Which DVD burner? Need a little help guys...

[SpiralDragon]

my question is can you do authoring on dvd+r/rw devices....?

[Jerry Jones]

Certainly.

Why not?

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[SpiralDragon]

beacuse with dvd-r you need a special drive and a special disk .. i was wondering if it is the same with dvd+r/rw

[Jerry Jones]

Well...

...assuming I understand the question...

...yes...

...one would need a DVD+R/+RW drive to author DVD+R/DVD+RW discs.

...one would need a DVD-RAM drive to save files to DVD-RAM discs.

...one would need a DVD-R/DVD-RW drive to author to DVD-R/DVD-RW discs.

Then there are the various combination drives that do two out of the above three.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[John Wray]

Originally posted by SpiralDragon
beacuse with dvd-r you need a special drive and a special disk .. i was wondering if it is the same with dvd+r/rw

There are two types of DVD-R media, called "for Authoring" and "general", but you can use either for creating DVD videos that are compatible with set-top players. All consumer DVD-R drives are "general", and the "for Authoring" drives & disks are rare and very expensive.

So I think when people in this forum talk about DVD-R, they're almost always referring to DVD-R general media.

John

[SpiralDragon]

agreed... but i was wandering about DVD+R+RW ... is there an authoring solution for those drives or do the use the same drive and media..... thats what i am intrested in.... can you author to DVD+r/rw as you can to DVD-R "for Authoring"

[John Wray]

You can author equally to DVD-R "for authoring" or to DVD-R "general"; you don't have to use "for authoring" media & drives to author DVDs.

The only thing that "For Authoring" media allows that "general" doesn't is Cutting Master Format, which is only of interest if you're going into large-scale replication of DVD movies. None of the other formats support this either; they're all comparable to the "general" version of DVD-R.

John

[mits]

SpiralDragon,
YES you can author on DVD+R/RW (there is only type for DVD+R not General and Authoring like DVD-R).

[Hulk]

Well my DRU-120A arrived yesterday.
Ended up costing $320-$50rebate=$270 shipped.

I installed the drive and my computer recognized it.
I didn't install any of the Sony supplied software.
I've burned a few DVD+R data discs using Easy CD Creator 5.0
No problems, just like burning a CD data disc. BTW, I'm using Legacy DVD+R I got for $3 each from ebay. So far so good for data storage but I doubt they'll work for video.
I'm going to try a video DVD as soon as I download the MovieStudio trial.

I'll get back...

[SpiralDragon]

thanx for clearing that up ......

[Hulk]

I burned a video DVD last night, it has a lot of chapters and video files in it.

Results:

Will not read in my Toshiba 2109 (3 years old)

Will not read in my brother's Toshiba 2100 (2 years old)

Plays perfectly, no glitches, menus fine in my brothers cheap GE that he recently purchased.

I think I'm just going to take the disc to a store and see which units play it, but that unit and move the old one upstairs.

[Tapeworm]

Hulk,

At least with DVD-Rs, the other big compatibility issue is the media. Burning DVD-Rs in an A-04, we saw different levels of compatibility in six different machines using Apple, Mitsui, Pioneer, Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden disks. As a rule, newer is better, even if it's a cheap player. Unfortunately, my brother did the testing, and I don't have the list. I believe the problem lies in there being more than one color of laser, and many manufacturers having a slightly different colored substrate on their disks.

I've been told that replication is still the only sure thing for now, but that's a pricey alternative for the casual user.

[Jerry Jones]

Tapeworm,

Your statement that 'with DVD-Rs the big compatibility issue is the media' is only partly true.

In my tests of three DVD 'recorders'

- Pioneer DVR-7000 (DVD-R)
- Philips DVDR 985 (DVD+R)
- Panasonic DMR-E20 (DVD-R)

I discovered all three of the above produced DVD discs that play in nearly every *stand alone player* we tried.

HOWEVER, only the Pioneer DVR-7000 produced discs that would play consistently in *computer DVD-ROM drives.*

Neither the DVD+R by the Philips...

...nor the DVD-R by the Panasonic units would play in all computer drives tested.

So - where DVD recorders (VCRs) are concerned - I'm convinced that the BRAND of the DVD recorder *matters.*

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

Does anyone know the setting for TMPGEnc that will produce a MPEG-2 file that MovieStudio will accept as DVD compliant?

The DVD template in TMPGEnc isn't accepted by MovieStudio.