I own dvd xcopy version 3.2.0. It has been working flawlwssly for a year now with 4x disks on 4x dvd burner. All of a sudden I tried 8x disks on it and now am getting complete burns with movies that jump around aimlessly and/or stick. I went back to 4x disks but the problem remains. I then checked for all bad conflicts and disabled stopzilla and deleted powerdvd. But problem still remains. I even got new burner - this time an 8x burner - but problem remains. Any ideas? Homemade pentium 3.0, 1GIG memory, optiwrite drives (dvdrom and burner) 120 GIG storage
Just curious what brand of media are you using? WinXP SP2 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.01GHz) 1GB DDR 3200 ATI All In Wonder 9600 Burners Nec 2500A / Pioneer DVR 105
WinXP SP2 Pentium 3.0 120 G Hard drive 1G memory Optirite dvd-rom Optirite 8x dvd burner Fujifilm 4x dvd+R's dvdxcopy platinum 3.2.0 Coasters all come out either jumpy, sticky and some "the disk is dirty" I've backed up 300+ dvd's until this happened. Help please!
This could be a number of problem so lets start with the easiest. 1) Media run your Fuji disk's threw DVD Identifier and lets see who manufactured those puppy's 2) Burn speed could be the issue.. X4 should be good though 3) Firmware. seeing how these are new disk's you probably need to go to the manufactures website and update your DVD writer's firmware try looking here http://www.optorite.com/_english/web/2_service/2_firmwares.php you didnt provide your model number but this page list all models just find yours and download and install the [bold]CORRECT[/bold] firmware. 4) The way you do your backup's. DVDXcopy is old and outdated. Try using Shrink and Decrypter. You can go here for easy to follow instructions http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/ Ok that is enough for now get back with me when you have tried all of these, and good luck WinXP SP2 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.01GHz) 1GB DDR 3200 ATI All In Wonder 9600 Burners Nec 2500A / Pioneer DVR 105
I agree with bbmayo with one thing to add. Have you followed the black list associated with Studio 321 products? I would at least try disabling all in msconfig startup tab.
Thank you very much The dvd xcopy platinum I have was bought in 2003 - I worked it until I got satisfactory results - now this problem occurs and it looks like due to their lawsuit - they stopped supporting it. Is the Shrink/Decrypter the best alternative or is Nero/Shrink. What are the differences. Does the result of the lawsuit against xcopy ripper software have any ramifications here? What is the time frame usual to back up and burn a typical two hour movie with 3.0 P4 with 1Gig ram? Is it hours or about 40 minutes (which xcopy took)? I really appreciate your response - your comments have led me to think I need to just abandon xcopyplatinum abd learn another way. Do you agree?
jmspie - I agree that you should probably abandon X Copy. One main difference between Shrink/Decrypter and Shrink/Nero is that Decrypter is free and Nero costs $ (although there is a free trial version for download). Another difference is Decrypter will rip some things Shrink won't, so in some cases it be necessary to use Shrink/Decrypter. I have 1.6gHz with 512mb SDRAM and it generally takes me about 1hr15min to do a complete back-up with Shrink/Nero. Have never tried Shrink/Decrypter as I already had Nero suite for other purposes and it has never failed me. There are links to excellent guides all over this site, and it is not hard to learn.
jmspie, Of course you should make the switch. You should be able to go from start to finish backing up your DVD with Shrink and Decrypter in under the 40 min it took with DVDXcopy. Check out my sight it has a guide on there "How to Back up using DVD Decrypter & DVD Shrink" If you follow that exactly you will be well on your way in no time. http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/ WinXP SP2 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.01GHz) 1GB DDR 3200 ATI All In Wonder 9600 Burners Nec 2500A / Pioneer DVR 105
jmspie, Why does my backup copy play back with pauses, skips and stops? Answer: Besides media being the #1 prime suspect, lots of times the issue is simply with a scheduled process (like Windows XP auto-defrag, or most often screensaver that tries to kick on at specified intervals, causing shkipping and stuttering. One of the best ways to resolve this matter is to turn off screensavers and power-saving options. Then, shut down any possible background processes that may act on their own while idle (like virus scanners, pop up killers, etc.) and attempt your back up again. (I noticed you had stopzilla,it's notorious for this) I would also recommend defragging your hard drive, as this will also cause the symptoms you described. I agree that shrink/decrypter is better than X Copy but I don't necessarily think that by changing programs your situation will be resolved, tho hopefully it could. X Copy does fine for what it is, because it will rip, edit and compress, and burn all on it's own. I agree with the others that Shrink 3.2 does however, do a much better job at higher compressions. It will need a burner and that's where decrypter comes in. One final note, if you do switch to shrink 3.2, don't forget the quality settings for anything over 10-15% compression. This will increase your times to as much as 1 1/2 to 2 hours, but it is well worth the wait considering the quality result. Hope this helps :>)
Wow, You guys are great - thanks for the prompt help. I have downloaded and configured Shrink and Decrypter as you said on your website and it works like a charm. Six more questions: 1. I have 8x burner (for DVD+r's , 4x for -R's) and an 8x burner (Optorite) - when I first started having problems with xcopy - I assumed it was the 8x fuji media - so I rebought 4x fujis to slow it down. Many forums suggest the slower is better. Does Shrink/Decrypter have same limitation or can I burn those 100 fuji 8x's that I have with this new combination? 2. Also what is the difference between -R's and +R's and is one better for movie and/or ps2 backups than the other (I have Sony playback machine - so it should play both and my burner is rated for both, albeit at different write speeds) 3. I have a 400MB Mac Powerbook with DVD player that has thus far refused to play my +r's is this because of a limitation of the mac's dvd player or might it accept a -R? 4. Can Shrink/Decrypter also back up my ps2 disks - I had no luck at all with xcopy on this. If so - is there a resource to help me configure Shrink/Decrypter for that task as your "My Home Page" helped me config for movies? 5. If my compression shows 70% (I assume 30% compression) which is more than the 10-15% mentioned in the last post - I know it is best to select both quality improvements - but if I choose only one (because of time) which is the most useful? 6. If I'm not having any problems burnng right now with Shrink/Decrypter (with screen savers and stopzilla activated) does that mean I should be fine in the future? Or could an intermittant problem occur? Once Again, Thanks a lot - you're a lifesaver
jmspie, First of all I am glad you got everything going ok Ok let me see if I can't answer your questions 1) You can burn any DVD's out there with Decrypter there are no limitations. The reason you should burn your movies at 4x or lower is because most DVD players will not play back properly at the higher speeds. Also you just get less chance for error's. 2) There literally isnt any difference in the -R or +R format as far as quality goes. People say the -R's are more compatable with DVD Players and PS2's. I don't really believe this is true any more so the best thing to do is use whatever is compatable with most of youe equipment. The products manuals should tell you what type they support. 3) Your MAC power book may only like -R's. Not really sure could be it just dosent like the brand of media being use. You could update the firmware for the DVD ROM and solve this issue? 4) Decrypter can back up your PS2 games I'm not sure how this is done because I don't do that but you can check it out here http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/116 5) The anaylsis would be the most usefull, but the most time consumming also I never bother with either of those and I still get good copies 6) There could always arise a problem when other proggys are running in the back ground. Especially during the Re-authoring compression phase. It is best to just shut them all off when backing up your movies. You are always taking a chance if you don't, but if you are willing to take that chance then feel free :0 I hope that helps you out,,, whew WinXP SP2 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.01GHz) 1GB DDR 3200 ATI All In Wonder 9600 Burners Nec 2500A / Pioneer DVR 105
but if I choose only one (because of time) which is the most useful? The most useful is the two pass deep analysis, it also takes the most time, since you are gonna do that you might as well do the other, it won't add to your times. Why does an hour make a difference on something that willl last the rest of your life if done properly and with excellent quality? I use RB/CCE, which takes 4 hours! Run it at nite before you go to bed, it'll be done in the morning. You will really miss out if you don't use the quality settings on larger compression rates. Can Shrink/Decrypter also back up my ps2 disks You only need decrypter for this unless the game is larger than 4.37 gigs. (Then I use Alchohol 120) Since 90% of the games I've seen are under 4.37 decrypter works fine. Read and write with decrypter in ISO mode. You will read to a folder you create on your hard drive then write using the ISO image created by decrypter to your media. NEVER burn games over 1x! You can set your write speed in decrypter before you burn. The older PS2's would only play -R(versions 1-4 I believe), the newer ones will play +R and -R(versions 7 and higher). I wouldn't use my PS2 to play movies on a regular basis. You can get a good DVD player for 60.00(Philips DVP 642, plays all formats imcluding mpeg and Divx), I have seen players for 30.00. A PS2 costs 175.00 to 200.00, which is easier to replace? Reading movies on your PS2 is hard on it and it will reduce the lifespan of your lazer.
bbmayo I cant thank you enough. Are you guys full time employees / support staff or regular amateur like me? bigorange What is RB/CCE? I assume it is for the most thorough, top quality backups - is this true. Where to get it and how to configure? thanks also to jpc00 and Mort81 Thank you again for the help
You assume correctly :>) It is the best backup app on themarket for quality, especially large movies. How would you like to have your movie no matter what it's length on one disc with no appreciable loss in quality even at 300% magnification? This app also only requires one click to start it and that's it. When it's finished you burn to disc using any app with a burn engine(Nero, Copy to Dvd, etc.) The app is Dvd Rebuilder and CCE basic. The setup is a little complicated, but there is Vurbal's guide that breaks it down and gives you the links for all the components you need for setup. All components are free except for CCE Basic which costs 58.00. Do not use the trial version, it sucks and everyone that has tried it has mega problems, so you have to trust us on this and buy CCE basic, sorry. I can promise you, you will not be disappointed. Read the threads, not one person(and I mean NOT ONE!) who has used it will disagree, it's quality is superior to any app out there, period. When is the last time you saw any app that has that kind of endorsement? If you are interested let me know and I will be glad to help you with setup. As I said before it can be a little daunting for someone not used to doing DVD work, but once it's done, and you only have to do it once, you hit transcode and wait til finished, and that's it for every movie you do from then on. It's only drawback is it takes about 4 hours, so most of us do it at nite before we go to bed and when we get up in the morning it's finished. Then it takes 15 minutes to burn. I have done movies (including all the LOTR's) with over 50% compression and you can't tell the difference between that and the original. And that was using a side by side comparison on a 57" HDTV at 300% magnification. Go here and browse thru the first two top threads on the page, "Difficulty using RB/CCE" and "Which transcoding tools produce the best quality". There is a ton of info in both on RB/CCE. http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/78 BTW, in the 1st thread you will see 90% of the problems people had were in trying to use trial versions of CCE SP or CCE Basic. As I said if you or anyone else for that matter is interested I will be more than happy to help you set it up. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks bigorange I'm new to this except for the 300+ disks burned with platinum before my problem and you guys have introduced a whole new world - thanks. I read the rb/cce links you cited. If you have the time ..could you peruse my questions? 1. What are the different logical steps that this reading/analyzing/compressing/writing to hard drive/and then burning to disk go thru. I'm confused about the functions of CCE/RB/decrypting/avi ..etc. what parts do they play in the whole picture? 2. The link mentions batching jobs, does that mean that I can do a quick "snapshot" of a movie, burn it to the hard drive, do another movie's snapshot and then a third - have them all on the hard drive and then have rb/cce/decrypter do its thing on all three in turn during the night? 3. Will they all be ready to burn when I wake up? (assuming I sleep 12 hours?) He He 4. Is there a superior burning software? It sounds as if you use Nero,and bbmayo and Vurbal use decrypter? I dont mind spending small amounts on software if its the best. 5. Will the compress times be much affected by faster cpu's I have a 3.0 P4 with 1g ram and 75 Gigs of storage empty running xppro? Will it take me 4 hours or so? 6. I have heard that dvdr's do not hold their data indefitely - is this bs or does it have something to do with the quality of the burn? 7. What is an "LOTR" that you mention? 8. I have a bunch of 8x fuji blank dvd+r's - and an 8x Optorite burner but I understand that movies shouldn't be backed up faster than 4x and PS2's faster than 1x. Can i set the burn speed to be less than the max potential of my media/burner's potential? I'm using shrink/derypter - do I set this burn speed in shrink? Or in decrypter? I know I have lots of questions - answers will be much appreciated - I can only hope this conversation is useful to all newbies who read it - thanks for your time.
1. What are the different logical steps that this reading/analyzing/compressing/writing to hard drive/and then burning to disk go thru. I'm confused about the functions of CCE/RB/decrypting/avi ..etc. what parts do they play in the whole picture? Rebuilder/CCE compresses your DVD9 files to DVD5 files to fit on a 4.37 gig disc. That's it. It doesn't edit because it doesn't need to, it will remove foreign audio and subtitle tracks. Rebuilder automatically opens and uses CCE(so you don't even have to know how to use it). Basically you set it up, punch one button, and that's it, wait for it to finish. The link mentions batching jobs, does that mean that I can do a quick "snapshot" of a movie, burn it to the hard drive, do another movie's snapshot and then a third - have them all on the hard drive and then have rb/cce/decrypter do its thing on all three in turn during the night? OK, forget decrypter, other than ripping your movie to a folder on your hard drive for RB/CCE to use, that's it for decrypter. (Be sure to rip in file mode with decrypter). Batch process is you can load 2 or more movies into Rb/CCE and it will do all one at a time. The advantage is it can do them while you are asleep or away, and when you come back you have all your finished movie files ready to burn. Again, forget "snapshot", this is a way to do more than one entire movie. 3. Will they all be ready to burn when I wake up? (assuming I sleep 12 hours?) He He YES 4. Is there a superior burning software? It sounds as if you use Nero,and bbmayo and Vurbal use decrypter? I dont mind spending small amounts on software if its the best. Decrypter only burns ISO image files. RB/CCE's output isn't in this format, I use Nero Express, it's so easy, just load, Express picks the files it needs automatically, and burn. I also use Copy to DVD to burn. 5. Will the compress times be much affected by faster cpu's I have a 3.0 P4 with 1g ram and 75 Gigs of storage empty running xppro? Will it take me 4 hours or so? Yes, but not much, and yes it will take 3-4 hours. You are doing 2 passes with CCE, and Rebuilder must competely rebuild the DVD. I have heard that dvdr's do not hold their data indefitely - is this bs or does it have something to do with the quality of the burn? BS, it depends on the brand more than the format. Verbatim has a 99 year warranty, for example. I prefer branded Ritek Ridata 4x +R. 7. What is an "LOTR" that you mention? Lord Of The Rings I have a bunch of 8x fuji blank dvd+r's - and an 8x Optorite burner but I understand that movies shouldn't be backed up faster than 4x and PS2's faster than 1x. Can i set the burn speed to be less than the max potential of my media/burner's potential? I'm using shrink/derypter - do I set this burn speed in shrink? Or in decrypter? A)Yes, normally you set the burn speed with the burning app you are using. B)In shrink You will set the burn speed in decrypter since it is your burning app. If you were using enable burn with nero in shrink you can set the burn speed in shrink in the backup window under burn settings tab. Hope this helps :>)
Two days ago I asked for help on this forum. I had been getting "dirty disk" or "cannot read this disk" errors with xcopy platinum software. bbmayo, bigorange etc helped me to see that I should change to decrypter/shrink. I downloaded them, configered them and they worked like a charm for 5 movies. Now for the last 12 hours I've been getting the same two errors. I went to the optorite site and made sure I had the latest firmware for my 16x optorite drive (model DD1601). I also confirmed that startup items on my xppro were turned off and stopzilla is deactivated. I have completely checked to make sure that no screen saver or conflicting software is on the computer (from the xcopy conflicting list). My media is fuji 4x DVD+R and the write speed capability of the burner is 16x. (for a +R disk). Decrypter setting show possible available burn speeds up to 8x and I had configured with "MAX". I assumed that if the media max is 4x, that the burner would sense this and not burn any faster. The burns for a full lenth movie (40% compression approx. with both quality setting checked) is about 8 minutes with a 3.0 p4 chip. Is the write speed the problem? Is it trying to write too fast? Decrypter is continues to confirm that Operation successfully Completed!" It also indicates "average write speed (7.3x). I dont think its the media, should I force the write speed to match speed to 4x or lower? Any other ideas? I ve obviously tried this several times before I wrote here and still get "dirty or cannot read" messages. Thanks
jmspie, The write time you stated sounds like you are burning at 8x. Even though you are useing 4x media you may be overspeeding to 8x (which will work on some medias). Try setting your burn speed to 4x or even 2x.
Mort covered it well You need slow down those burn speeds I reccomend that anyone wanting good quality backups burn below x4. Also 40% on you movies isnt good either try taking out the extras and bun just the main movie this will produce better quality burns as well check out my site on how to do this http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/
I agree, burn speed at 4x should be around 12-15 minutes. Since you set it at MAX it seems to be burning faster, especially what you're getting from decrypter. I always use the 4x setting instead of max. Flashing your firmware can increase burn speeds. Are you getting this error on every movie or just one? Usually a cyclic redundancy error is from your source media. Are you saying you get this error with your burned copies? Have you tried wrting to your hard drive and seeing if they will play on a software player before burning? Actually shrink with the quality settings can handle 40% compression and do a good job.. Since I like extras and a menu I do what I can to keep them and have good quality(I edit previews and foreign audio tracks and keep everything else). That's why if it goes over that I will use RB/CCE which is good up to 50-55% compression.
