Software

[Bucknaked]

I bought meself a DVD burner today. $119 i thought was a pretty cool deal. I paid that 2 years ago for my cd burner. Anyway, I thought I'd give it a test by copying one of our DVD's. But i got a message to say its copy protected. Is there preferred software that gets yo around this little problem. I want to start to copy my 4 year olds dvd's now so I can save them fom being scratched and thrown around liek he has a habit of doing. This is the main reason i got the dvd burner to copy our originals and give him the copy. If he scratches them, then its only a copy of the original again. Saves a $30 dvd from becoming damaged.

Cheers

Buckie

[bindi]

Yes the only programs that work are DVD decrypter and DVD shrink. You can find these on www.download.com I think

I know what you mean, that's mainly what I use my burner for. I copy the ones I already have so that if they get scratched then it's only a copy. Also I use it to backup my harddrive (until I get an extra HD that is).

[Bucknaked]

Thanks Bindi. Will go check it out now

[EBII Ghia]

Try www.doom9.org for all your dvd burning/editing software and its all free. DVD shrink is the easiest program for backing up DVDs you already own. :voldar02:

[Bucknaked]

I think I'e got a problem. My pc keeps turning itself off during a burn. I have to let it sit for a few minutes before thruning it back on, or it keeps switching itself off. I hate computers. Now I have to work out what hell this means. Grrrrrr

Thanks for the sites guys. Appreciate it

[Casper]

Originally Posted by Bucknaked

I think I'e got a problem. My pc keeps turning itself off during a burn. I have to let it sit for a few minutes before thruning it back on, or it keeps switching itself off. I hate computers. Now I have to work out what hell this means. Grrrrrr

Thanks for the sites guys. Appreciate it

I'd take a guess and say its overheating. If its a pentium they have the safety mechanism to shut down to avoid damage.

[Bucknaked]

Originally Posted by Casper

I'd take a guess and say its overheating. If its a pentium they have the safety mechanism to shut down to avoid damage.

Its a Celeron. So how do I keep it cool? My guess is the burner is making my life difficult.

Sounds like a power supply problem.

Burning a DVD consumes more power than what it would normally. Your power supply isn't coping with the extra load i suspect.

Before you go and upgrade your power supply, open up your computer when it is off and unplugged and get rid of all the dust around the power supply vents. Also do this for the back of the computer, near the power supply fan. This may help as if it is currently blocked up with dust it could be more hot than it should and the rise in temp causes it to shut itself down.

See how it goes. ;)

(ps if you are not confident in doing this kind of thing then don't do it!)

Originally Posted by Casper

I'd take a guess and say its overheating. If its a pentium they have the safety mechanism to shut down to avoid damage.

Could be that as well.

Again dust could be a contributor, in the heatsink.

Give it a test burn with the side of the case off and a desktop/pedestal fan pointed into it.

[Bucknaked]

No its cool. I built this computer. Maybe thats the problem. lol. I will check the size of the supply as its about 2 year old. BUt maybe that is the problem. I will open it up and check the power supply and give it a dusting at the same time.

I got a small fan, so I might give that a crack too. Thankyou

[Teleto]

Get DVD Shrink 3.2 and youll need the latest Nero as well to go with it. Its simple as to use

[Bucknaked]

I just downloaded the shrink program and nero was in the bundle. So that should be all i need?

[b2tf]

Yeah, you should be right with that.

Sounds like a good price, what brand is it?

[FreezeR]

You'll need another bit of software, needed to bypass the copy protection.... Try dvd43, its a tiny program that sits in the taskbar whenever you need it.

Just load up the dvd and turn it on and it will bypass any protection that is on the dvd

www.dvd43.com

Have fun

[Bucknaked]

Originally Posted by back2thefutura

Yeah, you should be right with that.

Sounds like a good price, what brand is it?

LG. The guy in the computer store said that I can have either Liteon or LG for the same price. He says the LG is a little better.

Originally Posted by FreezeR

You'll need another bit of software, needed to bypass the copy protection.... Try dvd43, its a tiny program that sits in the taskbar whenever you need it.

Just load up the dvd and turn it on and it will bypass any protection that is on the dvd

www.dvd43.com

Have fun

Just downloading it. Theres a few programs available. If I can ever get this shut down problem sorted, i'll have plenty to keep me busy

[FoxMulder]

You could also check out Video Help for some tutorials and software. There's even software to remove things from the menu of the DVD, so that when you remove it to help shrink the DVD, it's no longer a defunct option.

[Quasi]

Originally Posted by Bucknaked

LG. The guy in the computer store said that I can have either Liteon or LG for the same price. He says the LG is a little better.

Considering Lite-On are/were responsible for producing the internal components for most of the big name brands, I wouldn't worry about that too much. Besides, Lite-On have always been a stable unit, whereas I stopped selling LG as soon as I took over a computer shop last year. I generally don't use, or recommend LG stuff.

At the same time, there are a few other brands out there I would not hesitate to use, or recommend. Pioneer and Sony, for a start. Sometimes an extra few dollars is more worthwhile in the long run.

[Casper]

Personally I like the Pioneer burners and DVD readers. I will however be quite happy with a Lite-On. As far as burners go the Lite-On's have always had excellent reviews. LG's are not so great though, have heard of them being a bit dodgy... just like the HP's.

[bindi]

Originally Posted by Bucknaked

I just downloaded the shrink program and nero was in the bundle. So that should be all i need?

This is how I work it. Nero kept giving me bad burns.

1) DVD Decrypter - it copies the movie from the disc to the hard drive.
2) DVD Shrink - it will backup (copy) the movie from the hard drive to the brand new dvd. Remember you have to have space in your hard drive for the program to tempfile it.

Also remember that the brand of blank dvd is important. I have tried all different types of blanks but the only two that seem to be good are Verbatim and TDK. But that could just be my fussy machine. Also I have a Lite-On DVD burner just fyi.

[Bucknaked]

Originally Posted by Quasi

Considering Lite-On are/were responsible for producing the internal components for most of the big name brands, I wouldn't worry about that too much. Besides, Lite-On have always been a stable unit, whereas I stopped selling LG as soon as I took over a computer shop last year. I generally don't use, or recommend LG stuff.

At the same time, there are a few other brands out there I would not hesitate to use, or recommend. Pioneer and Sony, for a start. Sometimes an extra few dollars is more worthwhile in the long run.

Which shop do you have Quasi. I have to buy parts from somewhere. Handy to have someone from forums in the local area

I had a liteon cd burner. Its a great unit, only ever had 1 or 2 bad burns

By the way guys, i appreciate your help. I did some dust reduction work this moning from the heat sink on the cpu. After I had it shutdown on me this morning, i went into the CPU health in the bios as was running at 93 degrees. I am surprised it didn't melt. Anyway, after a clean, i have relocated the box to a higher spot, removed the sides and have stuck a fan blowingon the cpu. Successfully made it thru 1 burn. So I'm stoked.

Again, thankyou to everyone with their idea's and suggestions. Appreciate it

[The MaDDeSTMaN]

Good to hear you seem to have worked out what was causing the shutdowns, 93 degrees, ouch, which celeron are you running?

I think it's interesting that a few years ago, people were complaining about and having trouble with hot AMD cpus, now it's Intel cpus that people are having trouble keeping cool. We're running AMD XP 2800+ (Barton core) CPUs and they rarely ever even reach 60 degrees (c), and from what I've read some of the more expensive Intel CPUs go above 70 degrees within a few minutes of being started up, without any real load being placed on them, and start throttling (slowing themselves down in order to reduce heat output) practically as soon as they are subjected to a decent workload, which sort of defeats the purpose of buying a "faster", more expensive CPU when you can't use it's full potential and a "slower", cheaper CPU actually runs faster because it doesn't have to slow itself down to attempt to keep cool.

Oh, BTW, if you've got DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink, that should be all you need for making backups of your DVDs. Here are some tips:

• To discover if a DVD is single layer or dual layer (sometimes the covers don't give you that information), start up DVD Decrypter, put the DVD into your drive & press R (or select Read from the Mode -> ISO menu), and have a look in the box on the right which gives you all the information you could need about the DVD, look at the line that says "Number of Layers:" & if it doesn't say 1, then you'll either need to use DVD Shrink to squash it down to a small enough size to fit onto a single layer DVD, or you'll have to copy it onto a (more expensive) dual layer blank DVD.
  
  .
• Unless you really want all the different languages that some DVDs offer, you can remove them in DVD shrink by removing the tick from the tickboxs, or you can get DVD Shrink to automatically only have selected the language you want by going to by selecting Preferences... from the edit menu, selecting the 'Stream Selections' tab, and selecting the language you want from the 'Audio language and coding type:' and 'Subpicture language:' selections.
  
  .
• Ensure DVD shrink is shrinking your DVDs down to single-layer size by checking that DVD-5 (4.7GB) is selected in the 'Target DVD size:' selector in the Preferences tab of the DVD Shrink Preferences.
  
  .
• Ensure DVD Shrink does do a 'Deep analysis' of the DVD, it does take a lot longer, but it can do a better job of shrinking the DVD without it becoming obvious that it's been shrunk that way.
  .
• Sometimes DVD Shrink is unable to shrink a DVD down enough to fit on a single layer DVD, and gives you a warning message. If it does, ignore the error message and select Yes, that you do want to continue. When it has finished, load the ISO image it has just created (by selecting 'Open Disk Image' from the File menu, and selecting the file it just created, then getting it to attempt to shrink that as if it was a normal DVD, which is can usually do, leaving you with a copy which will fit on a single-layer DVD, just remember to give it a new filename when it comes time to select where to save the ISO image.
  

I hope I've made sense, and that my tips prove useful

*edit*: forgot to add, LuvinmyEB uses a SONY DRU-700A DVD burner, I use a LG 4120B and my brother uses a Pioneer, and none of us have had any problems with the drives at all. We used to use Princo DVD-Rs, but after having a few problems with them have switched to using Riteks, and so far we have had no problems with those, slightly more expensive then the Princo DVD-Rs, but definately much better, and still not exactly expensive...

[Yum-Yum]

Geez...I'm glad I came across this thread muwhahahaha!!!

[loxxr6]

Try anydvd.

Its available either through their website or from various p2p programs.

[loxxr6]

I've never heard of DVD Decrypter.

For copying I just have anydvd in the background to let me use any region/bypass security and dvdshrink to make the copy. I have Nero too but don't use it.

I've not long had my Pioneer 109 and no coaster's(dud burns) yet. The blanks are a generic brand from Strathfield Car Radios.

[Yum-Yum]

Originally Posted by loxxr6

I've never heard of DVD Decrypter.

For copying I just have anydvd in the background to let me use any region/bypass security and dvdshrink to make the copy. I have Nero too but don't use it.

I've not long had my Pioneer 109 and no coaster's(dud burns) yet. The blanks are a generic brand from Strathfield Car Radios.

I only found out about Shrink a couple of days ago from a friend and am gonna try it sometime today, I'll try using TDK discs from the Warehouse so hopefully they'll work. The guy who told me about Shrink said I'll need Nero but after reading this thread...I don't know now
:

[bindi]

Originally Posted by Yum-Yum

I only found out about Shrink a couple of days ago from a friend and am gonna try it sometime today, I'll try using TDK discs from the Warehouse so hopefully they'll work. The guy who told me about Shrink said I'll need Nero but after reading this thread...I don't know now
:

LOL we've confused you sorry darlin' but after much distress and a fair number of dud DVD copies, how I mentioned before is the only way I have been able to successfully burn movies. And believe me, I had tried EVERYTHING - 22 dud DVDs later mind you, trying every conceivable program offered on the net.

DVD decrypter gets past all the copyrighting crap, and dvd shrink burns clean and dud-free copies. Nero had issues (my copy of Starsky and Hutch was a culprit of frame freezing thanks to Nero).

My thanks to the Maddestman, he explained it all very well. Once you have used the programs you will understand wtf he in on about... he has NOT lost his marbles (well, not on this particular subject anyhow hee hee hee).

[Bucknaked]

Originally Posted by bindi

My thanks to the Maddestman, he explained it all very well. Once you have used the programs you will understand wtf he in on about... he has NOT lost his marbles (well, not on this particular subject anyhow hee hee hee).

Definatley. I went through your explanations and it is started to make more sense. Thankyou for the detailed information and images. The only thing I couldn't do is find my preferences in DVD shrink. I might have a different version.

Thanks

[Bucknaked]

I found the preferences. I had to download a new DVD shrink. The one I had was called "Easy DVD Shrink" Who would have thought, several programs with the same or similar names. :

[Bucknaked]

Originally Posted by The MaDDeSTMaN

Good to hear you seem to have worked out what was causing the shutdowns, 93 degrees, ouch, which celeron are you running?

Its a Celeron 1.7 I built about 2 years ago. I like to space my rebuilds 2 years a part. Make good use of the hardware before upgrading. Usually upgrade the key components and then when a good deal comes up on things like burners, hard drive's and video cards, i get those parts then.

[FASTXR]

I just insert the original DVD, shrink it to the hard drive using DVD Shrink and then burn it to a blank DVD using Nero. I'd say I have about a 98% success rate this way.
By the way, I have a Samsung DVD burner (not sure of the model number), and always use TDK DVDs. I've tried others but had problems - the TDKs are great.