Hi I have just brought this from Aldi for £60 are these any good? they burn + and - disc's. what is the best software to use to back up dvd's on to dvd-r?. I understand about macrovision and copywrite etc but nothing else!. please can you help,what is an easy way to back up and where can you get the programs from?. cheers.
vitascope, I am unfamiliar with that burner brand name. Being able to burn both formats is an advantage.Those certain pesky stand alones will be the ones having problems reading those backups. Software? You came to the right spot.You need: 1) a ripper= dvd shrink and dvd decrypter are free programs and do a great job. dvd decrypter is a more powerful ripper and has a burning engine.They usually pull off the encryptions,"copywrites" but sometimes have trouble. Another program,although not free, is anydvd by slysoft. This proggy runs in the background to give dvd shrink a kick start on those newer encryptions. 2) Those larger movies will have to be compressed to fit on single 4.7 gig disc. This is where dvd shrink comes in. It will compress them,and has extra enhancements to make those copies look near original quality. Dvd shrink will not burn. 3) Burning software: dvd decrypter and nero work very well with dvd shrink.Shrink has settings to automatically burn to either program,with no extra steps. You can get a free trial of nero for 30 days if you like. Here are some great guides by bbmayo that you can use to learn these programs: http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/index.html Easiest way to backup? I use dvd shrink/reauthor main movie only/click backup/check all my settings/hit ok and that is all she wrote. A high quality duplicate in 20 -30 minutes,depending on how much I am compressing it. The enhancements will take longer if you use them.
Hi Thanks for your advice, I have backed up one last night ok using shrink and the method you advised at first glance dvd+sound are excellent. I will watch it in the next couple of days. Do all films back up ok,or do so jump or skip? Thanks for your help
Have you tried burning a CD yet - I'm having trouble woth this aspect. DVD's quick and good, CD's hanging even though it spins up? Tried different discs, and different programs (Nero, Roxio) The name Gericom isn't actually the drive which is supposedly Samsung, but mine isn't - it is a TSST Corporation. I'm still playing to see if I can suss it out.
vitascope, most films-"dvds" should be able to be backed up. This his where you find out how good you took care of those older dvd's. Damaged dvd's may not be so lucky.They will give us crc errors,making them very difficult. When you are able to rip them to your hard drive, they should be able to play very good.Those programs I listed are excellent,and better than other programs that you pay for. Those issue like jumping,freezing,and skipping are usually due to: Poor-cheap-low quality media and too fast burn speed. By using high quality media,a below 4x burn speed, you can avoid a lot of problems. Even setting backup targets to 4300 mbs will help. Media quality is critical,especially in stand alone players. They will tell you is something is wrong with your backups. theLatics, I have no idea what your post is about. If you have both nero and roxio on your pc, nero has a packet in it"in-cd" and also has a packet and they can clash. Best advised not to leave both programs on. Nero is prefered well over roxio. Dvd shrink can automatically pull up nero out burn after the encoding phase.It's all in the settings.You have no extra steps. Dvd shrink also works well with dvd decrypter.
Although I have both Roxio and Nero, I don't leave both running at the same time. Also I have a slower CD/DVD writer, and this is working fine, so it is not just a software clash issue. Something on the drive is not working, but is it knackered or is it a setting? It's connected via Firewire, and is recognised as soon as plugged in (XP),so no drivers installed etc. Is it a firmware issue? I've been into properties and ticked Allow CD recording, but no difference. When you click on Burn (CD) it spins up the disc (which has already been correctly recognised as blank), then says writing TOC, then it spins, but does not increase from 3% done. I have to remove the firewire cable to turn off the drive to enable ejecting of the disk, which is still blank. What it is not is; bad CD - tried 3 types won't write at all - will do DVD's not being recognised - see above. I'm a bit stuck now. It is a Samsung Smartwrite drive, TS-H552U. I only bought it as my DVD writer is a 2x, so took ages to make DVD's, but I do also do CD's, and hoped to use the 24x capability of this drive.
I am also having the same problem with my external writer from aldi so is a friend. It burns dvd s and data cds perfect. But when you try to copy audio (mp3 convert,image or on fly) it will not work nero just hangs with the scsi abort command in log file. I have burnt about 2 cds music after re booting. Any ideas anyone please help!!!
If you search for the drive number in these threads (TS-H55TU etc) you get another thread which has a lot of mention of SCSI errors, and we may be able to find a solution there. http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/102002 Trouble is there were 15 pages of it, and I got bored after a couple.
I have this DVD writer too and have some further Qs... I only have a USB 1.1 connector on my Thinkpad T23 laptop and was going to use my PCMCIA HiSpeed USB 2.0 card interface as I do for other devices. But this writer doesn't show up in the devices list (unknown) under XP SP1. Gericom's website is useless (and in German) and the 0871 helpline is a $$$ ripoff leaving you on for ages... Any ideas as to a driver for this?? Oh, DVD's play OK through the USB 1.1 connection without frame drops, so will it be OK for a Full DVD burn?? Cheers for any help - this is my first DVD/CDR burner Mark
USB2 and external DVD writers seem to be a problem. Don't suppose you have firewire? Some threads say that burning on USB1 is too slow for the speed of data sent, so it reckons it would fail, best to give it a go at slowest speeds and work upwards if it works.
I also bought an ALdi TSST H552U (Gericom/Samsung) burner and I have exactly the same problem - hanges at 5% when trying to burn a music CD. One thing I did try was upgrading the Firmware - www.samsungodd.com - go to Firmware downloads. I updated my firmware to US03 , still hangs, I upgraded to US04 still hangs on music CD. ** WARNING ** When I updated the firmware(s) it completes OK but gives an error, then when you check the firmware level, its at the updated level, so mine now shows US04 and the drive still works fine. But its a risk I guess.
Does any one have the driver? im installing it on windows XP, using the cable with the bigger end, (usb cable) i cant seem to find what its talking about on the windows updates. regards simon.
So another option is to get a Firewire-PCMCIA Cardbus interface...? Trouble is will the Drive show up cos it doesn't on my PCMCIA USB 2.0 HiSpeed card..?
May be we have to wait until next firware update lol dont phone help line its german they dont understand yorkshire accents. I have have written about 3 good audio cds but it is about 80-90% fail rate. Think it may be nero 6 oem my writter in laptop started failing audio too??? downloaded nti 7 and laptop writter ok on audio now but nti does not recognise usb gericom. will keep on trying diff things and post results.
I bought this drive as my old one is slow (but works every time). This bugger is not as good as I thought it would be. Unless you have a laptop, I'd seriously suggest installing it in your desktop and forgeting the warranty (which looks like it would be difficult to make use of anyway). As it is basically an internal drive it a case, it will be easy to do a straight swap. Other threads have suggested this and it seems to work much better. There is an issue of Windows Controllers and external USB or Firewire drives, that noone seems to be able to fix 100% of the time. A Nero engineer is on one of these threads, and he has done some things that may help, such as a new mmc.dll file, but I don't want to mess with things I don't understand until I've tried it inside the dektop.
I just have to say nicely put TheLatics I cant even count the number of threads on here about external burners. I think they are a headache and nothing but trouble. There are way to many people having issues with any type of external burner. I just can't figure out if its a Windows problem, burning software problem, or drive problem. Point is they just arent stable enough for DVD movie back up. Come to think of it most external CD writers had issues also. Unless you have your system set up exactly as the idiots that designed these drive's did when they did there testing on them (lets hope they at least test them out) your probably going to run into issues. I realize some people are on laptop's and really have no other options because the drives they put inside a laptop are even worse most of the time. You just really need to make sure everything is set up correctly (USB drivers, firmware, software update's to name a few) for the drives to have any chance of working properly. If you can I would definatley recommend that you use an internal DVD writer, and save your self some headache's... Just my opinion on the subject
Try this link for the firmware http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/LiveUpdate/FWDownload/FWDownload.asp There is a utility that you need to download to install the firmware and this shows you what version your Burner is ( mine was US02) then you have the option to upgrade is if you want. I have also installed the Liveupdate program that lets you know when a new version is available. Good luck Royyyyy
Try this link for the firmware http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/LiveUpdate/FWDownload/FWDownload.asp There is a utility that you need to download to install the firmware and this shows you what version your Burner is ( mine was US02) then you have the option to upgrade is if you want. I have also installed the Liveupdate program that lets you know when a new version is available. Good luck Royyyyy
