New to this and just wanted to say

[moschops_R33]

that i've followed peoples advice on here and successfully backed up my son's Pirates of the Caribbean at the first attempt.

I used DVDDecryptor to write the files to HD, then DVDShrink in re-author mode to get the film on one disk. I scrapped all the menus and other rubbish and doing a deep analysis the compression was about 78% (but my memory's awful ). Burned it to a Infinity Red @ 4x with Nero 6 on my NEC 2500A and worked a treat.

Sorry if this is in the wrong place but I just had to tell someone!

Thanks for the excellent tutorials and helpful information.

Oh, regarding the Infinity's the first 2 I burned recently (@ 4x) were coasters - on close inspection I see that a small scratch caused a 'shadow' on the dye, like the laser was dispersed and didn't touch the dye.
Are burns this prone to failure due to (small) scratches, or is it crap media? I'm checking each one now to make sure it's scratch free

(I only bought them because they were £15.99+VAT for 50)

 

[new2this]

Yeah. Stay away from cheaper media. Use Ritek media where possible and avoid touching the writing surface until written. A finger print makes a nice image on the surface but renders the disc useless.

 

[StressTest]

I've done pretty well with the Fuji DVD-R media. You can find it just about anywhere and does a fantastic job.

I haven't had one failure to burn and I've backed up most of my DVD collection with this media (around 300 DVD's)

Take care,