I've been a lurker here for quite some time and figured it was time for me to give back a little. My experience moving from Nero 7 Ultra to Nero 8 when mainly performing DVD backups... Last night I decided to go for the Nero 8 upgrade from Nero 7 Ultra that I purchased about a year back. The main reason I upgraded was that my dad had Nero 7 Essentials and wanted the ability to use Nero Burning ROM which does not come with Nero 7 Essentials so I decided to upgrade with him. Now the most unfortunate thing for me was that I didn't visit this forum before I decided to upgrade, that was my first mistake... The upgrade process went flawlessly. Now I'm running Vista Ultimate x64 with 4GB of RAM and my dad is running Vista Premium 32-bit with 2GB of RAM. My dad has been wanting to backup some of his DVD's so I was going to show him how I backup mine using DVDFab Decrypter then DVD Shrink 3.2 which automatically burns with Nero. Well much to my dismay I found out the hard way that Nero 8 is not a supported burner for DVD Shrink like the last 3 versions of Nero have been. Now I've read all the threads that now tell me how Nero 8 doesn't work with Shrink and I realize that I have several options. One option is just to continue forward using Nero Recode which seems to be the next generation of DVD Shrink. Another option is to continue using DVD Shrink to do the transcoding and then manually burn using Nero 8 since automatic burning no longer works (see other threads about Shrink with Nero 8). Another option is to forget Nero altogether and run the modified version of DVD Shrink with ImgBurn. Well I've been using DVD Shrink 3.2 ever since version 3.2 became available and well before. I started using DVD Decrypter when DVD Shrink was no longer able to remove the copy protection from my newer DVD purchases. Not long after that DVD Decrypter was no longer being updated and I eventually moved onto DVDFab Decrypter and have been using that ever since. Now I'm not a proponent to no change, however if what I'm using works and works well and there's not something out there that is not significantly better well then there's really no reason for me to change. DVDFab Decrypter + DVD Shrink 3.2 + Nero 7 had been treating me just fine. Most of my backups I merely backup the Main Movie and therefore have little to zero compression required. Most of my movie watching occurs on my 120" projection screen with a Panasonic 720p PJ which I have been overjoyed with. Compression tends to show itself moreso on a large screen but even movies I have compressed with DVD Shrink still look very very good on my projector. So last night after realizing that DVD Shrink would no longer work with my newly upgraded Nero 8, I followed the advice of several people here on the AD forums and decided to move forward with Nero Recode. I first chose a couple of movies I had previously backed up that were single layer DVD's where no compression would be required. I tinkered around with the ability to "disable" certain video feeds and then just ran the entire movie through and it worked flawlessly. Next I tried opening the DVDFab Decrypted files of my recent purchase of the movie 21 which amounts to 7.53GB. After doing the "Import DVD" within Nero Recode and choosing the file structure for 21, Nero Recode went through its normal process of analyzing the DVD. It then showed the structure for the DVD in the display and then seconds later the Windows "busy" cursor started and I was unable to do anything. I killed Nero Recode using Task Manager and tried another DL movie ... same result. It didn't make any sense to me so off I went to Google to see if others had experienced the same. It seems as if Nero Recode as part of Nero 8 (never really used it in Nero 7) does not deal well with either Vista 64-bit or with Windows @ 4GB of RAM. This was my experience and no matter what I tried, it was the same result. I went to the Nero website to see if there were options and the new software I purchased appears to have a 14 day money-back guarantee. I promptly dialed the number and after a few transfers I explained my situation and the phone rep agreed to refund my money (fifty buck upgrade). The cancellation was relatively painless but I will see if the refund makes it back to my CC within the 4 - 7 business days they promised. I have since uninstalled Nero 8 and reinstalled Nero 7 using my old serial and attempted to backup a DL DVD with my usual success. Now I just need to get my dad downgraded to Nero 7 Ultra Edition so he can be at the same level as my installation. Sorry for the long drawn out message but hopefully this can help others that may be in my situation in the future...
Also wanted to point out a thing or two that I noticed as odd about Nero Recode if it is supposedly written by the same author as DVD Shrink... Both Shrink and Recode have the option for "Deep Analysis" and "High Quality Error Compensation" or similar. In DVD Shrink if I open a single layer DVD and move forward to the "Backup" stage, the options for deep analysis and high quality are both disabled which makes sense since there will be no compression to make the output fit on a DVD-R. With Nero Recode, regardless of the source file it will proceed to perform a deep analysis and also appear to do a high quality encoding. I noticed this when using Recode to backup one of my single layer discs that it proceeded to do a deep analysis even though there was going to be zero compression. Hope this helps.
First of all you are doing your DL discs with the wrong program In MHO, ImgBurn is the program of choice. Let it select the best layer break also. Try it you'll like it. Been using Nero for years-Recode specifically, and If you don't want recode to do all the advanced stuff just uncheck the options. Most of my backup have been with AnyDVD and Recode 6.6.0.18 and now I'm using Nero 8-got discount and two serial # for the price of one. Having no problems but I have never burned a DL with Nero! LOCOENG's Abstraction Imgburn- http://www.imgburn.com Guides: Burning DVD Video files directly to double layer media with ImgBurn http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=1780 Creating a single layer ISO on your hard drive using ImgBurn http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=1778 Creating a double layer ISO on your hard drive using ImgBurn http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=1777 ImgBurn Build Mode, An Overview http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=1779
garmoon, First off thanks for your comments- I am not burning to a DL disc, I am burning to a standard DVD-R single layer. I was talking about backing up a DL disc to a SL DVD-R as compared to backing a SL DVD to a SL DVD-R. Nero Recode does not work on my computer ... Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with 4GB of RAM. After researching it appears that Nero Recode either does not play well with 64-bit Windows or with 4GB of RAM so Recode really isn't an option for me. I have now gone back to Nero Ultra 7 and my DVD Shrink works exactly as it did before ... autoburn with Nero working! Also as I mentioned, for most of my movie backups I only backup the main movie which rarely exceeds the space requirements for my DVD-R discs. A recent exception is the movie "There Will be Blood" which required about 66% compression with the foreign sound tracks removed. The movie still looks very good even on my 120" projection screen with the Nero deep analysis and high quality "Sharp" setting. As for the few times that I was able to use Recode, comparing it to the DVD Shrink Re-author I much prefer the ability to drag&drop video tracks into the DVD Structure as opposed to having to manually "Disable" each of movie tracks that I don't want in Recode. Perhaps I have not had the opportunity to experience the full capability of Recode because it acts so erratically with my system.
