DVD writers need some new command sets before that makes any sense

Depends on the protection, but on the PC there is a good chance to write a protection emulation layer.

Thanks. And unfortunately I am the project manager for MakeDisc, and this little beast is not really kicking off...

At the moment, CloneCD simply has a higher priority.

Well, to be honest it's the same for most of us. CloneCD is priority number one.
MakeDisc sounds promising, but that one button design is what I'm really looking forward to. Just don't drown in the work. You'd be missed (for your work at least ).

@Olli: I was more aiming at 1:1 copies than on emulation

Real time fast enough playback on DDS-4 ? Which SCSI is the minimum requirement ?

If i had such a tape drive i'd be quite interested , but alas.. they're usually in servers only. Only got a DDS-1

Ha! Big mistake! You asked me about it! Now you have to read the blubber...

I use an OEM HP-DAT40 drive (don't now the model number, something HP'ish cryptic) which has wide SCSI, but I use it on the cheapest Symbios Logic 8 Bit PCI SCSI Controller I could find, and it is still much faster than needed. Works like a charm with DDS3 (12 GB) and DDS4 (20GB) Tapes, DDS2 is too slow, forget DDS1. Note that this HP drive is pretty fast even with DDS3, I don't know if a HP DDS3 drive would be fast enough.

You need a sustained transfer rate of about 1 MByte/s uncompressed, this should be enough to watch a DVD in realtime from tape. Forget compression, the MPEG2 stream can't be compressed any further with the in-built hardware compressor. The random access time is fine for watching, having three movies on one tape it needs about 1 Minute to seek to another movie. Much faster than VHS, and with better quality of course. Skipping chapers is a matter of seconds.

Only problem are random accessing menus back and forth, and the tape drive itself, which decides to clean its heads every 20 minutes of watching for about 30 seconds.

My wife constantly complained about the "30 seconds of picture freeze every 20 minutes" using more-or-less harsh words, so elbyTape got a "Media Mode", which does not only cache all the DVD Menus, but does also read ahead caching, so it is no problem if the drive completely stops for several minutes. It uses temporary files on the harddisk for that.

elbyTape uses the NT/2000/XP tape drive interface, so it should work with every drive, which is supported by NT/2000/XP, if it can deliver the data fast enough.

Drawback - no 9x support (as long as this thing is no product and only for me, myself and I, no problem)

elbyTape can emulate a DVD-ROM, so any DVD player software (WinDVD, PowerDVD, Cinemaster, ZoomPlayer) plays directly from the tape. Some trickery had to be done, as random access is much slower than a real DVD-ROM and the requests tend to time out, but this problem is solved and this knowledge is very benificial for DVD Region Killer Pro.

(Maybe you can guess now where Virtual CloneDrive originated? I actually needed it for this purpose! It was only a small effort to adapt it and include it with CloneCD)

The real disadvantage is - who has a fast tape drive, or is willing to buy one to watch movies? And you can only watch on a Home Theater PC, the tiny DDS tapes won't fit in a VHS deck
This is not a problem for me, I have a projector connected to the VGA output on my PC and the Digital Amplifier connected to the SPDIF output of the motherboard.

BTW, I use elbyTape to record digital Satellite programs as well. I use a DVB-S PCI card for this purpose. As DVB MPEG2 usually has a low transfer rate, I can record about 8 movies on a single tape.

I believe I am probably the only person on this planet who likes such strange things...

Oh dear, now you know what I do in my almost non existing spare time

Ah that's what you're doing when not waiting for food in a Thai restaurant

Hello, Olli!!!

Man, I like that idea with the backup tape! Man... I would pay for that software! I'm serious!

You could do a side projekt maybe? I'll wich to se the program live! It would be intressting. For recording and playback it would be a very nice tool. And for home Video users it would be ideal if you don't have to big harddrive and have a DDS-3 laying around.

Could you do a screenshot maybe??? hehe =) please!

I want to se elbyTape! =) Slap you boss and say... - We need it as a smal bonus feature!!! =) And if that doesn't work. Do a seperate project... ElbyTape!!! WROOOM!!!

But don't overwork! Take time and rest...

And good work with CloneCD by the way!

GO OLLI!!! GO OLLI!!!

/Dyzan

*edit*

If you lock at the price on the DDS3 drive... A litle expansive. Cheaper with a new HD-drive. hehe =) But I like the idéa any way. It's a "cool" status on that. And for me, I got a DDS3 laying. So no problem for me. But for thouse who hasen't. It would be expensive buy. Better buy a DVD-burner.

Actually, I have two of those tape drives from our two servers at work. We took them out when we upgraded to something even better. These got storered for a few months on a shelf so I asked the boss if I could make good use of them

I'd LOVE to see this program released!

this reminds me of using a standard vhs recorder as a tape archive for your computer data.. never saw one , but i heard you could put a LOT of data on those VHS tapes.

anyhoo.. i think it's a very very weird , yet nice technology. dunno why you tried to make it (just to see if it was possible to use tapes on other things than data backupping ?).

20 gig of divx on a single tape.. now there's a thought

Hi guys,
thought i would add my comments--
When the boyz at liteon produce a flying dvd writer and ollie hits the Button we will be flying!!

Reading some threads elsewhere there was @ 70 million divx downloads this year alone !! WOW theres a huge Market waiting to be hit here,Because i'm like alot of others at the moment divx rules until the right software and writer becomes available for the dvds.Just too god damn much peeeeing around at the moment to record / Backup dvds.

Anyway good look in your quest Ollie - get this one right then i think we will never see you again ,you'll be tanning yourself somewhere nice @warm with the Babes.

Ollie

@valnar

don't talk about ac3 recompression...lol..you will ruin the nice stuff of ac3

(ps accept if it is 2 channel ac3...i don't care...but normally i want to keep my 5.1)

@valnar

don't talk about ac3 recompression...lol..you will ruin the nice stuff of ac3

(ps except if it is 2 channel ac3...i don't care...but normally i want to keep my 5.1)


i hope they will add something like ifoedit...would be nice

I'm as all times Clone CD supporter for nearly five years up to now and I have a lot of confident with Clone CD which let me back up a lot of games which I couldn't be with others programs and much easier to use. I also have a huge DVD movies collection which I bought from U.S. I had also tried to back it up from some others dvd back up programs but it took more than six hours including rip and burn. In some cases I gave up. Until I read this post about Clone DVD from the same creator of Clone CD. Unfortunately, Clone DVD is still far away of backing up movies or unable to do it. I'm very disappointed indeed. I wish one day Oilli will improve the capability of Clone DVD and make it happen one day. I know there are some programs out there already had some progress but I wait and see.

@Olli

It's now 23 Februari and March is coming quickly.
Will CloneDVD be ready in March (as you mentioned) or has it been delayed.

I'm planning to buy the Sony DVD±RW writer!!

I saw this link from doom9's forum, very interesting .

Yes, please no compressing of AC3s! The whole point of having a DVD burner instead of using some other compression means such as DivX/MP3 is to keep all that nice stuff.

Anyways, I don't doubt you guys in your ability to make this type of app since you have given us CloneCD, but I have some questions. I currently own a DVD-R burner and have seen what's sometimes required to recreate DVDs, especially as DVD-9s get more and more complex.

With the flashy menus, multiple video streams per DVD (standard and widescreen on one disc for example), multiple sets of VOB files for extra stuff, multiple PGCs in DVDs (often with dummy PGCs that appear to do nothing, at least until you break them then suddenly your menu doesn't work, hehe) interviews, trailers, etc. etc., it's not as simple as just "rip, re-encode and burn" by any means.

Virtually every high-capacity DVD-9 that I've seen has been very different from any other. There's just no standard way that complex DVD-9s are assembled, how you re-create it depends on how they authored it to begin with. Even programs that only attempt to preserve the main movie and audio streams like DVDXCOPY don't do very well with certain discs that have multiple PGCs and odd authoring tricks in the original.

Will this app actually attempt to preserve ENTIRE discs or will it just strip out "main movie and audio" as DVDXCOPY does?

If it does attempt to preserve all the "extras", I'm very anxious to see how well it works .

The process of creating the image of a movie is so complex and taken unbelievable of time. DVD X Copy simplify all of that procedure and allow people to recreate a working back up of the dvd movies. But quality will suffer a little bit and in some cases won"t or don't do PCGs stuffs. However, this is a good opportunity to let people to recreate a working back up of their movies collections within an hour times, which is amazing and convenience. Besides, I don't have to leave my computer on for a long period. Otherwise, I need to have various programs like Smart Ripper, Chapter Xtractor, DVD Maestro, Nero 5.5.9x, DVD2SVCD 1.10 build, Cinema craft Encoder 2.50 only and Sub Rip 1.14 or later just to make a perfect copy. Who wants this complexity and a huge amout of time on it? Certainly not me as long as the back up looks good to me.

Sorry to post to a thread which is so old. (April 2002)...

Most of you likely know that DVD:9 -> DVD:5 is much easier now. I suggest looking at the software programs :
1. DVD Decrypter, and
2. DVD2One
3. ImgTool
The process of “generally” crunching a DVD:9 menus and all down to DVD:5 is not so trivial. ... Maybe DVDxcopy does this??? visit http://doom9.org for more information.

Anyway, CloneDVD is ** still ** unreleased. From what I have read, XBOX discs for the most part fit onto DVD:5 media. (3 titles are over 4.7Gb according to one guide on the subject.)

I hope that CloneDVD hasn’t been shelfed for eternity. We need someone to crack the XBOX format and make a software which makes good backups.