help with copying

[stela]

I just bought the easy cd and dvd burning program (the one in the red box) this weekend and I need some help figuring something out. I and trying to copy some old home movies that my dad lent me and I know it says that for copying dvds you can only use DVD-Rs. But the dvds that my dad gave me are DVD+R and DVD+RW. So I tried importing the video files to my computer and then buring the files to a data disc and it worked but it doesn't play on my dvd player. Is there anyway that I can use this program to copy these dvds other that the "copy disc" option?

[stela]

 

Usually when I go to copy a dvd I will click on the home icon click on the copy tab then click on copy disc and it will usually look like it is going to work for a min but then it will come up with this error message. I have tried creating a data disc with both this program and another and my dvd player that is hooked up to my tv told me both times that it could not read disc because there might be a problem with the play back feature. I also tried using the mydvdexpress and it wouldn't import the videos. As far as where I saw that it said that you could only copy dvds that are dvd-r I went to help>media guide and this is what it showed me

[Brendon]

Hi again Stela,

 

You didn't need to quote my whole post, so I trimmed myself out to save clutter. I hope you don't mind seeing less of me.

 

[1] The read error when trying to copy.

This is your most important problem. You are starting out the right way, but if you can't get a clean read on a disc, you can't copy it.

 

You need to make sure the source disc is clean and scratch-free. If it is clean but the drive won't read it properly then you may have a dirty lens or some other drive problem. If you can get the drive cleaned or fixed, you should be able to copy unprotected DVDs the way you want to.

 

[2] The data disc

A number of newer players will play data discs, but most players that are more than a couple of years old will insist on a proper DVD-Video disc, so a data disc isn't going to work for you. You need to copy a DVD-Video disc, or make a new one with MyDVD.

 

[3] Importing

MyDVD Express should import from a disc, in a very limited way but you need to get a clean read on the disc for that and your disc drive isn't getting that for you, is it. If you can get a clean read on the DVD then forget about Express and just copy the disc. Copying it is ever so much quicker and more accurate than trying to import and re-process it with MyDVD Express.

 

[4] Type of disc required

That mediaguide page is really a bit out of date now. Modern players will play all the media shown in that information box in post #2, but when DVD players were first on the market some of them were quite "picky" about what they would play.

There are some old players still out there which will only play silver, pressed discs.

There are some which don't like re-writeable discs.

There are some which won't play burned discs at all.

 

Once you get your read problem solved, I'd suggest you try one of each to see what your player will accept.

 

Thanks for reading all this. I hope it helps.

[Brendon]

Hi Stela,

 

I don't know where you saw that only a DVD-R will do, but that's wrong unless your burner drive is a really old type which can only use DVD-R discs. Here are the types supported by Easy CD and DVD Burning in my BENQ drive, and all my other drives handle the same types.

 

I tried it a few minutes ago with the Home > Copy Disc module, and that worked fine. I copied the DVD to a DVD+RW without incident.

You do need enough free space to store the DVD on your hard drive.

 

 

I've tried two alternative ways of copying an unprotected Video-DVD, and had very mixed results - mostly bad ones.

 

[1] Used Creator Classic to make a data disc. It has been altered so it won't allow you to drag a VIDEO_TS folder into the project window for a burn, so I dragged a "temp" folder in and then renamed it to VIDEO_TS which is what a player expects to see.

-the result played on a couple of my players, but they're new and will play almost anything you can put in them.

-it wouldn't play on a slightly older player.

 

[2] Used MyDVD Express, and "Imported" the movie. The resulting disc played on my player, but the original menus were lost, and there was no audio in the copy.

 

 

If you haven't tried the standard copier module, I think you should try it. If you have already, what happened?

 

Regards,

Brendon

[stela]

Thanks for the advice I was able to get like 5 discs copied but when I try to copy the discs I got from my dad it still says that they are too dirty evan after I have cleaned them. I have tried importing the files to my computer and using them to make a data disc and they don't work in my dvd player. I also tried mydvdexpress and it didn't recognize the files. So do you have any advice on how I could copy those dvds?

[Brendon]

If the copy function is working with other discs but not your Dad's, you might need to have them copied on another machine or with another drive.

 

A way to check if the drive is really finding them too dirty or if some other strange thing in the software is playing up, would be to try another program. Here's a simple test which costs nothing and is easily done:-

 

-download a copy of the free software ImgBurn, from here and install it.

-use the menu item "Create image file from disc" and see if you can read a disc into an image file on your hard drive.

-it that is successful then there's something wrong with your Sonic program which won't read that disc. Use the ImgBurn menu item "Write image file to disc" to write that file to disc, and voila! -there's your copy.

-if that isn't successful, then you've established that the reading problem is independent of the software and your drive itself is causing the issue.

 

 

Brendon