I started to experiment a bit with express and DL burning since fengtao's improvement re: the LB. Created a bkup of "The Fugitive" - express v. 2.9.7.0 - main movie - VSO engine. The LB was still a problem...freezes, starts, freezes, starts...stuttering (loss of audio during this), but ultimately able to navigate past this with the player's remote. I then, took a look at the movie on the hd...absolutely no discernible seam. So, I figure what's another $1.80. This time I burn, again within express, but with nero, everything else is the same...same image off the hd, same media. This time the LB is all but invisible, quite literally seemed like the blink of an eye...no stuttering, no start and stop, no loss of video.

End of last summer, when I started fooling around with express and DLs (the price of media finally started to justify trying), I really don't recall if I used nero at all.
Larry, Mack, Gary, Fengtao, Portmac and anyone else...any insight? any thoughts?

Tom

VSO will be looking into this as soon as possible.

Please send the DVDFab burn logs and the Nero burn logs to me (portmac(at)vso-software.fr) and also quote this thread.

Done...thanks for looking into this...

Tom

Because of your post I've decided to do a little experimenting. Here is what I have now discovered so far. I took a DL backup that I burned using DVDFab Gold VSO engine with the version just before 2.9.7.0. On my Home Theater system that has a Onkyo DV-CP701 6-Disc DVD player all the DL movies backups have a minor skip at the Line Break. It was minor and never bothered me. I now took the same movie over to a friends with a new Samsung HD DVD player and the movie froze for like 5 seconds at the line break. In my portable Protron DVD player PDV-228 the movie froze again for like 5 seconds. Any on a cheap Diamond Home GK 2003 the no DL Disc backups will not play at all (SL disc will). I use a LG GSA-4163 with the latest firmware, RiDATA +R DL Discs and a windows 2000 pro machine. For some reason my Onkyo player can handle the burned DL nicely but the other DVD players I've now tried don't. I'm going to do some more testing and will post my findings.

Hmmm... Ritek DL is really bad... a lot of people here has problems with this media. I strongly recommend Verbatims DL (MKM001 or MKM003) if you can find them.

Regards,

ET

I've heard that but the price was right. They play fine on my Onkyo DVD player so I've never questioned them. I've burned about 25 RiDATA Discs and they have all played fine on my Onkyo player. Some with a minor skip at the LB and some I don't notice the LB at all. I'm going to do some more experimentation and see what I can figure out. The local Sam's club has the Verbatims DL discs now but they are more per disc. I might just buy some anyway and give them a try.

Greg, eltranquil, thanks for the feedback...


eltranquil, yes, I appreciate the advice. Have been burning Ritek DLs to the tune of about 50-60, no playback issues in any of my family's 4 players, except the LB and then only with Fab. Using liteon 1633s or liteon 1693s - depending on which of my systems. I'm also burning Verbs, again no playback issues. After some feedback from folks like ripit (? I think), I believe that the RICOHJPN D00 (001) are quality discs but have terrible firmware support.

Anyway, not trying to start a war...No argument that verbs are the best and now that I can find verbs for $2 each, I'm a happy guy... I still have about 20 or so Riteks to go.

Greg, interesting re: the Onkyo. When I play the "bad LB disc" in my Liteon 5005 (standalone), no visible LB at all...I mean I can't find it. This is exactly what I find when playing any DL created with AnyDVD and dvd decrypter combo (and burned with dvdd or Img)...no discernible LB...and this, in all players. I'm hoping that fab and vso will soon do the same.

Well, of course I'm happy that you and maineman are able to cope with the Riteks.
Maybe you could post a KProbe or CD-DVD Speed scan of one of those Ritek with the 1693?

Regards,

ET

Ok, I'll bite...like I said, verbs are the best, no argument... ...but you asked for a scan:
This one was with the 1633s...I just got the 1693s...I'll have to look some more.
The thing is, they "play" without any problems except for the annoying LB issuue with fab/vso

>>now that I can find verbs for $2 each<<

Care to share :-)

I'm not done experimenting. Will post when I have more to report. I did try a DVD DL on a RiDATA +R DL disc that I burned with latest Gold version 2.9.7.0 with booktype set to DVDROM in my cheap Diamond Home Player and the DVD player still will not recognize the burned DL discs.

Thanks! I must say that indeed it is not bad.

ET

Hey Greg,

I first learned of the $2 ea for verbs here at cdfreaks from a number of members:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58

ripit, in particular, is invaluable in posting "Next weeks ads", each week:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/sales/scans/index

This week, you'll find a 10 pk for $19.99 at officemax... ...
this sale runs pretty frequently at bestbuy as well.

Thanks, I've really just started scanning, so I'm very early in the learning curve, but it didn't look too bad to me either...

BTW, I've looked around a bit to learn more on how to interpret scans...found some useful info, but the info is somewhat scattered. Do you know of any posts or sites that would be concise and yet fairly comprehensive?

Thanks, appreciate your help,

Tom

Well, OC Freak's guide to Interpreting PI/PO error scans is really nice IMO...

And also Precision, accuracy, and reliability of disc quality (PI/PO/jitter) tests is a newer and interesting thread.

ET

Thank-you...again!...

Good job Tom!. We all know there are some different variations of the Ritek DL's out there, and Tom I think you got the better ones, at least according to the posting disc "experts" in past. Bottom line though, the layer break issue appears not a "disc" issue in this case, as proven by you burning/playing without issue with Nero.
Looks like Ken ("Portmac") has jumped on this per your post, and hopefully a resolution on the Fab/vso side. Did a good job on our SL Fab/vso burn issues awhile back! I hate to say it boys and girls, but lately, hard pressed to fine much material worthy of even the much maligned Ritek DL disc, so not so concerned at moment with the anydvd combo available when needed.
Know everybody's tastes are different, but in my opinion, Fab Express does a great job on SL compressed "movie only" rip/burns! Put it in, movie starts, viewing quality almost always near perfect...doesn't get much better than that.....
Also, maybe things have changed for better with all Ritek's DL's. The ones (and from numerous posts, apparently I have the even less desirable ones), I did with anydvd/dvddecrypt/imgburn - flawless, no issues whatsoever. But that was only about 10 or so, maybe if I did a 100, I would see problems?

maineman/larry3030cd

I'm a little confused about anydvd/dvddecrypt/imgburn. I know anydvd is not compatiable with DVDFab but are you saying if I bought anydvd and run that, then use the old dvddecrypter program to rip to the hard drive and burn with imgburn (not sure what that program is) I can get better full disc DVD copies without line break issue? Will all the restrictions be removed from the DVD like DVDFab does? Right now I'm not very pleased that I discovered the DL I made only work in my Onkyo DVD player

And maineman thanks for the link to those ads. Very useful

Greg,

I'm not sure if you saw the thread...on the old forum, where gmacs and I were experimenting with DL burns and in particular, the LB. Here are a few points. Yes, your assumption is correct. Dvd decrypter (dvdd) in combo with AnyDVD yields absolutely flawless bkups...no discernible LB...whatsoever. Since dvdd is defunct (the developer UK Lightning...gave up rights to it in his "settlement"), you'll need something like AnyDVD to interface with dvdd and keep up with the newer copy protection. You can burn with either dvdd or Img (also by UK)...Img is his latest burn app and will continue to be developed...here's a link:

http://www.imgburn.com/

You'll have to configure dvdd to work with AnyDVD...it's not bad tho'...I just guessed my way through it and it worked the first time.

Here are a few links to guides...they're by Cynthia...really outstanding guides.
If you have questions or run into trouble, just give me a holler.

Img guide:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=55424

Dvdd guides:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=51575
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=52136


BTW, portmac has the burn logs that he requested...I'm hoping for some good news re: express/vso and the LB...so keep your fingers crossed ...

Tom

maineman,

I may have seen your thread (although the forum kept getting hacked) I was not doing DL burns until more recently when the discs started to become reasonable (almost).

I've downloaded imgburn and installed. I'm wondering if I could use DVDFab Gold to create the ISO image file on my hard drive and use imgburn set to auto select LB and burn the DVD instead of the VSO engine. So DVDFab Gold>ISO>ImgBurn. I'm going to play with that and see what happens. I'm really hoping portmac comes up with a solution.

When burning an iso image imageburn will only select layer break as provided by an mds file made from dvddecyptor . it is not possible to manipulate the layer break info from an image . If you want to use dvd fab gold I suggest you rip in file mode removing the layer break and burn , if you are having probs with vso this will more likely to to bad media safe bet is to use verbatims and bitsett the discs when you burn in file mode it is much easier for software to place a layer break on the disc
then if u still have trouble try nero or discjuggler for burning part until vso sorts this out . I have made sucsessful dual layer burns with copytodvd so I am not sure why
you are having burning issues with fab ...

Greg,
As rayw pointed out, Img is configured to burn from the MDS file. A while back, I started to look at doing something with gold...to be honest I can't recall how far I got...but apparently, not too far. I'm at work right now, but let me know how it goes.

rayw, unfortunately, the LB issue with fab/vso, is not media, burner, or bitsetting dependent (have used different media including verbs and have bitset, multiple systems, burners)...appreciate the feedback tho'. Not sure how much of this thread you've read, but dvd decrypter in combo with AnyDVD will yield absolutely flawless bkups. What we're hoping to accomplish here is easy one click DL creation within the fab application and without the "unseamly" ( ) LB.

I am by no means an expert here on DVD structure or much of anything technical. What I want is to be able to use DVDFab Gold to backup movies.

Although I've heard lots of complaints about the Ritech DL discs I have about 25 discs burned without a problem with image or sound. The LB issue really does not really effect my main Onkyo DVD player. I still believe at this time it's the VSO engine that need a bit a work. But if I find out different I'll post my findings here.

I went ahead last night and did an ISO copy to Hard Drive with DVDFab Gold 2.9.7.0 and burned the Image with imgburn to a DL RiDATA (RiTech) disc. Today I put the disc in my Portable DVD player and this time the LB is just a fraction of a second skip. Put the VSO burned disc in and again a 5 or so second pause.

I'm going to experiment a bit more but it looks like the VSO engine needs a little tweaking. Hopefully they will do this and all will be good

I've been working with just one DVD movie because I knew where the LB was on it. Now I'll have to watch another movie to find the LB and test once more.

Greg, thanks for the info...that's good news. Yes, I agree re: VSO. I won't be home until about 08:00 EST (U.S. East coast) tonight and I'll check my email then. If portmac has news for us, I believe he'll post it here anyway...he's very good about that.

I used the DL feature in Gold and burnt "Wedding Crashers" on Ritek Ridata +R media code RITEKD01 bit set to DVD-ROM and got successful results. Scanned with VSO inspector and got 99.99 % good read. Played flawless on my Liteon 5005 and one minor freeze on a Sylvania player.

Also you can edit an ISO with Iso Buster and I think Ultra Iso.

This site has a lot of info on media:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

They recommend using the scandisc in Nero and forget all the PO/PIF/PI/Jitter as those features serve to start arguments in forums and chat rooms. These features are for drive engineers to evaluate their drives and are little use to average users. Also learned from a link off the links posted by eltranquil that PO/PIF/PI/Jitter is not a true test of the media, but test of drive reading the media. I guess that is reason you can get different scans of PO/PIF/PI/Jitter using the same DVD on separate drives. I'm no expert but do research and not just on forums but those of major universities. From my research I found that scan for errors and play back are the only test of use for most people.

Mack

Just watched the disc at the point where the LB is. I used Gold 2.9.7.0 to rip to HD ISO mode and burned using imgburn to RiDATA DL on my Onkyo DVD player. Absolutly no LB detected at all. Before I could see the skip but now nothing. Flawless. On my portable I see the skip but it is like less then a second. When I get time I'll watch the whole DVD and see if there are any problems. Right now it looks like I'll be ripping with DVDFab Gold to Hard Drive and burning with imgburn.