Why can't I burn?

24 Jan 2006 7:20 (Edited: 24 Jan 2006 7:20)

Backing up your DVD movies is easy, but if just one thing is out of whack you could be producing coasters faster than your favorite bar at happy hour can use them. Here are some tips and tweaks to maximize your burning experience.

1. ALWAYS use quality media. The price of those Memorex or Imations may be tempting but stay away from them. If you don't want to take my work on it just take a look at this thread: not all memorex are bad Pay the few dollars more for the good stuff. The good stuff includes Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim advanced AZO and Sony, Fuji, Maxell ( Made in Japan). Most of these discs can be bought here supermediastore or locally at Best Buy, Wally World, Office Depot.

2. DO NOT burn at more than 4X. Your burner may be able to burn faster but the blank media cannot handle the speed and produce quality results. Each burner and disc combo will be different, but 4X seems to be the magic number, so after you get the burning process down to a science...so do a few tests at different speeds to see what is optimal with your setup.

Read this thread about burn speeds and quality results: why you shouldn't use CMC Mags
This thread will also backup tip number 1.

3. NEVER use adhesive labels. Many things are said of using labels on discs that range from an uncentered label will throw the tracking of the laser off to when the disc gets hot inside your player glue is slung all over the inside, the bottom line is don't use them. Just use a sharpie, who cares what your chicken scratch looks like...or if you just have to have an image on your DVD, look into one of Epson's excellent printers. The R200 series and R300 series are capable of printing directly onto the surface of the DVD when using printable blanks.

4. MAKE SURE that your DMA is enabled. DMA=Direct Memory Access, the alternative to this is PIO...PIO=Programmed Input/Output. You don't want PIO mode, it will make your rips slow and your burns fail. For information on how to check which mode your drive is using and how to change it look here: enable DMA

For more information on these two transfer modes click on the links.
DMA: [ link ]
PIO: [ link ]

5. UPDATE your software. Now most of you know that the two most popular programs used for backing up movies are no longer being updated, these two programs are DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink of coarse. If you don't already have these two programs yet, get them now before they are gone forever. Even though they are no longer being updated they are still excellent tools for backing up DVD's and will be in my arsenal for many years to come, they can still successfully back up 99% of all movies on the market. Thanks to programs like AnyDVD, DVD43, DVDFab Decrypter and the list goes on, you can still use them to their fullest potential.

You can get these free programs here:
DVD43: [ link ]
DVDFab Decrypter: [ link ]
DVD Decrypter: [ link ]
DVD Shrink: [ link ]

You can get AnyDVD and CloneDVD for a 21 day free test drive here:
AnyDVD: [ link ]

Note: If you are using AnyDVD you don't want DVD43 installed on your system, it known to create conflicts and AnyDVD will scan your PC and ask you to uninstall DVD43 when you run the setup.exe.

Nero 6 users can get updates here , when installing omit the InCD package.

6. MAKE SURE your firmware is up to date. Now this is one of those if it ain't broke don't fix it things. If the above suggestions don't work, you may need to look at your firmware as the cause of your problems. I would make this a last ditch effort because flashing your drive can be risky if you don't know what you are doing.

What is firmware? Look here for the answers. But to make a long story short, firmware helps your burner/reader stay up to date with current media trends, such as 16X compatability or DL support etc.

If you decide that a firmware update is for you and are willing to take a chance you can go to RPC1 for updates. This site contains current firmware for almost all makes and models of drives on the market.

That's it for the most part, once you have these steps down we can talk about booktyping/bitsetting....

User comments

by tridall1 @ 12 Mar 2006 23:07

The best DVD-Recorder"external usb2 or firewire" is Plextor708UF and up, have used it over 1000 times still works great and software I Copy DVD's 2 with Slysoft.com sofware programs has worked flawless for all your needs on cd's or dvd's. Using Windows SP2 home edition 2ghz-512mb ram-32mb video card-laptop also TDK disc's work everytime and cheap when on sale at Circuit City. Slysoft programs are better than any others out there and you can select the drives you want it to use unlike dvd43 it will not screw up great for virtual drive programs.