I have a Pioneer DVR-104 burner which I am using to back up my dvd collection. My system consists of a AMD 1.2 athlon, 1GB PC-133, and a 40GB hard drive that I only use for this purpose. I rip my movies with DVDdecrypter and then DVD2one and burn with nero. I always use my Pioneer DVD-RW to test the movie before I burn it again with a DVD-r. Each time Nero has never failed with the -RW. However, when I burn the movie to DVD-r I have about a 50% failure rate so far. Nero tells me there is a communications failure. I am currently using TDK DVD-r which were bought from Best Buy. I searched the forums and one post suggested disabling dma on the drive. I did this for the Pioneer drive as well as my hard drives. It worked but it took about an hour and forty minutes to burn the disc. Now I wonder if it is a media problem or in fact a hardware/software issue. If anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.
I use the A104, with no problems. However, i have had problems using Nero (5.5.9.0) Discs burn Ok, but won't play in my PS2. (other machines are OK.) The DMA setting can often solve some problems. I use PIO and it takes about 50 minutes to burn at X1. These days I create a disc image (Spruce Up or Imgtool) then burn using Ulead Movie Factory (burn Image) Never had a problem since. HomerJ
Thanks for your response. I have successfully burned 2 DVD-R's since changing to PIO mode on the burner. Hopefully this will solve my problems. I may try your method if I have any more problems.
Firstly make sure you have the latest version of Nero installed (5.5.10.35) as there have been compatibility problems with earlier versions in that some discs don't play on some players after burning. If I were you I would then try using DVD Shrink (latest 2.3). Also what media brand are you using and at what x recording are you burning at? Have you installed the latest firmware for the 104? (you can get the latest firmware from here:http://www.dvd-recordable.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewsdownload&sid=1 I have more or less the same set up as you but have no problems with Nero. I don't use decrypter or DVD2One though.
I am using the version of Nero you mentioned,5.5.10.35. My firmware is only 1.32 however. I was unaware that there were newer versions. I guess I need to update that. Thanks for the link on that, trying to find it on Pioneer's web site is very difficult. The first brand of media I used was a house brand from all media outlet which pretty much sucked so I am now using 2x TDK's purchased from Best Buy. I am burning at 2x in Nero(which took about 5o minutes to burn a movie with DMA disabled. I have heard much about DVD shrink, I guess I need to try it out. Do you use smartripper instead of dvddecrypter? Thanks again for the help. Ben
If it takes 50mins to burn the movie then it is only doing it at 1x no matter what Nero says. The new firmware may help. You might also want to check here:http://www.firmwares.co.uk/ You don't need to use a seperate decrypter with DVDShrink as it will rip and re-encode the files all in one. If you still get similar problems it might be worth trying out RecordNowMax instead of Nero. Good luck.
I am happy on my Pioneer 104 w/ f/w 1.31 X2-Ritek Either : DVD Decrypter DVD2One Nero or DVD Shrink Nero Ritek G03 = £0.88 per disc
