DVD Burning Problems?

[feralicious]

Nero isn't the best for burning DVDs as it changes the .bup files so it will no longer match your md5 if you have one.

I'm very happy with Sonic's RecordNow. It also allows you to put artwork, txt and md5 files outside the VIDEO_TS folder which I like.

[AAR.oner]

what OS are you on?
what program do you use to burn DVD's with?

there are lots of "how to" sections at www.videohelp.com maybe read up on things there and practice awhile.

[cvonw]

Thanks for all the advice. After checking out some online forums, I'm still leery of Nero--seems like you either love it or hate it, and the latter category mainly involves bugs and lack of tech support. Also, it does seem to be "bloatware" in terms of my needs. Again, I just want to be able to burn the video files I download from this site to DVD. Looks like you can get Nero 6 for cheap on e-bay, though.

I do wish I could get DVD Santa to work as it looks easy to use and doesn't have all the stuff I don't need. Could my problem be that I don't have the proper codecs installed?

Feralicious, not sure what you mean by Nero's conversion of .bup files so they no longer match my md5 (newbie, remember?). I do have RecordNow already loaded on my PC, so maybe I'll try that. Didn't realize you could use it for burning downloaded files to DVD (I've been using it for CD burning with good results).

Thanks again for the help.

[guygee]

If you are running Windows (2000 or XP) I would highly recommend against Roxio products for burning archive data DVDs (like your flac and shn files). I burned some DVDs using Roxio 6.x "Platinum Edition" over a year ago, since Roxio Basic came with the Plextor drive I was using at the time,then I got out of trading/torrenting for awhile. When I burned the DVDs, I used all of their settings so that supposedly the DVD would be readable on other (older) DVD players. In the interim, I had several disk crashes, went through some motherboards, etc. When I finally got my computer situation stabilized, I found that the DVDs I burned using Roxio were unreadable, both on my new Sony DRU-800 and on my cheap laptop DVD drive. I bought Nero and it still wouldn't read the Roxio-burned DVDs. I bought DVDInfoPro and it could see the multi-session data, but it could not recover the data. Worse, I wrote Roxio (with valid order# and registratiion key) so that they would reactivate my download link for their product that I paid for, and they refuse to answer my emails. Finally, with disgust, I got my hands on another copy of Roxio Basic, and recovered the data from the DVDs.
Summary: Roxio support is terrible, and it seems Roxio-burned data DVDs can only be read by Roxio (from my experience).
Recommendation: Use Nero (or other), and be careful not to burn multisession (Nero warns you on this).

[RicDeez]

i use dvdshrink to burn dvds. If the file size is no larger than it should be, the files go unchanged. It's free, and works better than nero for me. I got a few coasters from nero, which is why i stopped using it, no coasters since

I'm on win xp, and using the dvd burner that came with the PC, it's call "Record now! CD & DVD recording"

[feralicious]

First things first. You don't download only until the next person completes, you download until you've uploaded at least as much as you downloaded. And always make sure you don't disconnect if you are the only seed.

Now... on to RecordNow! Here's what you do:

select "Data Disc"
name it whatever you want in the "Volume Label" thing at the top
drag in your VIDEO_TS folder into the main window, no need to worry about the order of files
click on the red button on the lower right and wait til it's done

With this proggy you can also put files outside the VIDEO_TS folder such as txt, md5 or artwork. Most players will play the DVD with those files there.

If you care about your md5s for trading and stuff DON'T use Nero. It alters the bup files when it burns a DVD.

[feralicious]

Originally Posted by cvonw

Feralicious, not sure what you mean by Nero's conversion of .bup files so they no longer match my md5 (newbie, remember?). I do have RecordNow already loaded on my PC, so maybe I'll try that. Didn't realize you could use it for burning downloaded files to DVD (I've been using it for CD burning with good results).

Thanks again for the help.

Sorry. The md5 allows you to check the file hash and make sure you got it intact. If the md5 doesn't pass it means your files aren't in their original state. So a lot of DVDs come with md5s. So then if you download it and check the md5 and it's fine, then burn it with Nero, it alters a couple of the files in the VIDEO_TS folder for some reason, so then when you try to verify the files using the md5 it will fail even though the files will play fine. So it doesn't alter them in a way so as to ruin them, but it makes your md5 incorrect and it will fail verification. So in short, don't use Nero if you are going to trade and use the md5 files.

And yeah, use RecordNow... Here's how you do it (from a post I just made a few mnutes ago for someone else but newly improved!)

select "Data Disc"
name it whatever you want in the "Volume Label" thing at the top
drag in your VIDEO_TS folder into the main window, no need to worry about the order of files
drag in any txt, md5 or artwork files keeping them outside the VIDEO__TS folder
click on the red button on the lower right and wait til it's done

Most players will play DVDs with files outside the VIDEO_TS folder but I would test yours out with one.

[AAR.oner]

^^^i'm pretty sure nero only does this when burning DVD-Video disc, not when burning data discs tho [DVD-ISO or DVD-UDF].

[cvonw]

Originally Posted by feralicious

Sorry. The md5 allows you to check the file hash and make sure you got it intact. If the md5 doesn't pass it means your files aren't in their original state. So a lot of DVDs come with md5s. So then if you download it and check the md5 and it's fine, then burn it with Nero, it alters a couple of the files in the VIDEO_TS folder for some reason, so then when you try to verify the files using the md5 it will fail even though the files will play fine. So it doesn't alter them in a way so as to ruin them, but it makes your md5 incorrect and it will fail verification. So in short, don't use Nero if you are going to trade and use the md5 files.

And yeah, use RecordNow... Here's how you do it (from a post I just made a few mnutes ago for someone else but newly improved!)

select "Data Disc"
name it whatever you want in the "Volume Label" thing at the top
drag in your VIDEO_TS folder into the main window, no need to worry about the order of files
drag in any txt, md5 or artwork files keeping them outside the VIDEO__TS folder
click on the red button on the lower right and wait til it's done

Most players will play DVDs with files outside the VIDEO_TS folder but I would test yours out with one.

Alright, tried it with RecordNow as you suggested and everything seemed to work fine. I burned two DVDs, one with the extra files outside the VIDEO_TS folder and one without. Both play fine on my PC and look great. Neither will play on my standalone, though. It's a Panasonic RV30, admittedly a couple of years old. Guess it's back to the drawing board.

Maybe I'll go ahead and download the trial version of Nero and give it a shot. I'm not so concerned about the md5 problem. Does anyone know if I can get away with just downloading the DVD Rom burning module? I really don't need all the other stuff. Thanks again!

[guygee]

Originally Posted by feralicious

(...)
If you care about your md5s for trading and stuff DON'T use Nero. It alters the bup files when it burns a DVD.

Well up until recently I have been strictly a music trader. I archive everything I get in compressed form (shn or flac), then play it though my computer sound card into my stereo system using plug-ins for winamp. For my car I may burn audio, but I never rerip for trading purposes. But recently I have finally downloaded a couple of torrents for video DVDs. As usual, I plan to archive everything I download on data DVD's (for trading purposes), then I'll be making seperate video DVDs to view.

So let me get this straight - if I burn the video data for archival purposes using Nero the md5's won't check anymore? Or does this only apply to making them into playable videos?

Thanks for your tips.

[feralicious]

Just a hunch but I would think that it's not the software but the media or the standalone causing it not to play. Have you ever been able to play a DVD+/-R on it? Are you sure it supports it?

[cvonw]

Originally Posted by feralicious

Just a hunch but I would think that it's not the software but the media or the standalone causing it not to play. Have you ever been able to play a DVD+/-R on it? Are you sure it supports it?

Yeah, the DVDs I've burned from digital home movies (same media) work fine on my standalone, so I don't think that's it. When I try to play the ones I burned with RecordNow I get a message on my player that says, "This type of disc cannot be played."

[Racerx2004]

This just shows that there is so much to learn...thank you guys for all the info.