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Does anyone still burn their movies to DVD? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Evkob@lemmy.ca to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Okay I'm fully aware of how ridiculous this sounds in 2023, but bare with me.

I have a wonderful neighbour, Jackie. She's in her mid-sixties, and ever since she moved in we have become very good friends, she's like a second mom to me.

Jackie loves movies and has an enormous DVD collection. One day, she was talking about how she couldn't find a particular movie, and I said "I can probably download that for you!" Her immediate reply was "Can you put it on a DVD?" I tried telling her the many reasons it would be better to use a myriad of other solutions, but she insists on DVDs.

I did them for a while using DVDStyler on Windows, and it worked fine. But then I installed EndeavourOS on a new partition on my hard drive, tried using Brasero and Devede but it wouldn't read on her DVD player. Then I tried DVDStyler on my Linux partition, and it didn't work on her DVD player, despite saying the operation was successful on my end. I then tried booting up into Windows and using DVDStyler, and that also didn't work, not even letting me burn the disc. Does anyone have any ideas what could fix this? I've tried playing around with the settings in all these apps but I couldn't figure it out.

Apologies if this isn't the best place to ask this, but I figured a community of pirates would understand my desire to get movies to Jackie without her having to pray to find them in a pawn shop!

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[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 19 points 1 year ago

Is it possible that the video isn't properly encoded in the first place?

Try transcoding to MP4 first and then burning it, even if it is already MP4.

Did you change DVD spindles recently to a new set?

Maybe you unwittingly moved from DVD- to DVD+

Will it play as a DVD on your system?

[-] Evkob@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

It's done this with multiple files, even ones which previously worked. The blanks are from the same spindle, and I've also tested with another batch. My PC can't read them either.

[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 22 points 1 year ago

I'm guessing your writer is failing.

Same data

Same media

Multiple os rules out malware, mostly

Without being there to watch and understand your process, I have to assume you know what you are doing and haven't missed a step in the writing process, such as finishing the disk or whatever. The fact that you are using multiple applications on multiple operating systems lends confidence.

That leaves the hardware itself. Luckily a new writer isn't expensive.

[-] Evkob@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's kinda the only conclusion I could come to, this post is really a last-ditch effort to see if anyone more knowledgeable than me could figure anything out before I spend money on new hardware. Like if something I did in the BIOS while figuring out my dual-boot could have messed up any firmware settings for the disc drive or some other sort of issue.

[-] hypelightfly@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

You can try writing at lower speeds. Even if it's a failing drive that may work if it's not totally dead.

[-] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 4 points 1 year ago

As kolorafa said, writing at a lower speed might help.

Also, how is read performance on the optical drive? Could you try a commercial disk to see if it plays well?

If you made basic changes to your boot order I can't see it causing performance issues with the drive. I can't think of any settings that would cause issues.

[-] kolorafa@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I would also vote for broken writer.

I had multiple issues with DVD drives that could write but then it would not work on any other DVD readers or don't work at all even on the writer drive. And other way around. They are just to damn delicate, especially those you have in your laptops.

I would try to write the disk with slower speeds as it could improve it somehow like less vibrations or more laser burns.

But in your case l would check if that person does have a TV or even DVD player that could read from USB, or buy them some smart set top box with jellyfin/Plex/Disney+/...