Dvd Drives

[carinab]

The existing driver for my DVD-ROM somehow got toasted. It's an older, read only drive and I can't find a driver for it that works with Win2k. So I figure this is an excuse to buy a new one!

Any suggestions?

As for brands, I have a sony CD/RW drive that I like. It replaced an Iomega CD/RW that I got good use out of, however I wasn't fond of the software it came with. The sony DVD's look like they come with Nero for burning/editing. Don't have first hand experience with any of the other brands out there.

Which do you have and why did you buy it? Do you like the software it came with or did you end up buying a different application?

BTW, I'll be using this to not only edit family footage but some match/shooting images as well. This means I'd like to ghost two images together (i.e. two different shooters running the same stage) for analysis. Does the software included with what you bought have this feature?

Thanks!

[XRe]

I'm using an LG brand DVD+/-RW, right now. There's a newer (ie, faster) one on the market, now. The new, retail box version is on newegg for $50 here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16827136047

I'm not an expert, and there are likely better choices, but.... this burner has been good to me so far. The one I'm using is 8x DVD burning - the new one is 16x.

I think it came w/ a limited version of Nero??? I haven't touched it... using a full version that I already had. Also came w/ WinDVD, which I've used to watch some movies...

[Merlin Orr]

You might do a little ready here at the Video Guys. Lots of good info to be found.

[standles]

Sony DRU800A

Dual Layer capable and fast.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16827131253

steven

[galt11]

The existing driver for my DVD-ROM somehow got toasted.  It's an older, read only drive and I can't find a driver for it that works with Win2k.  So I figure this is an excuse to buy a new one!

Any suggestions? 

As for brands, I have a sony CD/RW drive that I like.  It replaced an Iomega CD/RW that I got good use out of, however I wasn't fond of the software it came with.  The sony DVD's look like they come with Nero for burning/editing.  Don't have first hand experience with any of the other brands out there.

Which do you have and why did you buy it?  Do you like the software it came with or did you end up buying a different application?

BTW, I'll be using this to not only edit family footage but some match/shooting images as well.  This means I'd like to ghost two images together (i.e. two different shooters running the same stage) for analysis.  Does the software included with what you bought  have this feature?

Thanks!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Most of the higer end users I know use the plextor drives. I am not sure what software tehy come with but getting a copy of nero or roxio is not a problem, if you know what I mean. The plextors are usually rated top three in any test I have read from the major computer mags.

Adam

[dfwmiket]

Carina,

Fry's has them on sale just about every Friday/Sat/Sun. Snag the Fry's ad out of the paper on Friday and check out what's the 'sale' of the week. I got a good deal on mine. My DVD burner was like 85 bucks....... Sony/Plextor/couple others are top brands.

Mike

[Nik Habicht]

Don't get too hung up on speed either ---- you're going to want to burn on the slowest setting anyway, if you follow George's advice. I'm using Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 as my CD/DVD authoring software, unless I'm burning music out of itunes......

On installation, make sure that the DVD burner is the master drive, not the slave.

[GuildSF4]

I have a Sony, an NEC and a Lite-On. They all work great.

I use Nero that came with the drives for most burning, but for Video I use

Sonic MyDVD, havn't tried overlaying two different video tracks but for most other stuff it works great.

You will probalby need a professional version to do the overlay.

[timamal]

Plextor is the dvd-burner on the markey but also the costs the most

[standles]

Don't get too hung up on speed either ---- you're going to want to burn on the slowest setting anyway, if you follow George's advice.  I'm using Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 as my CD/DVD authoring software, unless I'm burning music out of itunes......

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nik:

had similar problems with Roxio Crap. Get Nero and burn at full speed. I averaged 3 coasters out of 10 with Roxio but with Nero the last time I made a coaster was ....... Hmm Can't remember.

FWIW NERO was so stable at home I had them buy it for work as well. Now 4 others have dumped Roxio and joined NERO...

Steven

[George]

Speed kills disks. Burning makes crappy pits in disks compared to the pressed pits you get from replicated DVD's like the commercial ones you buy. The faster you burn, the crappier the pits burning creates. The crappier the pits are in the DVD substrate, the more error correction required for playback.

There is no black magic in using this, or that software. The burner itself is responsible for how the laser tracks. Sharper edges on the pits the laser burns means less errors and therefore wider player compatability. Lasers create sharper pits at slower burning speeds PERIOD

Bad discs that won't play at all are not the issue with speed burning as much as having the disk work for you on the drive you burned it on, or on a new player with the latest chipset, but not playing at all on a machine that is 3-4 years old with an early chipset that can't handle the extra error correction required by an 8x burning speed.

Compatablity on a whole lot of players is the main issue with speed burning. Coasters are more likely to happen while speed burning when using cheap offbrand DVD media.

I get bad disks now and then from professional software like Apple's DVD Studio Pro even with good media and slow burn speeds. It's something that will happen ocassionally no matter what software, or speed, or media you use. Burning video content to DVD is a complicated process and sometimes it just plain errors out during the burn. When this happens you get a coaster. It's a part of DVD life. The professional duplicators accept up to a 1 in 10 bad disc rate from high speed duplicators.

Nothing unusual in occasional bad discs. Nothing but good ones is however, quite unusual ;-)

--

Regards,

[standles]

George,

While I agree with your logic, I can only report what I have observed and experienced. My disc failure rate with quality stock went to near nil when I swapped over to Nero. I don't claim it never produced a coaster but it is few and far between comapred to previously.

Now as far as accepting 1 in 10 failures in high speed disk pressing... I don't know the facts so can't argue. However, with that high a rate how do they screen the bad ones out?

Steven

[George]

Commercial duplicating machines have two out bins, a good bin and a bad bin. Every disc gets a verification pass immedietely after the lead-out is written and if it doesn't pass a bit by bit comparison with the master burn data file, it get's kicked into the bad bin.

I have an almost 100% sucess rate burning with Roxio Toast (6.1.1) in Mac OSX using a Pioneer D106 outboard burner. I DO NOT use Roxio to encode my video, I only burn pre-encoded Video_TS folders that have been built with a professional authoring application and pre-tested with a software player.

Using a Prosumer level application to handle the encoding of the video data is where most DVD's go wrong, not in the actual burn process. The bad burns you were getting were probably bad before they hit the burner because the encoding was at fault, or the data rate was too high and the burn errored out because the system lagged in supplying data to the burner at some point.

If the application can't encode as fast as the disc wants the data sent, you will get an errored disc every time (a no play coaster). I have found that the failure of the user to set the buffer underun prevention option in the advanced burning prefs with any Roxio software is usually the cause of high % bad burn problems. Burning at 1x also keeps the data rate sent to the burner down so the puter itself doesn't error the burn by glitching the data stream getting burned because it can't keep up.

It is also usually a good idea to leave the burning application forward while it burns and not have the computer doing enything else during the burn. This is especially important with lower powered puters.

--

Regards,

[carinab]

All good stuff to know....But back to the software question...

The Pioneer comes with ULead and the Sony with Nero. I tried but can't find anything about Nero being able to lay down two video tracks (one ghosted on top of the other). I did find that feature reviewed on ULead.

Any comments of one versus the other....I don't have the coin to really buy a whole separate appl. and would like to get the better of the bundled software.

[George]

Two parallel video tracks with one ghosted over the other (transparency) is a fairly high end video effect and is typically limited to an editing application, not an encoding/authoring/burning utility like Nero and Toast.

iMovie and Final Cut Pro do that on the Mac platform and Adobe Premiere does it on Windows (but it's expensive). The low end video editing apps may not do it well, but I am sure there is one that will for your platform. Not much of a way around the fact that it is going to take an editing app, not just a burning app to do this. Burning a DVD and creating a video with effects like that are Church and State tasks ;-)

--

Regards,

[Putty]

I have built custom computers for a long time.....and I have had to really stay on top of manufacturers changes and how they are interfacing with other hardware sets. So I spend alot of time looking at hardware forums for problems or conflicts with other vendors products. This saves me alot of headaches via troubleshooting down the road, and thankfully this has paid off with no callbacks. YES, no call backs...did I say no callbacks? I always buy and build and benchmark for myself before building for someone else.

Software too for that matter. In the end it comes down to alot of research in the present tense, because what was once LG working very well with Roxio software and an MSI motherboard in a NT system is no longer valid. Even revision history on MOBOS and driver issues and more importantly FIRMWARE for optical drives can change via hardware interfaces across your system.

Currently I have found the Plextor optical drives (internal) to be very rock solid, with the NERO software. They seem to work well in concert with the socket 939 Asus mobos...(dunno about P4's)

If you want to save some ching, and you need drivers I would suggest looking for updated versions of firmware for optical drives that the manufacturers no longer post on their support websites at http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_all.php

If your deadset on a new drive, newegg offers bundled software with alot of their retail optical drive offerings. I bought a plextor for a client and it came bundled with games, Nero and DVD software.

I would suggest doing your own research, and when you feel good about the product, it usually works out.

[George]

Sandoz speaks truth about the chipsets and the firmware being a huge bugaboo here. Buying a recently manufactured drive usually means the firmware is up to date, but not always. Something that worked fine with the previous version of a software, may not with the same drive and the same media after the software is updated. I just got into another Pioneer drive (D109) and it's working fine outadabox. It came with the most recent firmware, but I checked anyway just to be sure.

The point is that DVD burning will usually work fine for most folks on most hardware with some experimentation with media types, but it may also take some hardware/software finagling to get it going if the system didn't come to you in that configuration. Once it does work well for you, don't change anything in the software/media chain if you want it to keep working ;-)

--

Regards,

[Kestrel]

What are some of the best video editing and DVD creation packages for Windows? I know Premiere has been around for a long time, but what are some others?

Is Sony Vegas a good package? Any others?

Eventually, I'll get another Mac, but right now, I just have Windows machines (and an older PowerMac).

I'm not looking for a loooong, complex learning curve. I prefer something intuitive.

Thanks.

[George]

Intuitive is NOT Premiere. Then again, Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro on the Mac are not exactly intuitive.

iMovie and iDVD on the Mac approach intuitive in usage and IMHO, there isn't much available in Windows at that level. Take a look at Nero for a simple and cheap Wintel package:

http://ww2.nero.com/enu/index.html

--

Regards,

[Kestrel]

Any experience with Sony Vegas+DVD? (Not the $99 consumer package.)

[George]

Nero and Premiere are all that I have any knowledge of in the Wintel realm.

Sorry.

[GuildSF4]

Havn't used Sony, have used Sonic and Ulead, both work, neither are intuitive.

[Singlestack]

Any experience with Sony Vegas+DVD? (Not the $99 consumer package.)

I have been using the $99 consumer package with satisfactory results for about a year.

[Flyin40]

I might have to look into the Sony for the price. Anything else out there worth checking out. 4 months is long time in computer business.

Flyin40

[Kestrel]

I might have to look into the Sony for the price. Anything else out there worth checking out. 4 months is long time in computer business.

Flyin40

Flyin,

I'm curious, as well. As it turns out, though, I'm planning to get a 20" iMag G5 soon, so I'll probably just go with Final Cut Pro, etc.

I am interested to here if there is something better for the PC in the same price range.

K.