Video_TS folder, imagetool/dvddecrypter works just fine. Why does ImageTool Classic take into account all the other stuff, i.e. the empty Audio_TS folder and the AVS folder??

But, really thanks spud, that one sentence has saved me loads of effort and angst

because its technically a valid DVD structure, even though you don't mean it to be

Old DVD players MUST have audio_TS included, so it needs the root directory, and then consturcts that as a DVD. Beyond that though, you got a bit of freedom.

Technically you can put anything you want on a DVD movie disc; you often get a SOFTWARE folder, and exe outside of video_TS. This is standard DVD layout.

So what you should do is just delete the extra directory, and then click on the root (including the audio_TS folder!) and then make an iso of that. IMGtool does a lot of rearranging of files so the files are burnt in a particular order, and this is why i recommend it, you could just use nero but you might as well make it as compaible as possible... you never know when you'll come across a picky player