Problems Burning DVDS

[whinswood378]

I have noticed recently that updated versions of DVD burning software simply do not recognise Movie File Types and was wondering why ?

For instance Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 burns almost anything I download using bit comet to DVD no problem...whatever the file type. However version 10 of this software....the latest version....does not work.

I have also noticed other burning software with this problem. Is this a common theme in all Burning software and if so why ?

Is this something new being introduced to stop Piracy ?

[kluelos]

"does not work". Could you be a little more specific?

[whinswood378]

Basically you get the message file type not recognized. This happens with almost everthing I download in version 10 of Ashampoo....and later versions of other software.

With Ashampoo 9 this never happens... it recognises the file type no matter what.

My brother has Ashampoo 10 and it's simply useless as everything he downloads on bit comet is unburnable.

My thought was maybe newer software has something built in to stop burning from Torrent sites ?

[Vasy]

Unless the files still have the .bc! file extension I can't see any reason for it to not recognize the file type. If you're sure the files have the right extensions you can burn them as data.

[kluelos]

Ashampoo should not need to recognize a file type, anymore than BitComet needs to. BitComet downloads whatever's in the torrent and does not care what it is. BitComet is like FedEx, doesn't know or care what's in the box.

Ashampoo should, and does burn whatever's on the source, to the optical disk without caring what it is. Ashampoo can even burn filetypes that it will never recongize, files from foreign OS's. The only time it does care is when you are trying to create a video disk, that is, a VDVD or VCD, and in that case, ABS is not a transcoder, so its file dialogue will only admit mpegs and .vob files and the like -- but that is by no means new behavior.

I have not experienced issues like this with any version of ABS.

I'm afraid you're still not being nearly specific enough. What exactly are you trying to do, and what happens when you try?

[whinswood378]

Hi guys thanks for the replies.

The problem is that when we try to burn a film onto a blank DVD disc using Ashampoo 10 no matter which film of the ones downloaded that we choose the Ashampoo 10 software displays a message stating that the chosen file is not recognised.

However this does not happen when I use the older Ashampoo 9 software......even though I am burning the same files that the newer version has rejected.They ALWAYS burn perfect and play on any DVD player using this older version.

My PC knowledge is very limited so please excuse my ignorance. I purchased Ashampoo 9 and have deliberately not updated to 10 because of this problem. We tried always with the 10 version on my brothers PC but to no avail. It simply would not burn them.

I am stumped by this and the only sense I can make of it is that something has been added to the software that is causing this ?

[greywizard]

As my colleagues have asked you before, I'll ask again: What kind of disc are you trying to make?

There is a great deal of difference between making a DVD-Video disc and making a data DVD on which you burn one or several movie files just as simple files.

Since we have no idea what exactly are you trying to make, we can't even begin to think what's going wrong.

[kluelos]

First then, there is no such software as you describe, whether for the purpose of preventing piracy, or otherwise. What you are seeing seems almost certainly to be the result of operator error -- that is, of your own ignorance about what you are trying to do.

You may think that a DVD is just one thing. It is not. It can be several things, all quite different from each other.

The first thing it can be is a "Video DVD", also called a "VDVD". This is an optical disk with a certain, very particular directory structure on it, and certain, very particular filenames on it, in very particular and exacting formats. This optical disk can be inserted into a stand-alone DVD player and played. It contains video streams, but in a very dated and inefficient form of encoding that requires a huge amount of disk space.

No deviation from the VDVD standard is permitted for such a disk, not even the slightest. Put a prerecorded DVD into your computer. Stop it from playing. Use Windows Explorer to look at the DVD in your drive. Notice that it has two root-level directories, VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Inside the VIDEO_TS directory there are several files, but none of them have filenames that are anything like the movie that's on the DVD. Every VDVD must have those directories, and those files with those names. Their actual structure is even more tightly constrained.

The second thing a DVD can be, is what is called an "image" of another disk. There are several different types of images, with the most popular being called ".iso", after a specification by the International Standards Organization, whose job it is to promulgate and maintain such things. Images are used chiefly for transfer of optical disks by a variety of means including transfer over a network. They have become overwhelmingly popular for this purpose. You will see a lot of these on bittorrent sites.

A third thing is based upon the understanding that a DVD is an optical disk which stores data, period. It does not actually matter what kIND of data it stores. One can, therfore, use it to store data from a computer -- any computer. A Macintosh computer can write optical disks containing Macintosh computer files, which another Macintosh computer can read. A Windows computer can do likewise. The Windows computer cannot read a Macintosh DVD, and a Macintosh cannot read a Windows DVD. (THAT is what images are for.)

I can burn a "data" dvd containing any sort of Windows file I care to put on it. However, this will not and can not be a VDVD (run upstairs and see what that is, again). A stand-alone DVD player will reject that disk because it is not in the very exactly structure, with the very exacting filenames having that very exacting structure which is required. A data DVD can be read by other PC's, but isn't really intended to be read by anything else.

HOWEVER, there are certain types of video and audio computer files which are encoded in certain ways, which SOME modern DVD players can ALSO read. They can play those .avi files you downloaded. Most players cannot.

Now a VDVD has, as I said, a very old video format that nobody voluntarily uses anymore. It takes, as I said, a huge amount of wasted disk space. A feature film of typical length takes up the entire 4.4 gigabytes of a DVD. Now if you used modern compression on the video, at the same quality, you could fit four or five feature films on one disk in the same amount of space. Most of what you can download uses modern compression, for obvious reasons.

If your burning software is told to make a Data DVD, then it will accept any file that can be stored on your hard disk, and it will not check, notice or care about the file type. You could do this with a bunch of MS-Word documents, or text, or movies, or sound files, or database files, and the burning software wouldn't check, notice or care. It simply reads the file structures from your hard disk and duplicates them on the optical disk -- whether that's a DVD or a CD, by the way.

But, if the burning software is told to make a VDVD, everything changes. The files must already be in that ancient format, and in the proper strictly controlled layout, or at least very close to it. (The process of changing formats is called "transcoding", and I told you that burning software is not transcoding software.) More importantly, your burning software cares very much about the filetype and will reject almost anything that doesn't fit the exact standards.

In particular, if you take your average downloaded movie, it will be in a modern format and the burning software will not even allow you to try to turn that into a VDVD.

If you absolutely insist on doing this in spite of all the warnings, then you must first transcode the downloaded file, to the ancient format. This will take hours of your computer's time during which you probably won't be able to do much else, and the file size will expand tremendously. That 700 mB .avi you downloaded will turn into a 4 GB .mpg with nothing to show for all the wasted space.

About the third or fourth time you go through this, you'll probably decide that it's time to buy a modern DVD deck that can handle modern DivX-encoding. They cost around US$80 street price. Stay away from the ones that cost very much less than that or you'll really regret it later.

Now, IF you are making DVD's for somebody else who just can't or won't get a more modern deck, and you aren't willing to buy it for them, then I suppose it sort of justifies transcodiing to VDVD, but let me know when you think you've used up $80 worth of hassle doing it, then go buy them the new deck so you won't have to anymore.

[hath80]

Wow, I am impressed by the answer of kluelos, very detailed answer. And I agree with you, totally.

I don't really have such a problem. I can burn my Comet downloaded movies to DVD anytime, right now or in the past. This could be something with the software you are using, kind of a bug. I use DVD Creator, by the way.

Edited December 22, 2010 by cassie
Removed Spamvertising URL (see edit history)