OK...

I have been burning DVD's for relatively a long time. I recently joined the Any DVD and Clone DVD bandwagon. It seems that any dvd movie that is less than 100% burns crappy. Here is my setup. To totally ISOLATE my burning environment I built a VMware workstation 5.0 virtual XP machine. The virtual machine has a 20 GB pre-allocated HD, and 1024 MB of memory. The XP VM has been patched with the latest hotfixes. Then I downloaded the latest version of Any DVD and Clove DVD. 5.4.1.1 for Any dvd, and 2.8.5.1 Clone DVD. I am using a Pioneer DVDRW DVR-107D 4x speed external USB 2.0 buner. I am us9ing TDK DVD +R 4.7 GB 8x DVD's from Best Buy.

Here is what happens: Take for instance a movie like Seabiscuit or Million Dollar Baby. I can burn either the whole DVD with the exception of subtitles and spanish language. The DVD burns about 78% quality. The movie plays perfectly.. until the last 45 minutes. Green and purple squares.. skips.. segments in the movie that as it gets closer and closer to the end refuse to play at all. I try the same test again with the just copy title only mode. Same issue. Any movie that is less than 100% quality (or I am assuming a movie that is not on a dual layer dvd to start with) burn like this. I have even changed my media. Same thing happens on sony media.. and generic ebay media.

For those of you that think it is a VM issue.. nope. I built a brand new Dell 400sc server with windows XP. I mirrored my VM setup on the physical box. Same issue. It seems like when the transcoder kicks in.. the dvd's don't burn properly.

I have also updated my firmware on my dvd drive.

What could be causing this?????

AnyDVD did not decrypt correctly the second part of the movie. I assume that AnyDVD (remember, it is a kernel mode driver!) does not work correctly in VM-Ware.
My suggestion: Install AnyDVD & CloneDVD on the host OS. It is a wrong assumption that you "isolate" your burning environment, as VM-Ware uses the host OS drivers to access your hardware anyway. If your host OS is spoilt by something, your VM-ware is as well.
Simple test: Use AnyDVD on the host OS. CloneDVD in your VM should see an unprotected DVD. Isn't that amazing?

It also has happened in the physical environment...

Good point. I overlooked this sentence. Do the original DVDs play properly with DVD player software when AnyDVD is enabled? I still believe it is a decryption error.

Might seem a daft point - but using x8 media on a x4 burner might be giving you some weird results. I would guess the burner doesn't have a correct write stratagy and is using a generic one.

Tru - you seem fairly clued up - would this make a difference?

No DVD decrypter and DVD Shrink? How come?

I noticed some problems burning 8x even 16x media on a max4x burner. It happened on a couple of discs.

Not sure if it was specific to backing up faster media on a slower rated drive, although, I would not rule that out as a posibilty.

Hooligan: If you can find some 4x media .. I would try that on your 4x drive.. and see if your problem persists. Updating burner firmware if available should also be done.

Ive backuped some movies at 40+% and the quality is still excellent.
AnyDVD and CLoneDVD are definatly a winning combination -

My understanding is that TDK +R8Xs are CMCs, at least mine were...Crappy Memorex media at best.....

My current stack of TDK 8x printable +R media is internally identified as CMC - and it burns and plays just fine when burned on my system (using a Benq 1620).

Read errors resulting in flawed or failed playback towards the end of a video (the outer rim of a media) is sometimes an indication of burning beyond the actual capabilities of the burner/media. I would suggest trying some burns at a slower speed (something mid-way in the range of media/burner advertised speeds) to reduce the burn speed being attempted towards the outer rim of the media - where it tends to be at its maximum. We seem to be talking about an external 4x max burner. I would transcode in a separate step and save the transcoded files to the hard drive. Then I would try burning in a separate step - at 2x and see if it impacts quality positively.

Same thing here, I keep hearing great things about CLONEDVD2 but the results are just crap, Iam getting flawless Burns with ANYDVD & DVDSHRINK combo but Clonedvd is just giving me movies that bug out near the last few chapters of the movie. I have no idea how to correct this issue, but it most have to do with the Burning Software that Clone Uses, because SHRINK uses Nero and it comes out fine.

My specs are a Compaq 2.4 GHZ 1 GB Ram WinXP Optorite 16x burner (yes its a cheap brand but works great with DVDSHRINK so far)

I want to give Clone a chance but iam starting to lose faith.

shrink uses whatever program you set it to use...doesn't have to be nero.

if you have good luck burning with nero then continue to do so. you can always create the files/iso in clonedvd if you like it's functionality then burn it separately in nero.

i've never had this problem with clonedvd. usually falling apart at the end of a disc is a sign of poor media. if you have the problem with one program and not another then I don't know what to tell you.

there are some people that will try to convince you that there's one perfect program out there, but they're crazy. I prefer the anydvd/clonedvd combo, but if you'd rather process in shrink or clone and burn with nero and that works for you, then by all means just do it that way!

The Media is Verbatim, they get pretty good reviews i believe, maybe iam just doing a wrong step or something what are your steps when using CLoneDVD.

My steps where activate ANYDVD in the background then open up Clone , click on copy dvd titles, get rid of some of the stuff i dont need like ceartain subtitles, extras, etc, output method DVDWRITER, set speed then GO.
Again it burns fine its just the finished product has errors at the very last few chapters.

yeah, same here...clonedvd is about as simple as it gets.

only other thing i can thing of is to make sure you're setting the speed to the rated speed of the media. setting at "max" can cause issues (at least it always does for me in ANY program)

if you're already doing that then I don't know what to tell you.

I probably did some max burns during some wich could explain the errors, but I have noticed that burning at 2x works fine. I dont know what else it could be but iam going to give it one more shot and make sure i dint do anything wrong.

2x seems pretty slow...burning too far below the rated speed of media can produce burns just as poor and trying to burn too fast.

if you're using 8x media i wouldn't go any lower than 4x. i usually burn my 16x media at 8x only because my drive (BENQ DW 1640) isn't too wonderful with burning at 16x. the discs come out fine either way, I'm just a nerd that does quality scans and likes to see those nice scans, and it looks nicer at 8x for me.

I've only rarely had a problem with AnyDVD/ CloneDVD2 and it was due to FUJI 8x media bought on sale at BestBuy (and returned). It gave that same result. I've been burning DVDs for at least three years and have used other programs and have found these to be the best. Over 300 movies backed up successfully.