Hello, I'm new to this so bare with me. My first question is what speed should I backup my DVD's at? When I use 16x I get a picture that is blurry and somewhat distorted. My second question is, if I want to copy an already backed up DVD should I just "copy" the disc using nero or use DVD Shrink to open the disc as if it were the original copy. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.
You can burn them at 8X - 12X just to be on the safe side. I've burned some 16X successfully, but I would not recommend it because you're more than likely to get a coaster and or get a distorted, pixellation, etc. down the road. Nearly 99% of all my backups are done with 8X and I don't have any freezing, distorted, etc. -- in addition, number 1 rule is to use 1st class media like Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim and Hitachi Maxell (MIJ). To backup an already backed up, you have 2 choices: (1) re-rip your backup to HD and have either Nero or ImgBurn to burn the VIDEO_TS folder (2) burn it on the fly (if you have 2 drives and your backup is clean/good) Best of luck!!
alkohol good post man. you don't leave much room for improvement. jel231, the advice given by alkohol is all accurate,straight to the point and no nonsense. i've seen lots of good responses here at afterdawn. this one is as good as any. and keep in mind his number 1 rule!
Although I'm a proponent of high speed burning my reader is rather slow when reading burns and can't keep up with my burner with on-the-fly burns. I use DVDDecypter's ISO-> Read, ISO-> Write for backups or let Nero create it's image (un-tick 'Quick Copy') in it's disc copy mode.
Using dvd decrypter's ISO read and write mode to re-rip backups only takes about 5 mins longer than on the fly. I like ripping with dvd decrypter using ISO read,then use ImgBurn-fish out the mds files and burn at 8x. If you already have the files on your harddrive from that first copy,just open shrink/open files/find that movie and backup again.It's already been analyzed and encoded-so it'll take 5 mins to re-analyze it again and burn away. I also have no trouble with using nero and dual drives for On the Fly rip and burning.It is riskier and a true testament to the quality of your media and drives. If your 1st copy is crap,then copies of that will likely be crap. You want your first backup copy to be as good as possible. This means, you want to make that copy with as few of errors as possible. It's impossible to get an error free backup,but you want keep those little errors(PIE/PIF} to a minimum. It's those dreaded crc errors that are troublesome-which would be major errors. First backup copy: 1) Quality media like Taiyo yuden,Verbatim,or Hitachi made maxells. 2) Burn speed of around 8x 3) Backup target around 4360-4370 mbs.This keeps the burn from reaching the outer edge of disc. 4) No multi-tasking 5) No paper/sticker labels 6) Burner quality: There's some crappy drives out there and some of their backups will be plumb full of errors. 7) Keep HD/S defragged. 8) Clean pc- no spyware,malware and a clean registry. The only times I had trouble re-ripping backups: 1) Someone put a sticker label on it 2) Backups from my HP 640C lightscribe gave too many crc errors.Junk Drive!!!!!!!! 3) Burning 16x verbatim MCC-004 at 2.4x, way too many crc errors-16x Verbatims have to be burned at least 8x ,if using Benq Drives. Don't let a stand alone player be the judge of your backups.Some of them will give a crappy picture.Backup discs are harder for them to read. View them on the pc using the dvd-rw that produced that backup. The playback on your pc should look near original in quality. View them on several stand alones and see if there's any difference in the playback quality.
