Does anyone know why I can't burn anything onto DVD-R's?

Whenever I try the disc tray just opens and I get a message along the lines of please enter a blank disc...

these are all brand new discs. I use Recordnow on XP.

A friend suggested that I use DVD+R's - would this help and what's the difference?

:confused: :rant:

Different Recording formats. A DVD+R drive can only write to DVD+R Discs. DVD-R drives can only use DVD-R discs. Both drives will read any format. DVD-R seems to be predominant.

I have 25 DVD-R discs for sale if anyone is interested...

Originally posted by spook
Does anyone know why I can't burn anything onto DVD-R's?

Whenever I try the disc tray just opens and I get a message along the lines of please enter a blank disc...

these are all brand new discs. I use Recordnow on XP.

A friend suggested that I use DVD+R's - would this help and what's the difference?

:confused: :rant:

Not sure on what the differance is between + and - , but most burners normally burn both types, however the b*gger is, what is your DVD Player - "-" or +? As, if you have bought the wrong type then they won't play...

Alex

Do you know the brand, type and version of your DVD burner...

It's entirely possible you have a DVD+R format drive so -R type disks won't work...

The good news is that if you really need DVD+/-R or RAM disks there's plenty of drives out there now that are around £45... Although you obviously want to try and avoid the expense if you can...

Apparently, DVD-R doscs are better...?

As more burners and players are "-", aren't they; now you can get dual writers and dual layer - both "-" and "+" discs,IIRC

Alex

Originally posted by amhudson119
Apparently, DVD-R doscs are better...?
Well they are generally a faster format when it comes to writing... Most drives will write a DVD-R disk at double the speed of a +R disk...

As for the speeds on drives... in most cases the drivers have a theoretical speed that current media hasn't quite reached yet...

For example... DVD-R disks are currently available at 8 speed but I've yet to see any 16 speed disks even though there are drives out that say they can do it... It's something to take with a pinch of salt and it helps to check reviews and for a manufacturers track records in supplying firmware updates...

Actually on that note...ebuyer is a good place to check for comments on compatability with certain media types... Lord knows there's plenty of cases where a drive "looks" good but turns out shed loads of "coasters"...

The old rule of thumb.. careful research can save you a lot of heartache later on...

as far as discs go, ive tried maybe 10 different brands, just buy the cheapest if you have trouble move on.

you dont need to buy a pack of 15 sonys for rip off price, buy infiniti discs instead.

oh and it seems disc / player compatablility changes from player to player so you can read conflicting things about what discs are good or not. i purchased some highly rated discs becuase i wanted a higher sucess rate, they were worst i had.

find out your model number for your recorder and your disc type. also i had to try different programs to copy. finally settling on easy cd/dvd creator. nero and others were poor for my player.

daft question again but how do you find out what sort of burner you have?

OK, first off to find what drive you've got you can either try and find out via windows hardware, or a little program that I will send you if you like (sent you a PM)

although, if you using Record Now Max then it should say the drive and its current firmware at the side where it shows the drives :)

as for media, a lot of the media being sold is crap, and dont buy from Dixons and PC World and stuff cus they con the hell out of you...

the reason DVD-R is more popular than DVD+R is mainly due to the difference in writing format, DVD+R's need a bookmark type thing, which is hard to hack when people are making region free firmware... therefore people who get heavy into copying DVD's dislike DVD+R's as they cant be written to on a region free drive... thus they slowly got phased out...

as for media I highly reccomend www.svp.co.uk nearly all the media I use is Datawrite, 4x yellow discs used in my old drive cus I have some left over... and 8x Datawrite grey's in my current drive...

I highly reccomend Datawrite grey 8x's, they are extremly reliable, I've got through 400+ of them and have only had one coaster due to a bad write!

Originally posted by xafier
OK,
I highly reccomend Datawrite grey 8x's, they are extremly reliable, I've got through 400+ of them and have only had one coaster due to a bad write!

Yes, as Xafier said - they are v. reasonably priced and good quality.

Alex

I have a writer that does all 4 formats, + and - R/RW. and thankfully my DVD player plays every kind of disc there is as well, from MP3s to photo discs to copied movies, the lot.

Originally posted by spook
Does anyone know why I can't burn anything onto DVD-R's?

Whenever I try the disc tray just opens and I get a message along the lines of please enter a blank disc...

these are all brand new discs. I use Recordnow on XP.

A friend suggested that I use DVD+R's - would this help and what's the difference?

:confused: :rant:

Ther is a web site with a program download " dvd shrink 3.2" the site i ithink is "Doom" when I was having problems someone sent me the link and I have found it seems to work on everything I have tried PM me if you want the link I will find it out

Originally posted by spook
Does anyone know why I can't burn anything onto DVD-R's?

Whenever I try the disc tray just opens and I get a message along the lines of please enter a blank disc...

these are all brand new discs. I use Recordnow on XP.

A friend suggested that I use DVD+R's - would this help and what's the difference?

:confused: :rant: im having the same trouble,everything was fine till i had a larger h/d fitted now its useless,my burner tells me its working it says burning completed successfully but theres sod all on the disc

i could tell you what discs i use et cetera, but the truth is, when you find a disc, make, + - whatever that works.

stick with it! buy hundreds of them and be happy.

took me a while to find media that never played up and would work on my dvd player.

now i have no coasters and dvd's that will play on my dvd player

Originally posted by GJ2004
Ther is a web site with a program download " dvd shrink 3.2" the site i ithink is "Doom" when I was having problems someone sent me the link and I have found it seems to work on everything I have tried PM me if you want the link I will find it out

is this the link your after:)

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/DVD-Shrink-Download-4128.html

you can download the latest DVDShrink from dvdshrink.org (http://www.dvdshrink.org)

twice ive installed dvd shrink and it doesnt work at all


oh and yes i rebooted lol:loopy: :loopy: :loopy:

does it give an error message or anything?

it worked fine for me, but my mate had some problems.

i managed to sort it in the end

Originally posted by panda79
twice ive installed dvd shrink and it doesnt work at all


oh and yes i rebooted lol:loopy: :loopy: :loopy:

Unless youve got Nero installed, all DVDShrink will do is rip and compress the film. With nero installed, it does a complete backup, including burning

i think the easiest programs for the encoding, authoring and burning all in one are dvdsanta and winavi 5.8 or 6.0 just pop your file in and wola 30 mins later (winavi) or 1h30m later (dvdsanta) you have a decent movie, even does pal to ntsc, .rmvb, ac3 etc not found anything it wont encode.

Originally posted by jonhanson
i think the easiest programs for the encoding, authoring and burning all in one are dvdsanta and winavi 5.8 or 6.0 just pop your file in and wola 30 mins later (winavi) or 1h30m later (dvdsanta) you have a decent movie, even does pal to ntsc, .rmvb, ac3 etc not found anything it wont encode.

will it encode divx fast as it takes hours usally if i ever do anything any links to the above would come in handy:)

they do work well but recently had problems with AC3 sound.

ive downloaded winavi 6 beta which looks to overcome most of the problems.

but both very good for avi->vob

http://www.winavi.com
http://www.dvdsanta.com

winavi i have found to encode anything that will play in wmp9/10 in roughly 35-45 mins for a 1.5gb file even divx, but it can take longer depending on specs of your pc, and they are both power hungry so your cpu usage goes upto 100% can be a bit annoying if you want to do something else

with the ac3 problem i believe it is when you install certain codecs, i just use ffdshow filter and that works great

Originally posted by jonhanson
http://www.winavi.com
http://www.dvdsanta.com

winavi i have found to encode anything that will play in wmp9/10 in roughly 35-45 mins for a 1.5gb file even divx, but it can take longer depending on specs of your pc, and they are both power hungry so your cpu usage goes upto 100% can be a bit annoying if you want to do something else

with the ac3 problem i believe it is when you install certain codecs, i just use ffdshow filter and that works great

im using dvd santa as i type it seems ok but jst a tad slow dont know what its like on divx files yet:thumbsup: