Unable to burn a dvd successfully.

[pearce]

Hi with reguards to the xp disc, xp is not designed for this machine and as far as I'm aware, their are no drivers for xp. I went to the compaq website and their are only vista drivers. If I was to reformat without any of the drivers on my usb, I would not be able to get the internet. One of the drivers allows me to connect to the internet, the others are display and sound.

I will purchase a new dvd burner if you think it will help, and will look for external case aswell.

I just opened up the pc, the sata cables are running directly to the motherboard. In that 40 pin socket their is a chord attached and alot of adapters for my old burner. So I believe I can try hook it up now and see how it goes.

I will let you know thanks very much.

[GregiBoy]

Well, the external burner certainly helped this guy.

http://forum.dvdfab.com/showthread.php?p=11288#post11288

have a read through that thread.

[maineman]

Good idea from GregiBoy...the ext burner did help that member.
Yes, I think the ext burner will help, but I really hate to recommend to others to spend their hard, earned money when there's no way to know for sure.
I can easily do this sort of thing in my home as I have a plethora of burners and about 6 ext cases......but that's not helping you out.

I think putting in the old burner will help you diagnose this though...it's worth a shot.
Assuming you do purchase another burner, you can always use it.
Are you sure no one has an older burner with an IDE interface that you could borrow?

I am almost willing to bet the price of a new burner that connecting the burner externally will fix this. As I said, this will totally bypass the nVidia ATA controller and it will be the usb controller that calls the shots.

[pearce]

So with the external burner does it not use sata or that other 40 pin cable? It just plugs straight into the usb outlet?
I used to have a computer that had 2 burners, one would rip the disc and the other would burn the disc. I think I may have used nero but this was many years ago. Is this possible with the new burner? Because my current one could rip and the new one could automatically burn, saving me the trouble of adding the blank disc (I could burn overnight, etc)
Thanks very much for the help.

[GregiBoy]

The USB one just uses your USB Port, no cables and you can use the internal reader as the source and the external burner as the target already loaded with the blank.

[pearce]

OK thats excellent so I will go to a few electrical stores tomorow and check them out. What are some good brands I should look for? and are they just called "External DVD Burners"
I'd also need the case too, which should be in the same section right? What are they called.

Thanks very much for the help so far it is greatly appreciated.

[maineman]

Yes, they are called external burners.
No, you do not need to purchase an ext. case or anything else as it is already an external burner.

It's much better to shop a specific make and model as any brand can have a "less than ideal model dvd burner".
LiteOn, LG, Samsung, etc., all make good quality ext. burners, but again, research a specific make and model.

The advantage with an internal burner is that you can avail yourself of a much bigger selection of burners and you have the capability to use it externally
(with an add-on ext. enclosure) or internally.

The advantage with an ext. burner is that you buy it and you're done.
No shopping for an ext. enclosure and no hassles with installation, making sure that both internal and external interfaces are all compatible.

If you go with internal, be certain the case is a 5.25 inch enclosure...has a decent fan, has compatible internal interface (IDE, SATA)
and that the external interface is usb 2.0 and not just eSATA or 1394 (firewire).

Here's a Samsung external burner for $49.99 in the US
You can click on the image viewer for close ups and to see what's included:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151194

Definitely get some feedback from GregiBoy as to what the best deals are in OZ

[pearce]

thankyou all.

I went out today and found a few burners, but will have to wait until pay day before I buy one.
On a different note, If I were to decrypt with dvd decrypter (Main movie only, No compression required, 100%) and then I was to encode the film with dvd shrink and then encode the new files again and again and again, would the quality ever deteriorate?
What I mean is, will the quality of a film with no compression required ever deteriorate after countless encoding.
Thankyou

[90312]

If you compress a movie, encode or transcode, there will be some loss. After the first compression there will not be any further loss. DVD is not like video tape.

[pearce]

Thankyou very much.

I put vista back on this pc again, the graphics of vista really appeal to me, thats about all that does. Vista is extremely slow on this pc and very unresponsive.

I re-installed dvd fab and to my amazement it ripped and burnt "The happening" successfully.

I am trying more dvd's now and am having other problems that are entirely different. The program itself seems rather unresponsive and on one of the dvd's, the "Open dvd source:" boxs pups up and analyses the disc, and then vanishes, and I'm left with the source box saying: Please insert dvd disc or choose dvd folder/image file.

Also another problem that occured with 2 dvd's so far was it got to about 1-5% encoding and paused, and this lasted for 40 minutes. I then exit the program because I knew nothing was happening.

But atleast one problem seems to be fixed. Any knowledge on these new problems are appreciated.

I'm downloading the beta version 6.2.1.0 right now.

I believe I still may aswell buy the new burner also.