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I couldn't really think of anywhere else I could post this message, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one member of this forum is a bit handy when it comes to PCs, DVDs & all that caper...!

I purchased a brand new Freecom DVD+/-RW external rewriter this week, which arrived yesterday. After installation of the kit `n caboodle (which is Roxio, by the way, if anyone's familiar with that...) I attempted to copy a DVD onto another for the first time. It failed. I attempted a second time, which failed also, rendering both blank DVD+R's I'd used to try & copy onto useless.

So I gave PC World a call & the bloke said that I should always copy at the lowest speed available, which in my case is 2.6x speed. So I tried that on yet another DVD+R, & it worked fine; I'd made my first succesful copy. Alls well that ends well, you might think...

However, this evening I try to copy two more DVDs onto blank discs. The first one fails, even though I set it to copy at the lowest speed. Even stranger, the second DVD is a succesful copy, so I'm bloody confused now! Why would the 1st fail & the 2nd succeed, even though I'm certain they had both the same settings?

I'm posting all this in case any of you at this forum have any tips or suggestions as to how to guarantee a succesful rewrite every time. It's just that as the failed DVD+R copies render the disc totally unusable afterwards, I'm scared all these failed attempts will cost me money & I'll end up binning more DVD+Rs than not. So if anyone knows of anything I could do to remedy this, I'll be eternally grateful & shower you with love & respect! Thanks, guys...

i'm no expert but i will tell you what i think.

First of all exteranal writers and drives in general are often slow and have issues because they have to communicate all the info through the USB/FireWire cable. FireWire is much faster than USB even USB2.0, so if you have it connected via USB, swtich to FireWire if possible. This might not be possible depending on you PC and the writer itself.

Anyother issue will be the CPU usage of the PC at the time you are writing, since the PC has to send the info, if you are doing other things it might slow down that flow of info enough to cause problems.

And.... I personally don't like Roxio at all!! Don't really heard many bad things from other about it, i just don;t like it myself. NERO is the best burning prog out there IMHO.

Also...try creating an image of the DVD you are copying onto you HD first. Then write the image to the new disc. Roxio is probably creating an image in some temp folder and then writing it from there, which shouldn't cause a prob, but if its just storing the image in a buffer somewhere that could cause probs.

that's all i got for noiw. feel free to shoot me anymore questions, like i said i am no expert by far, but i burn a ton of movies and cds and have had my share of probs but all seems to be much more successful these days.

oh and check out http://www.videohelp.com it is a great site with tons of info that has really helped me i the past.

goodluck

mazdog wrote:i'm no expert but i will tell you what i think.

First of all exteranal writers and drives in general are often slow and have issues because they have to communicate all the info through the USB/FireWire cable. FireWire is much faster than USB even USB2.0, so if you have it connected via USB, swtich to FireWire if possible. This might not be possible depending on you PC and the writer itself.

Anyother issue will be the CPU usage of the PC at the time you are writing, since the PC has to send the info, if you are doing other things it might slow down that flow of info enough to cause problems.

And.... I personally don't like Roxio at all!! Don't really heard many bad things from other about it, i just don;t like it myself. NERO is the best burning prog out there IMHO.

Also...try creating an image of the DVD you are copying onto you HD first. Then write the image to the new disc. Roxio is probably creating an image in some temp folder and then writing it from there, which shouldn't cause a prob, but if its just storing the image in a buffer somewhere that could cause probs.

that's all i got for noiw. feel free to shoot me anymore questions, like i said i am no expert by far, but i burn a ton of movies and cds and have had my share of probs but all seems to be much more successful these days.

oh and check out http://www.videohelp.com it is a great site with tons of info that has really helped me i the past.

goodluck

Thanks for all your help, Mazdog, you've given me some good suggestions, there. Could I just ask you, though: how do I create an image of a DVD on my hard drive? I thought I'd be able to do it via Roxio through to "My Videos" folder but I didn't know how to do it!

I agree about Nero, I've only got the CD Rewriting software, but it's always been top-notch when I've used it. If I carry on having problems with Roxio, I may switch. It's weird, excatly the same happened this morning as it did last night, my first copy attempt failed about halfway through, so I restarted the PC, & then I made two succesful (but slow) copies of two different DVDs after that.

I'll definitely check out the site you recommended, Maz, thanks again for all the info. Peace, brah

there is a freeware prog called "DVD DeCrypter" and that will make copy ANY DVD to your harddrive as an .IMG file or create a "Video TS" with all the .vob files. Either way is easily burnable, and in fact DVD DeCrypter can in fact be used as the burning program also.

I have no idea how to do it with Roxio, although i would think there has to be a way.

DVD Decrypter can be downloaded from http://www.dvddecrypter.com/.


hope that helps.