I think I have found the perfect combination for my burner. I always start out with DVD Decrypter. From there I have Nero Recode, DVD Cloner III & Clone DVD2 as burning software and I have tried the following discs: Maxell DVD-RW, Verbatim DVD-RW, Sony DVD-R, TDK-R & Maxell-R. The only ones that seem to work together without stopping with an error are Nero and Maxell DVD-RW. The others all had problems. My guess is that it just takes time to try different things for a given burner. For now I have found the perfect match. Of course time will tell and if I get a new burner who knows what will happen but for now I am all set. I never would have gotten this far with out all the advice I obtained from the people who responded to questions. Even if the suggestions did not work out it helped me learn. A huge thanks to everyone.
I'm not sure if you mentioned, I didn't see it...... but.... What burner are you using? And does it have buffer underrun protection/prevention?
It is a Pioneer burner and I have no idea if it has buffer underrun protection/prevention. How can I tell? I have had the burner for maybe 3 to 4 years.
Do you know the model of you burner, if not, goto Device Manage and select DVD/CD-ROM drives, and you should see the model there. HTH, Rich
Just out of curiosity, when it does fail, what movies are you trying to back up? And what movies back up successfullty? I am wondering if some movies that you are trying to backup have encryption that DVD Decrypter cannot handle, and if that is the case you need to get ANYDVD? Regards, Rich
Sin City is the movie that I was using as my test movie. DVD Decrypter was always used. It was at the burning phase that I was having the problem. I now know which burn software and blanks to use.
Interesting that you mentioned an aging Pioneer. I have one myself. It now resides in a box beside my desk. I don't know if I want to trash it or not. It's about 3 or 4 years old, a Pioneer rebadged as Memorex. It stopped burning DVD R media. It started acting up and my DVDs would go into burn, but the DVDs wouldn't play in my standalone player. On the PC they were read as Audio by the player software, but played as a video. WinDVD 7 was the player software, I didn't try others. The burns were successful, the burner just wasn't finalizing the discs. R media has to be finalized. I could play DVDs on the drive and record RW as well. Ring any bells yet? Anyway, that clinched it, write but not finalizing and writing good to RWs. I replaced the drive and the system handles all supported media once again. It sounds as though you may have the same problem here. If you can get your hands on a good drive to change out, that would be the easiest test. Normally those RWs are a bit more pricey than Rs, but it would take a bunch to make up the cost of a drive. Sounds like you want to run it till it locks though. It may have just been coincidence about adding the software. It might be a good time to upgrade to one of the new DL burners. sytyguy is right about decryption software. With newer movies there is encryption that has been created since support of DVDD ceased. LUK was good, but not clairvoyant. It takes updated software to handle the newer encryptions and AnyDVD is one of the best. DVD Decrypter will still do many of the DVDs, but there are those it can't. A lot of the Disney movies fall into the category. A lot of problem DVDs are from Sony. You can read about it here on AD.
Not that it matters but my Pioneer has the name of LaCie on it. My problems are not exactly the same as yours. Mine gives me an error message and stops burning when there is a problem. It does seem that these units are prone to problems after time. I was actually thinking of getting a new PC. The PC is older then the burner. I mentioned that I now need Maxell DVD-RW’s for the current state that the burner is in. Kind of funny that I found a half off sale at a local store. So I bought a few. When I do get a new PC I will use AnyDVD but until then, if I don’t get any problems I will stick with DVD Decrypter. Thanks for your input. Very educational.
Back up Madgascar for some children. There's more Decrypter can't do, but that's the only one that comes to mind now. Sounds like you have things under control and are aware of the causes for your problems. Watch out, there's a lot of innovations on PCs now. Try not to buy old tech. Good luck. By the way, sometimes it depends on the software being used as to how the error messages pop up. Not all are directly from the OS.
Hello Paynbills. So you got it going with those RW's then. I had the feeling it would work. I had a similar problem, would only burn RW's. But after reformating my HDD i had everything done up from scratch. The problem was still there, and one day i decided to try my brand new Verb/TY's -R's in it... And they worked... What bugs me is that after those i tried a fair few 'made in car-boot-sale' DVD-R's and they also worked... Go figure. If you can make it run with those RW's fine, but keep in mind that they are really expensive compared to normal -R's. But hey, if you're thinking about getting a new one...
