DVD player or bad files?

[AlterEgox5]

All right, I'm sick and tired of not having a clue as to what is going on. You see, I don't have room on my computer for tons of anime and don't have the money to buy an external harddrive, so I simply burn the anime I really want to keep onto DVDs as data files. However, there have been times where it doesn't work. It will start to burn the info and then stop, claiming there has been an error. This has happened several times, and I've been successful 3 or 4 times out of maybe 8 or 10. The weird thing is, one time I tried a set of files, it didn't work. Yet weeks later I tried it again and it worked fine.

:confused:

So I saved the log it made most recently in hopes that maybe someone who understood it more than myself might be able to shed some light on the problem. I don't know of my DVD drive is just screwy, if the DVDs themselves have issues, or if the files I'm trying to burn just don't want to burn.

4

NT

[Kraco]

I'm no pro and maybe no wiser than you are, but one interesting thing is that your media should be ok. ProdiscF01 has received quite good feedback at videohelp.com.

Are you positive your writer is ok?

[AlterEgox5]

That's the thing, I don't know if my writer is okay - all my computer buddies live far away now and I don't have dough to bother screwing around with Best Buy or something. I've suspected it for a while, but I don't know how to make sure...

Maybe I can get one of my pals to come over and look at it...but then he might take it apart and leave is scattered across the floor... ¬.¬'

NT

[darkshadow]

i couldnt see any kind of buffer underrun protection buffering being logged, maybe you should try burning at lower speeds

[Kraco]

What comes to that, it's not a simple issue. If you have many other programs running when you are burning, it can be deleterious especially if much HD access is going on. So, instead of burning at lower speeds it might be wiser to decrease the competition to the HD access. In the end the writers burn with optimum quality typically at the max speed. That's why saving time is not the only reason to always burn at full throttle.

[AlterEgox5]

That actually occurred to me too, the running of more than one thing while burning. Usually though, before I start burning I close everything out. Today all I had up was Winamp (but not playing), AIM (but not chatting), and uTorrent (3 torrents running). My plan was not to try anything again until uTorrent was finished. Even if I do try the lower speed idea, I'm still going to wait until all the torrents are done - I don't trust anything these days when it comes to burning stuff. I'm tired of throwing away half-burned DVDs.

About 5 minutes ago a friend IMed me and said the same thing, "Try burning at 4x - for whatever reason it doesn't like it when you burn at 8x."

Guess I'll find out just what it likes when uTorrent is done...

NT

[Kraco]

Well, it's an idea to try a lower speed. Maybe your drive just doesn't happen to like those disks. That can unfortunately happen. Updating the firmware sometimes helps, if updates are available.

Hmm... I have never even tried burning with torrents running. Torrenting is about as HD intensive as you can get (second to copying and other very direct HD accessing). Especially if you haven't set buffers for utorrent. By default it has no read buffer, and very small write buffer. And that means it's a lot more HD intensive.

[Raven]

I've had similar problems in the past with burning, and selecting a slower speed fixed it completely. I guess it's just more stable that way.

[AlterEgox5]

*smacks fist into hand*

Then it's settled - finish the torrents and give it a go...heheh...guess I'll have to wait just a tad bit longer to snag those Hellsing OVAs. I'll let everyone know how it works out!

NT

[AlterEgox5]

Ok, so I have nothing running (not counting the few programs in the notification area) - no AIM, no Winamp, no torrents; just the program to burn.

I decided to be brave and try it at the default (8x) speed and it cleared without any errors - but that's happened before and when I go and look at the files, not all of them will play. Such was the case again here. If I try playing a file it apparently doesn't like, it just freezes up (this happened with my first attempts to burn Naruto files).

I quit with 8x - gonna try it at a lower speed this time and if it doesn't work, then I'll have no idea what to do...

[AlterEgox5]

Right.

Now I'm really just confused.

I took the advice and burned at a lower speed and gave it a go at 6x. It finished, no error, but here's the kicker (a single example) for all you computer savvy peoples out there:

Disc #1 - burned at 8x - will play ep. #39
Disc #2 - burned at 6x - will NOT play ep. #39

Each one plays some files and not others, but they're not the same. I haven't gone through all of them because it's just really pissing me off because it makes no sense. This turn of events shows that it's not the files for sure...so what the hell is going on with this thing?

[darkshadow]

then either your laser is dirty or the media you use is bad, or your burner doesnt like the media you're using

[AlterEgox5]

*snort*

Go figure...this is supposed to be new stuff...(ok, well it's *just* over a year old, and I know that's not technically new in computer years, but you catch my drift I'm sure).

Looks like I'll have to get one of my buddies over here to take a gander at it...I'll just bet it doesn't like the media...picky lil @#$%

Thanks anyway guys! ^_^

NT

[Kraco]

Can you play the said episode directly from your HD? I have very rarely failed to burn a dvd, and in all but one cases it was a bad blank DVD. However, that one case was a corrupted Naruto episode on my HD. It wouldn't properly play directly from the HD, and when I tried to burn it, Nero terminated the burning process. I had to redownload that one episode to be able to burn that DVD.

So, make sure your source is good as well. Take good care of your HD.

[AlterEgox5]

I watch everything before I consider burning it, just in case I come across a movie/series I find I don't like enough to keep around longer than one or two views. And even if one of them was bad, it makes no sense for it not to play on one disc and then play on another.

After further review of everything, I got into contact with a computer pal who is going to take a gander at it today, but last night while we were discussing the topic, I figured out who made the writer (seeing as this is a frankenstein computer) and then went looking for it. To my dismay I found several other forums with people complaining about the same problem I was having. Yippee skippy. It sounds like the hardware just sort of goes "Keh" after maybe a year or so. I contacted my father since he was the one who knew the guys that put this together and told him that this whole "parts of my computer are failing to work like they should be" thing is not cool (I've already had to trade in my speakers - they stopped working right after a year too and for what this thing cost, none too happy bout it). So when I get out of here we're gonna take a bunch of stuff to them and say, "Hey, yeah you - fix it."

Thanks for all your help and suggestions and (if anyone cares) I'll let you know how it all pans out!

NT

[Aeon]

I've never burned anything as data but maybe that's the problem. The steps I take to burn everything is to first convert my avi files to dvd using DivxtoDVD which gives me .vob file. After that I'm able to burn 12eps per disc using Nero.

*Edit* How did I end up in the support forum? Thought this was General Discussion

[darkshadow]

thats not the problem, since i burn 19-26 eps per dvd at 8x without a problem, i had some cases that my burner didnt like the media, but its buffer underrun technology ( every manufactorer names it differently ) saved the media anyway, and i had 1 case that my burner really didnt like the media i was using, and it failed without the buffer even depleting at like 8%

[AlterEgox5]

Yeah, I've been able to burn 5 DVDs with the max amount they can fit (at most 19 eps of something), and even way back when I started burning DVDs (not long after my discovery of torrents - ah how this n00b has advanced), it seemed to have some issues.

It's a Samsung TS-H552B for those of you out there who might be curious.

NT

[Kraco]

It's a Samsung TS-H552B for those of you out there who might be curious.

Well, that explains something... (http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/163/9)

Quote from conclusions:



Questionable DVD-R and CD-RW writing quality
Questionable DVD+R 16x quality
Poor media compatibility



Some general info below, not directly relating to this problem (it's a lecture):

I can only say that when you buy your next writer, very carefully read a couple of good reviews from the net (and I don't mean one paragraph visitor written reviews over at Amazon). There are huge differences between writers, and the price is not normally a good indication at all, unless you are about to buy one of those $800 Plextors (the cheap Plextors are no better than any other ordinary brands).

Also it could be frustrating to try to hunt a drive that really excels at both reading and writing. Contrary to what you might casually imagine, writers are often much worse at reading bad media than ordinary cheap dvd-rom read-only drives. I have a LiteON writer (got a good review) and a LiteON reader (got a good review as well). The cheap reader gladly accepts some bad disks the writer didn't even try to read or tried to read forever with no results.

The bottom line: Don't automatically trust the salesman. Unless you have a friend who REALLY knows what he's talking about and is not only bragging with his own drive, go and spend hours looking for reviews and comparisons, before buying a drive. Thinking they are all the same or buying the cheapest or most expensive (within reasonable range) leads nowhere.

Uh... This got pretty long... [/end of lecture]

[AlterEgox5]

Haha, that's funny because it's exactly the cdfreaks forum that I got my initial info from (plus a few others, but that's the one I have bookmarked).

Yeah, the thing is I told them what I wanted in the computer, but didn't get the choice of hardware, ya know? Haha, if I had, it would have taken a lot longer to build my computer because I'm a psycho when it comes to choosing the best product for the best price. My sister thinks I have issues...

Anyone got any suggestions for new hardware that simply rocks out hardcore?

NT