OK, got my LITEON, now what...

[aud19]

So I picked up my Liteon DVD burner Then realized I have to remove my CD-burner (52X) or DVD-ROM drive (16X) as I only have the one IDE port on my mobo So I've decided on the CD-burner ( :evil: ) I doubt I'll be upgrading the mobo to one with more IDE ports so now what do I do with my CD-burner....? Kinda sucks going from 52X to 24X CD burning but oh well... I can burn to DVD's now!! :P

So the drive came with a copy of Sonic-MyDVD 4.0, I COPY DVDs 2, Power DVD (Which I already own) and two DVD+R's

I may have a look at "I COPY" later as it's promise of 2 clicks and your done does sound appealing but for now I think I'll just stick with DVD Shrink and Nero (I have version 5.5.9.13). But MyDVD looks kind of useless at this point. Maybe after I get a digi-cam the slideshows with music etc might be more appealing...?

Quick question: How well does DVD shrink deal with layer changes? Does it remove them alltogether or is there still a noticeable pause even though there is no layer change anymore...?

Let me know what you guys think of the other software above too

Jason

[Kevin P]

Quick question: How well does DVD shrink deal with layer changes? Does it remove them alltogether or is there still a noticeable pause even though there is no layer change anymore...?

There won't be a layer change anymore, since you're burning to a single-layer disc. The movie, if it's too big to fit on a single layer, gets transcoded to a higher compression level so it fits. Alternatively, you can eliminate extras such as commentary tracks, outtakes etc. to save space.

[JonMarsh]

So I picked up my Liteon DVD burner Then realized I have to remove my CD-burner (52X) or DVD-ROM drive (16X) as I only have the one IDE port on my mobo So I've decided on the CD-burner ( :evil: ) I doubt I'll be upgrading the mobo to one with more IDE ports so now what do I do with my CD-burner....? Kinda sucks going from 52X to 24X CD burning but oh well... I can burn to DVD's now!! :P


Jason

You can get ATA133 PCI boards for reasonable moolah, actually pretty cheap, and run all your disks. My current MB has a main IDE set, a RAID IDE set, a SATA raid set, and an additional ATA133 PCI board... go for it!

~Jon

[Gordon Moore]

Jon's right (and he beat me to the punch), I picked up a cheap pci ATA133 IDE raid card for $25-30 CDN shipped off of ebay.

What I would suggest is a raid 0 pair for your transcoding and leave the OS on a different IDE channel.
You are still adding/deleting 4 GB files and that leaves things prone to high defragmentation.

The OS will be happier on a drive of it's own that isn't isn't always in a state of flux.

Don't get rid of that burner just yet!

[aud19]

I suppose I could do a raid card..... we'll see down the line, thanks for the idea though hadn't thought of that :T I've already got two HD's though, one for th OS and one for data, so that won't be a problem :wink: Having them on a seperate ports would be good though....

Also reading up on DVD Shrink I found there's a check box to remove any residual layer change pauses when copying to a SL disc so that's cool

Are you guys using "DVD-Video" or "UDF/ISO" mode in Nero when burning?

Jason

[aud19]

Well I can get this MAXTOR PCI ADAPTER - ULTRADMA/133 http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...Adapter%20Card for under $50 new... Or this Adaptec 1200A ATA/100 RAID 2-Channel PCI Controller (Retail) for about $80. The Maxtor at $50 and with 133 capability looks to be the better choice here.... 8O Unless they're crap...? Anyone know? To be honest I didn't even know Maxtor made them until I started looking this morning. (I knew of and have even used Adaptec's before.)

Jason

[aud19]

So... I've done some googling and "DVD-Video" is a bit easier to use as it automatically creates the "VIDEO_TS" and "AUDIO_TS" folders but "UDF/ISO" is more compatible with players. Apparently the author of DVDShrink uses UDF/ISO, so I think I will too :B

Jason

[Gordon Moore]

Well I can get this MAXTOR PCI ADAPTER - ULTRADMA/133 http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...Adapter%20Card for under $50 new... Or this Adaptec 1200A ATA/100 RAID 2-Channel PCI Controller (Retail) for about $80. The Maxtor at $50 and with 133 capability looks to be the better choice here.... 8O Unless they're crap...? Anyone know? To be honest I didn't even know Maxtor made them until I started looking this morning. (I knew of and have even used Adaptec's before.)

Jason

Well they're 2 slightly different cards. Both will give you extra IDE ports but the Adaptec card gives you IDE raid capabilities. You may or may not desire this. In the world of performance RAID'ng drives gives you the maximum performance out of your drives. Raid0 would be the way to go but offers no redunacy of data so that if one drive in the stripped pair fails....the whole thing is ka-putz. So the idea is that critical data or data that is never backed up...should not reside on the stripped partition. But performance wise....it kicks butt for low-dough. My raid'ed Baracudda drives (ATA100) tromped all over Andrew's Seagate SATA 150, for instance. The advantage is that you have 2 independent read/writes heads going at the same time and a single drive can't compete with that.

[aud19]

Thanks Gordon, I don't think I'll be doing a Raid array anytime soon as I just can't afford the extra drives right now but it's good to know :T It's an old OC'd Celeron unit anyway, if I end up buying any more computer stuff it will almost definitely be for a HTPC in a couple years not this old beast :lol:

Jason

[JonMarsh]

The Maxtor is what came with my big Maxtor drive which is in the desktop system I'm currently writing from. It works fine, but it does come with it's own driver disk you'll need to install. No biggie. I needed it on the old MB to run the big drive; now I wouldn't need it, but I'd re-sealed the drive, and it wanted to come back up ONLY on that controller! So it's in the system, being treated as if it was a SCSI controller. Works smoothly, not complaints. Unless you're actually going to do raid, might as well save the money. Most raid boards WILL work as standard adapters, but they have extra stuff in the bios and usually a configuration/setup menu in the bias. Just more to hassle with if you don't need it!

Cheers!

~Jon