dbminter

Actually, the way you describe it has never happened to me. I've never been prompted to enter a description for audio tracks or subtitles. When I import video, it will just say English most of the time. And I have manually changed them before in the settings so they're more descriptive on the DVD menus. What I'll do is load the video in MPC HC, check the descriptions in the context menus that come up for audio tracks and subtitles, and alter them as necessary in a ConvertXToDVD job. I don't know if they're half the size of 5.25" bays but I'd guess they are. The weird thing is the "full height" bays are actually called half height bays because back in the old days of computers, the full height bays were double the size of the 5.25" bays. You can always tell a half height drive by using the Eject and Load commands in ImgBurn. Eject will eject a half height drive door but Load will return an error message because there is no motor assembly to load a tray in them.

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by switching the language identifier, so I don't know what you're asking. It's not a case of SATA versus USB being better than one another. SATA is faster than USB, but with USB, at least 3.0, it can power some devices and it allows for external devices. Well, there is eSATA but it never caught on and never will. What you're probably encountering is simply one drive is better than the other. For instance, my SATA LG is not as fast at reading or writing as my LG I put in a USB enclosure. But, the SATA is a slim model drive, and they're generally inferior to half height models in just about every comparable factor. I've many times had to convert between file formats for different container types, both audio and video, for various programs. For whatever reason, a file is somehow screwed up by its author in its original format. Converting it to another format and sometimes even the SAME format just using a different converter will get the file to import properly into ConvertXToDVD. The really pissy part is when you're taking half an hour or longer to convert something only for ConvertXToDVD to simply leave memory right at the very end because it fails to properly process the file.

Not only is it hard sometimes to hear what's going on, making subtitles necessary, DVD production companies feel a need to make the audio levels in the audio tracks so low that even turning your TV's volume to 100% is not enough. And TV manufacturers don't make TV's with high enough maximum volume levels because they want you to buy sound bars to do this separately to make more money! I've never tried playing subtitles as a separate file before. As I said, I always either include the subtitles in the container or ConvertXToDVD will merge the SRT file into the VIDEO_TS. And I rarely have SRT files anymore.

I doubt there's a guide precisely for autoloaders. The copying guide will give you the basics, but you'll only do one copy at a time.

What was going on was I was converting Blu-Ray Video content to DVD Video and needed the source files to do with it first. So, I was using Handbrake to do the extraction and conversion to container files. The subtitles in the source were apparently something called PGS subtitles. I couldn't get anything except hardcoded subtitles with MP4, so I sought help from the Handbrake forum because I'd tried everything I could think of, like setting the default language to English, like you mentioned. Nothing was working; I was always getting hardcoded, burned in subtitles. The forum support for Handbrake told me MP4 does not support something called PGS subtitles except as hardcoded, burned in subtitles, which I didn't want. I wanted selectable subtitles. I had Handbrake configured to always use MP4, since I prefer it over MKV. I didn't know MKV was "necessary" for some things. I was told, exactly: "Use a container that supports PGS subtitles, like MKV. MP4 doesn't, so they must be burned in." Without knowing what you're doing, I couldn't comment on the subtitles. I've had a few cases where I had external subtitles added by ConvertXToDVD, but that was about it. All my subtitle experience has been using Handbrake to add subtitles that existed in DVD's to MP4. I had never tried it with Blu-Ray before and this was my first attempt where I was told that MKV had to be used. I don't use VLC anymore as I find Media Player Classic Home Cinema to be better for my wants and needs. It lets you turn subtitles on and off and choose which subtitles track you want turned on within its right click context menu options on playback.

Personally, I've never found the speed to be a deciding factor. I use quality media and hardware so my biggest concern has always been how fast I can get the burn completed. I've never had a case where burning at the fastest available speed was ever an issue. However, some people find that when writes fail at higher speeds, they try lower speeds and get better results. Slower speeds are generally "better" so you may want to try these Ritek discs at a slower speed and see if you have better results. I didn't think about that when I initially posted because speed, as I said, was never a deciding factor for me. Slower speeds can reduce the possibility of write errors. The only real test you could determine is to get a known good quality BD-R DL and try burning it. If you get repeated failures (I generally go by the rule of 3. After 3 failures, I generally start trying to pin down if the hardware is at fault.) then you can start questioning if your hardware is at fault. However, the vast majority of problems we see on this board are caused by cheaper media. And Ritek is a cheaper kind of media. Verbatim BD-R is quality BD-R that they make themselves. However, even Verbatim will make cheap CMC CD-R, DVD+/-R, DVD+R DL, and BR-RE SL. Verbatim used to make its own quality BD-RE SL but now they farm those out to cheap CMC And any of Verbatim's Life Series media (NOT DataLife Plus Series.) you find in a physical store will be CMC junk.

Oops, I should have said get BD-R DL instead of BD-R, since you'll need double layer BD for this project. Now, I've never used Verbatim BD-R DL before. I'm only going on my experience with Verbatim BD-RE DL and DVD+R DL. So, I don't know for sure if their DL BD media is actually any good. Just going on past experience. I only use Verbatim's BD-R and BD-RE DL. Although some Verbatim BD-RE DL was made by TDK, which was also good. And given that Verbatim's MKM DataLife Plus DVD+R DL is the only quality DVD+R DL out there other than TDK's, I'd think Verbatim's BD-R DL should be of better quality. However, I don't KNOW that for sure from experience.

All the guides are located under the Guides section of the forum. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/forum/4-guides/ You'll want the one about how to copy a disc using ImgBurn. You said either data or video discs. Be aware if it's a DVD/BD Video disc and it's copy protected, ImgBurn can't copy it directly. And some CD's were also copy protected, but those were rarer and mostly only for games CD's. Did you specifically want a guide for using an autoloader to copy discs? I don't think there's a specific one for using one of those, but the general actions are still the same.

I've done a few outside the box hacks. Like how I used to, believe it or not, video tape radio! I still have that old setup, so I could do it again. Or I could video tape audio cassettes or CD's like I've done in the past, too. Handbrake is more complicated than it needs to be. In fact, the first time I tried to convert DVD Video to an MP4, the audio was out of sync with the video! It only seems to work properly if you use Legacy for the output mode. I only use MKV when converting Blu-Ray Video to container files that I want to keep subtitles for. MP4 doesn't always work in that instance, but MKV does. Data is data. You can't change how much space it takes up. The only way you can change the size for DVD Video is to use something like DVDShrink, but you will lose video quality when you compress video. Although on upscaling DVD players, I've not noticed the compression like it was on old DVD players that didn't upscale.

Try something other than Smart Buy BD. They're made by Ritek. The Disc ID is RITEK-DR3-000. Ritek can be iffy media for some burners. I know my PS3 won't properly playback Ritek BD-R. Try getting Verbatim BD-R and see if your experience improves. Particularly, DL media is generally only of any quality if it's made by Verbatim. At least in the realm of DVD+R DL, Verbatim is the only manufacturer of any quality media out there.

Here's something that you might find a little thinking outside of the box. You know what else I use ConverXToDVD for? Converting CD's to DVD's! Using another program called Wondershare Filmora, I can convert audio containers like MP3, FLAC, and M4A to video container files like MP4. I can use low resolution images of the cover art or some other JPG or similar picture file format to serve as the video for the MP4. Every single frame of the MP4 is the still image, with the audio coming from the MP3/FLAC/M4A. Then, these MP4's are converted to VIDEO_TS with ConvertXToDVD. I don't use this for things like music CD's because it's really difficult to preserve the audio track listings this way. But, it's great for multiple disc audio CD's like books on CD or audio plays that span multiple discs. I can take like a 10 disc book on CD and put it in one one DVD+R DL. It makes handling such sets much easier to do without having to swap out multiple discs. The downside is you can't play it on a CD player, of course, but many DVD players are your CD player, too. Plus, DVD's are easier to navigate than CD's. If you don't skip from track to track on CD's, forwarding through a CD can be a really slow process since there's generally only 1 speed for navigating them. With DVD video, there's generally multiple speed options available for navigating forward and backwards through that.

As long as you put nothing but VOB, IFO, and BUP files in VIDEO_TS, you can add anything you like to a DVD Video disc and have a DVD player play it. Again, as long as you don't put any of those files in VIDEO_TS or AUDIO_TS, data is just data to a DVD player. In fact, many DVD's have what are generally referred to as DVD-ROM extras in the root directory of a DVD. You put them in a PC DVD drive and access things like web site links, PDF's of scripts, wallpapers, installable programs, etc. Many DVD's used to have useless additional software on them called Interactual Player. So, what I do is in addition to the VIDEO_TS folder, I'll put some kind of directory structure in the root directory of the DVD that gives me an idea of the contents on the DVD. Then, I put the source files in that directory structure. ImgBurn will do no conversion of anything as far as I know. Many times, LUK has told other posters that ImgBurn just burns what you feed into it.

As for why you couldn't delete your post, I think the board may be acting up. I had some errors trying to post just now and emoticons weren't appearing if I manually typed them in. Only if I used the menu button to select them.

I supposedly used to have the ability to delete posts, but I never found out how to do it. Sorry. As for the hardware acceleration, I don't know if it works on my ConvertXToDVD or not. I just know I have it enabled, but I don't know if it actually does anything or not. Yeah, the VIDEO_TS that ConvertXToDVD creates is pretty well optimized. I don't know how they do it either. For instance, you can take a DVD-9 VIDEO_TS as a source and many times get ConvertXToDVD to generate a VIDEO_TS that fits on a DVD-5. I generally keep 1 container per ConvertXToDVD DVD disc because I also add the container file source to the DVD Video disc I create with ImgBurn and the resulting VIDEO_TS folder. For things that are smaller but related in some way, like say episodes of a TV series, I'll put a few per disc. 8 half hour episodes per disc and 4 hour episodes per disc, which is what most pressed DVD-9's will do unless they compress the Hell out of them to fit more episodes to a disc. I've seen some ridiculous ones like 12 half hour episodes to a DVD-9!

Why did a copy of your last post double up just now?

The probable reason your output files are larger than they should be is you're using ConvertXToVideo. I've never used it, but I thought it only converted video to Blu-Ray and to other container file formats. Blu-Ray folders will be larger, I'd say, because they have higher video quality in them. I don't know, though; maybe ConvertXToVideo has a DVD Video VIDEO_TS output option. That being said, I have encountered the odd container over the years that wasn't movie length yet created a nearly full DVD-R VIDEO_TS.

Power is what it's all about. Sony wanted control. And that's what they're all after. Control. Hence why they want streaming to replace physical copies. To charge you to stream something so they can later take it away and then mysteriously reclaim the rights to bring it back... and, of course, charge you a NEW license to stream it. Interestingly enough, Sony created Betamax and lost that format war, even though it was the superior format. Sony creates Blu-Ray and wins that format war, even though it's not the superior format. DVD's are all but replaced, but not by people's choice. The movie companies pretty much stopped making DVD's because they only want to sell you more expensive Blu-Rays. It started with producing DVD's with fewer special features to try and get people to justify buying Blu-Rays. Now, movie companies have all but dried up DVD production because they want to sell you only more expensive Blu-Rays. People didn't buy into the hype because Blu-Ray was only marginally better video quality. And on an upscaling DVD player, you really can't tell the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray anymore. Blu-Rays are also far more (too) Draconian to deal with. I also use VSO's ConvertXToDVD. As I said, I've used it for about a decade. Bought the lifetime license so I got the best deal. Tech support has always been a bit iffy with them. Right now, their tech support is nonexistent because they're moving their corporate headquarters. Supposedly by the end of this month, VSO tech support will be back on track. It worries me, though. Why move your corporate HQ unless you're going through rough financial times? Because all programs use proprietary methods of dealing with how they operate, one software may do something right whereas one won't. I've encountered, also, instances with ConvertXToDVD where it fails on my end but tech supports claims it works on their end. For instance, 2 pass encoding used to work, but stopped working a few revisions ago. I tried to tell tech support this, but they claim they can't reproduce it. It worked before and then stopped working. Regressing back to the older version fixed the issue, so the problem is they introduced a bork into the newer versions. What happens is ConvertXToDVD will add a solid green screen replacing the first 2 minutes of the output when 2 pass encoding is selected. Even on a virgin install of Windows 10, with nothing else installed, and on 2 different Dell XPS PC models. There's no difference between a data DVD and a DVD Video disc except for a few file system options. All data on a DVD Video is treated as data. There's just specific format options that must be adhered to for a DVD player to play the disc. They just call it DVD Video to distinguish it from just a collection of non DVD Video data. ImgBurn will detect when you import VIDEO_TS folders and make the appropriate changes for you if you agree to them.

Sony pretty much created the Blu-Ray format so they dictate how Blu-Ray players operate. Never heard of WinXDVD, so I can't say. I use ConvertXToDVD to convert containers to DVD. I've used it for like a decade. The quality of the resulting DVD will also, of course, depend on how good the quality of the video in the source file is.

I've never heard of FixVTS, but if you search this forum for it, there are apparently error messages from it generated by ImgBurn. So, maybe there is some processing done. I'd guess it may have to to get the layer breaks working right? I don't know. Unfortunately where I live, there are no 99 cent stores. The closest we have are 2 Dollar Tree stores where everything is either a dollar or less. The last time I saw recordable DVD there was some Phillips DVD-R that were 2 for a buck. You can guess what they were. In fact, the last time I saw DVD-R that wasn't CMC crap was Sony Ritek DVD-R from over a decade ago back when K-Mart carried them. If your DVD player supports playing back container files, there's little need to convert them to DVD Video, actually. Really all you're gaining in a navigation menu and chapter breaks. And I guess if your containers have multiple audio tracks or subtitles, they would be selectable if your player doesn't natively support such functions. Since BD-R lasts longer than recordable DVD because they use organic dyes which decay faster and BD-R burns metallic oxides which last longer, I will often times make a long term archive of a DVD Video to them. Blu-Ray players won't play them because Sony was so pissy they dictated that Blu-Ray players don't check the folder structure to see what the media is to play but check for the media type inserted to decide to how to play them. So, what I'll sometimes do is collect a large number of container files together for one BD-R and let my PS3 play those. The draw back is the PS3 doesn't navigate container files as easily as it does DVD Video. Of course, what I'm more likely to do is just use one of my 256 GB flash drives to store container files for playback on my PS3. Because it's 5 times the size of a BD-R and can be reused, I generally more often than BD-R just write files to a flash drive I have dedicated for PS3 container files, firmware update files, and PS3 file backups.

Oh, I forgot about the ImgBurn DVD structure part. I meant to comment on that before. Anyway, as far as I know, ImgBurn doesn't do anything with the VIDEO_TS contents besides check if they're compliant. If they're not, I don't think ImgBurn has the facilities to do any altering of the files. Except maybe the IFO's where it can do things like adjust/add the layer break. LUK would more about that and could comment on it. If more than one MP4 fits on a DVD and they're "related," e.g. say a movie and its sequel, if they'll fit on a DVD+R DL as both VIDEO_TS folders and the MP4's, I put them on one disc. Or multiple episodes of a TV show. I only save the files to MP4 because a DVD disc is an all or nothing affair. If the file becomes corrupt, it can't be read. So, the HDD copy is a backup. I've had cheap DVD's fail long before an HDD would. And I've rarely had an actual HDD failure. The only one I ever had was a cheap Compaq PC, e.g. an HP, where its HDD died 1 day after the warranty was up. It turned me off to HP/Compaq junk forever. And as far as my USB HDD's go, I've never had one of the actual internal HDD's fail. Just the USB bridge in the enclosure to fail. So, I could take out the actual physical HDD itself and recover the contents. Although with the Western Digital models I now prefer, they make it impossible to actually get the physical HDD out of the enclosure. And they do that so that when it fails, they can charge you a data recovery fee to get the data back out of it. But, I've got multiple redundancies of backup images on other USB HDD's, so I don't need to invest in that.

Yeah, the RW logo doesn't necessarily mean it's a rewritable disc. It's the logo of the DVD+RW consortium who created DVD+R and DVD+RW. They force people to put their logo on the media as means of advertising and to charge an extra fee. Of course, what I do with a best of the best MP4 is create a DVD out of it, burn the DVD with the VIDEO_TS folder AND the MP4 to a DVD AND keep the MP4 file on my external HDD. But, I'm paranoid and don't want to lose anything.

Nothing should get installed unless people get click happy. There should always be a "cancel" function of some kind of all bloatware added the wrapper. However, a sure fire way to avoid installing anything is to disconnect your Internet connection before running the ImgBurn installer. That way, the wrapper can't phone home for anything and won't have anything to install.

Unfortunately, there's little way to tell what you installed. ImgBurn does not come with any extra software on its own. It's bundled with things you can choose to install or not install at installation time. However, whatever you're offered generally changes each time the installation is run. Or you got an installer from a mirror that might have included who knows what wrapped around it.

Verbatim MCC is the only quality manufacturer of DVD+R DL out there, although I had good luck with TDK's about 10 years ago. I've only ever used MCC, Ritek, and TDK for DVD+R DL. I had 3 Riteks and 2 of them were unreadable after a year. All the TDK's were still readable after a few years and I only ever had 1 MCC that passed burn and Verify where a sector wasn't readable trying to playing it in a Playstation 2. I'd only ever use Verbatim, and I don't think Taiyo Yuden ever made DL media so Verbatim was the only quality manufacturer out there. Although, as I said, I had good luck with TDK's, though I doubt they make them anymore. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to primarily stick to Verbatim when MCC makes them or Verbatim makes their own BD-R. Never used DL for BD except for BD-RE, so I can only relate from the rewritable experience. Now, my results may not be very reliable because I hardly ever wrote to a lot of them except once a year. However, what would happen is they'd be fine the one year I wrote them but fail to write the 2nd time I'd try to write to them the next year for the monthly backups performed once a year. e.g. 12 discs, one for each month of the year. These were TDK and Verbatim BD-RE DL's that did this. Some BD-RE DL I'd formatted as giant floppies and wrote to them many times a month every month as they were monthly files backups. Those writes were all fine. As far as I know, CMC does not make BD-RE DL. They do make BD-RE and Verbatim farms out those discs to CMC. And there are NO alternatives from Verbatim as far as I know. So, I don't use Verbatim BD-RE anymore. However, there's not a lot of other options. Really just Ritek's that Memorex used to make and I don't think Memorex makes BD-RE anymore. I think Panasonic made some BD-RE the last time I bought some of those and I stocked up on them. Don't know if Panasonic still makes them anymore or not. Panasonic used to make quality DVD-R because they farmed out to Mitsubishi, who makes Verbatim's quality MCC stuff. So, I figured Panasonic's BD-RE would be decent enough. I primarily, like 99%, only use BD discs for data backups. Things like the monthly and yearly partition and files backups and the periodic daily files backups. Temporary file storage and things like that.

Is Verify Mode, when you're not Verifying against an existing image file, really just a Read mode where ImgBurn reads the sectors from the source disc but doesn't save what it reads to an image file? Thanks!