Hi guys, I am new to this forum, so let me tell you what burning hardware and software I am using. I am using an unknown DVD-ROM drive and a Pacific Digital 8X8 USB burner, the U-30223. Let me say right at the outset that I do not think much of this drive. I got it last year but I only opened it three weeks ago so I am a real newb when it comes to burning. As for software, I have attempted to use DVDShrink 3.2, Dvd Decrypter, Nero 6, etc. I have been trying to burn 5 or 6 dvds lately and they just won't let me burn them. I have tried doing it all with DVDShrink, like letting it analyze, compress, encode and then letting it use the Nero engine to burn, and I also have tried using DVD Decrypter to rip the discs to my hard drive and that has not worked so well either. It seems that it works about 50% of the time. I have burned about 5 discs in the past week along with 5 that just wouldn't burn. I have tried downloading trial versions of programs like CloneDVD and AnyDVD and DVD43 and DVD X Copy Xpress and none of them seem to be able to remove whatever encryption is on these discs. I get errors like "invalid block address" in shrink, as well as errors like "errors reading sectors" in my DVD X Copy Xpress. I also find DVDShrink locking me up on me so bad sometimes that I have to restart my computer. I have a 1.6 ghz Athlon XP1900 processor which is not that much anymore I know, but I do have 1 gig of pc2700 ram and I'm never using more than 400 of it so I don't see why this should be happening. I would just like one method that would let me burn all of my discs. It could be an all-in-one package that has all the LATEST and BEST decryption/copy-protection-removal schemes out there, or it could be a combination of a couple of programs that are very good at this stuff. I would be willing to pay a bit of money for them but I don't want to waste my money on a lame program that just won't do the job. I have punched in a lot of the errors that I have gotten with these software packages on google and a lot of the links have led me to this mecca that you people call AfterDawn.com forums. I have learned a little bit from these forums so far and I plan to try to learn as much as I can because there seems to be a treasure trove of information here. I would love if people here could give me their comments on what I've said so far. Thanks very much, and I look forward to meeting you fine people. Jacob
Let me also say that when programs like DVDShrink and Decrypter try to rip/encode/burn/analyze my discs sometimes, they take a ridiculously long time. Like DVDShrink will take maybe 10 minutes to analyze a movie, or DVD Decrypter will take 2 hours to rip a movie, or DVDShrink will take 45 minutes to encode.
