After learning the basics of capturing, encoding and mastering (for use on my old videos), I turned to the task of backing up my DVDs, only to find burning to be the apparent Achilles' heel of the process. Every burning program I have tried has either crashed itself (DVD Decrypter); crashed the entire system (RecordNow--the first time it gave me the "blue screen of death;" the second time, it spontaneously rebooted the computer); or, at best, produced error-ridden discs (PrimoDVD and Gear PRO). Nero came up with the best results (I'm up to about 10 coasters so far), but even those discs have errors scattered throughout the VOB files--they are readable, and might be, say, 99.8% correct, but there is still momentary blockiness, freezing, etc., maybe once every one or two mintues throughout. Are DVDs that are "not quite perfect" just something I have to accept, or is there something preventing a perfect burn? I do suspect that buffer underruns might be causing the problem, but I've done everything I know from CD burning to prevent them: defragging all partitions, shutting down all other programs--I even went into the Run section of the registry and temporarily edited out all the tasks that get called at boot time. In short, I've disabled everything that could interfere that I could think of and get my hands on. Also, I've tried both the "cheap" Meritline DVD-Rs, and the vastly more expensive name-brands, without any noticable difference. I'm using an approx. 18-month-old machine with a Celeron 766, 128MB, Windows ME (yes, I know what has been said about ME, but it's what came with the computer, and I'm not shelling out to go to Win2K--at least, not today--unless someone can positively point to that as a solution), and a Pioneer A04 DVD-RW. P.S.: Can someone confirm how to spot a buffer underrun, particularly using Nero? If, as with CDs, the burn has to be continuous, then it's definitely happening--in every instance with every program, the activity light has always gone off at some point(s). With PrimoDVD, it went on and off regularly. Anyway, in Nero, I'm not sure which buffer indicator is important. Several times the top Used Lead Buffer dropped to 0% and the burner's activity light went out; but the bottom Recorder Buffer never dropped below about 50%, and the state light stayed green throughout. P.P.S: Sorry if I've bundled too much together here--I do tend to ramble...
I've heard a number of problems similar to this with no real solutions yet. My suggestion though would have to be a little more ram. 128 megs of RAM is almost insane these days. You can buy the stuff incredibly cheap off pricewatch, so another 256 or even 512 may really improve your general system performance which may help.
Your main problems are going to be ME, lack of RAM and a fragmented drive. ME uses a crappy file system (FAT32) which is highly suceptible to fragmentation. It also cannot deal with large files very well. ME also happens to be a total POS. It's the biggest abortion ever to come from Redmond. At least throw another stick of ram in your machine. It sounds like you are getting underruns. Nero has 'buffer underrun protection' which will result in a disk that works if the buffer runs out BUT....it does a crappy job. It attempts to recover from underruns but is not at all seamless about it. You need to try to keep a continuous stream of info running into your memory at all times when burning. Shut down other programs that may require drive access during the burn process, too. The problems you describe are NOT charictaristic of results with burning. Also, you may not have much cache on your hard drive, which would add to this problem. Win2000, a defrag and 128MB more memory should fix your problems.
Progress of a sort, but still no success... I solved the buffer underrun problem with Nero by manually increasing its buffer size, which on automatic was apparently too low. BUT--Nero is now giving me a generic "error reading data" message and failing. The message is extremely unhelpful, and the error apparently entirely random, as it happened five times at five completely different points in the process. I created a permanent swap file for windows, to keep that from moving around and resizing. And, yes, I defrag all drives immediately before burning, and make sure that nothing except Explorer is running. Just for kicks, I tried one again with PrimoDVD, and got the same error-ridden result--that program doesn't seem to be able to write for more than a few seconds at a time without shutting off, several hundred times during the burn process by my estimate. As for more RAM, I intend to do that tomorrow. According to the specs on this thing, it will only take up to 256MB, and it's very exacting as to the kind of DIMM it will accept. I'll have to print out the spec sheet and take it to the store. Also I have to open up the case and see if they put in one 128MB module or 2 64MB ones.
PROBLEM SOLVED (I think): Resigned to re-installing my old CD-R drive and burning VCDs, I was browsing through www.vcdhelp.com when I came across a long forum thread dealing with the A04 and UDMA mode. I went and disabled DMA for the A04, and proceeded to burn what appears to be an error-free disc. (I've only done it once, so it may be a fluke. I'll be more certain later when I start trying to burn DVDs of my own original material.)
