Backup keeps popping and freezing

[jcpr]

Hello everyone...

This is my first post here. Hope to be an active member, whenever I can help.

Now the reason i'm writing this is not just to say hi. I would have used another post for that...

I've installed my DVD recorder recently and tried to make some backup's at once, although not very successful at that.

The DVD Recorder is a LG GSA 4040-B, which reads and writes every format I know of. Also it was not very expensive....

If anyone wants or have an impression about this drive, please let me know.

I tried to backup two of my Favorite films, as I watch them quite often. Besides, my nephew stays at my home everyday, and he has a particular interest in braking everything that's still in one piece... Kids!!

My first step was to get some blank DVD's. I don't know brands, so I bought some "Medianca" 1x-4x. Don't know if they are good or not. I installed all the drivers and programs that came with the drive.

The adrenaline was urging up so I quickly downloaded a trial version of Clone DVD. The program looked simple enough, so I went ahead. By then, I didn't know the DVD's could be encripted, and I thought that if the DVD had any kind of copy protection, Clone DVD would remove it, as it's brother (clonecd) does. Also, i didn't know there were DVD 5 , 9 and 10 types of media. I thought 1 DVD could be copied, 1 to 1, to another DVD. Couldn't be more wrong.

1st - Pulp Fiction - Love the movie! The DVD could have some more extras ( I don't have the special edition ).

I chose "Clone DVD" option to make an integral copy of the DVD, convinced that I would get an exact replica of the DVD. I chose to copy everything ( Movie + extras + all audio + subtitles) and it showed a level of compression of 44%. I tried to change it by adjusting the indicator, but nothing worked, so I chose to continue make the copy. Everything was complete in approx. 1H30 (The DVD doesn't have any kind of protection. I saw that in DVD Decrypter afterwards!). It recorded at approx. 4x i believe. At least, so it indicated.

I waited and when it finally it appeared... my first backup. I thought to myself "Ok... easy enough!!". I inserted it in my stand-alone DVD player (Pioneer DV-350), everything ok, so i thought... And the compression.. couldn't notice any significant difference. Everything went well, so i started to watch the movie, again. When it reached the last 2 chapters, some problems started to appear... first some blocks appearing here and there, and then there were so many problems that it started to freeze the image, with the same blocky look. I could also hear the DVD player like it was skidding... I was very disappointed.

So I started looking the web for information and ended up here.

I found ChickenMan's tutorial and followed it thoroughly, this time with my second DVD "The Crow".

I used:

- Clone DVD 1.3.12.1
- DVD Decrypter 3.1.7.0
- Nero Burning Rom 6.0.0.23
- DVD Maestro 2.9
- Subrip 1.17.1

And made the DVD in Maestro. I then tried to use clone dvd to burn the image made in Maestro. Everything ok, or so I thought.

Again, near the last two chapters the same symptoms. Blocks, pops and freezes...

The next time I would use Nero. Made a new copy with Nero (Burned at 2x, because it didn't allow to change it to 1x) and once again, this time nearer to the end, the blocks, pops and freezes.

I then tried something else. I removed the DVD and looked for scratches or dust. Found none, but I blown on it and navigated directly to the part where the problems appeared. It passed that part but problems appeared a little bit forward. I took the backup and played it in the PC. No problems there. I tried to play it again in the stand-alone player. Navigated to the problem part. No more pops, or freezes. I'll have to try again, from the start to see if no more pops appear.

Meanwhile, did anyone have any similar problems?

What do you think is the reason for this?

Bad Media?

Bad Recorder?

Bad Recording programs?

Bad Method? (I really don't think so. ChickenMan rulez!!! )

Can you help me?

Ze

P.S: Sorry for the long post

 

[hamcom]

Welcome 'jcpr'.

Bad media, Bad media, Bad media, Bad media.

Use Ritek G04 or G03's (4 speed or 2 speed).

Although in some rare cases you can get a bad rip from the disk, using another software to rip would show this. And to confirm .... play 'Vob' files in software DVD player to check. ie: .. Power DVD lets you load the dvd structure from the Video_ts folder.

Use Ritek G04 or G03's (4 speed or 2 speed).

Well done for managing to use so many softwares and getting them to output correctly. You read well.

 

[jcpr]

Welcome 'jcpr'.

Bad media, Bad media, Bad media, Bad media.

Use Ritek G04 or G03's (4 speed or 2 speed).

Although in some rare cases you can get a bad rip from the disk, using another software to rip would show this. And to confirm .... play 'Vob' files in software DVD player to check. ie: .. Power DVD lets you load the dvd structure from the Video_ts folder.

Use Ritek G04 or G03's (4 speed or 2 speed).

Well done for managing to use so many softwares and getting them to output correctly. You read well.

Well... ChickenMan wrote it easy to read


About Ritek... hum... I've never seen it here (I live in Lisbon, Portugal).

Maybe i'll order some online.

Are there any other good brands? Is Ritek the best? What about Sony, Verbatim, TDK, BASF? Are they any good?

About playing it on PowerDVD... I played it, and no problems appear running from the HD. So i'm more inclined towards bad media too. But, how do you spot it's bad media, when you buy it? For CD's you have the tranparency issue, where typically as transparency increases the quality decreases. But these DVD-Rs are opaque as hell. So... any other way of spotting them?

Thanks hamcom.

 

[ChickenMan]

Welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy your stay.

As hamcom said, crappy media that your DVD Player does not like is your problem. Try Sony or TDK media, they are also great. People say Ritek is good (they are) but they are "good cheapies" compared to Sony or TDK etc., generally you get what you pay for.

 

[scarecrow]

Ritek G 3/4 are the best budget media indeed.
TDK are in most of the cases made by Ricoh, and they are exhellent- and expensive.
The Sonys I've found here have no manufacturer information (!), they are relatively cheap, but they burn fine- not such a surprise, I have a Sony burner.
Never tried BASF.
Verbatims are generally CMC, which shouldn't be good. However you might be able to find Verbatim +R media made by Mitsubishi, which ought to be great. I have not been able to spot them here. I have also used Intenso DVD-R, which are most of the times made by Prodisc. These seem to work fine on my Sony, but other people with Pioneer and NEC burners discard them as plain horrible.
Princo media seem to be quite the opposite- quite good for other burners, but crap for Sonys.
The most recommended media by your drive manufacturer (Hitachi/Lucky Goldstar) are TDK. DVD-RAM should also burn great/ 100% error free, but they are both very expensive and not recognized by most standalones.
If you can read german, here's a recent test: http://www.tobitech.de/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=173&page=3
It reports dissapointing results with Princo and Intenso media, as well as very good results with "PrimeDisc" media which I never saw here. It also reports problems corrected with a new firmware A-300 to replace the current A-150, which for some very obscure reason can only be found at the african mirror of the LG site (!).
Hope it helps...

 

[jcpr]

Welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy your stay.

As hamcom said, crappy media that your DVD Player does not like is your problem. Try Sony or TDK media, they are also great. People say Ritek is good (they are) but they are "good cheapies" compared to Sony or TDK etc., generally you get what you pay for.

First of all, thanks CM for your tutorial. May I suggest you update it on subtitles , both forced and optional. It's the weakest part of the tutorial.

It looks like i'll be paying a visit to a computer shop to buy some TDK's.



Ze

 

[jcpr]

Ritek G 3/4 are the best budget media indeed.
TDK are in most of the cases made by Ricoh, and they are exhellent- and expensive.
The Sonys I've found here have no manufacturer information (!), they are relatively cheap, but they burn fine- not such a surprise, I have a Sony burner.
Never tried BASF.
Verbatims are generally CMC, which shouldn't be good. However you might be able to find Verbatim +R media made by Mitsubishi, which ought to be great. I have not been able to spot them here. I have also used Intenso DVD-R, which are most of the times made by Prodisc. These seem to work fine on my Sony, but other people with Pioneer and NEC burners discard them as plain horrible.
Princo media seem to be quite the opposite- quite good for other burners, but crap for Sonys.Well, my DVD collection isn't that big (30 DVDs or so), so i'll probably go for quality. Since my drive recommends TDK, and they are in fact good, i'll go with those.
The most recommended media by your drive manufacturer (Hitachi/Lucky Goldstar) are TDK.

I'll go for the TDK's. I don't have a big DVD collection so I can afford it.

DVD-RAM should also burn great/ 100% error free, but they are both very expensive and not recognized by most standalones.

I'll have to try to burn a DVD-RAM to see if my player reads it. Maybe i'm lucky... By the way, I've heard there are plans for DVD 9 DVD-R's... Is this true? When will they be available? Would I need to buy a new drive, or a firmware upgrade will be enough?

If you can read german, here's a recent test: http://www.tobitech.de/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=173&page=3
It reports dissapointing results with Princo and Intenso media, as well as very good results with "PrimeDisc" media which I never saw here. It also reports problems corrected with a new firmware A-300 to replace the current A-150, which for some very obscure reason can only be found at the african mirror of the LG site (!).
Hope it helps...

Yes, it helped! Thanks

My drive had the latest firmware anyway so no upgrade needed

 

[ChickenMan]

First of all, thanks CM for your tutorial. May I suggest you update it on subtitles , both forced and optional. It's the weakest part of the tutorial.

It looks like i'll be paying a visit to a computer shop to buy some TDK's.



Ze

Yes that is very true, however, I have very little use of Subtitles myself (only Forced English ones) hence little experience. And all I'm doing here is passing on my experience, thats all.

 

[jcpr]

Yes that is very true, however, I have very little use of Subtitles myself (only Forced English ones) hence little experience. And all I'm doing here is passing on my experience, thats all.

I would be glad to prepare a document with my experience on subtitles, if you would care to add it to your tutorial

 

[ChickenMan]

Yes please but I wont add it in, I would just link to yours so you get the credit rightly due.

 

[jcpr]

Yes please but I wont add it in, I would just link to yours so you get the credit rightly due.

Ok CM. I'll just grab a bite and i'll start to work on it right away.

 

[ChickenMan]

No probs, just take your time. Thanks.