DVD software

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Since i am new to this i have a question. Is it possible to download DVD software into my computer and watch a DVD disk on my computer. I have CD-RW external burner(iomegaZipCD650) and the CD reader inside my computer. As i said i am new to this thanks for any info. DavidLPal1@aol.com

Topic

It’s (kind of) possible…

In reply to DVD software

Dave,

You can copy DVD files onto your hard drive and play them…. but it takes something like 15GB to play a full movie… not exactly space friendly…

Enter DivX….
DivX does to movies what mp3 does to audio…
Full movies, close enoughto DVD quality with picture and sound, and small enough to fit onto one CD.

The downsides to DivX are that it takes 3 hours (and 15GB…) to encode a movie, and they don’t play on DVD drives as video cd’s…

Upside:
All you need to play thesefiles is a simple codec (availabled for free all over the web), and some encoding software (also free).

Try searching either download.com for divx stuff or try divx.com…

If you can’t find anything, I can e-mail the programs I use to you if you want…

Hope this helps,

Darryll
darryll.hirst@rim.co.uk

If they could copy then…

In reply to It’s (kind of) possible…

If he was able to read dvd’s from his cd-rom then he would not be posting this question.

Remeber, cd roms can not read dvd’s. Hence he would not be able to read the data on the dvd in the first place to even begin copying it to his hard drive.
Just something to think about

DVD Player

In reply to If they could copy then…

the easy way out is to either by a home DVD player or aDVDROM for your computer both are getting cheaper by the day…if u bay a home DVD player make sue it can read ntsc and pal and is multi zone with DVD VCD CD CDR CDRW MP3 capable, u will find they are available.Chinese are turning them out by the truck load.

oops…

In reply to If they could copy then…

My fault. I must’ve read the original post wrong…
I guess I just assumed he had a DVD drive in his machine.

I’d better go and slap myself now…

NO – NOT POSSIBLE FULL STOP

In reply to It’s (kind of) possible…

a dvd cannot be played on a CDRW. If you had a dvd and a cdrw, yes you could rip a dvd to an avi and slap it on a disk (or 2). but how can you copy dvd files to your harddisk with a dvd player? you cant! if someone ripped the disk for you, then sure. but you cant read a dvd (or extract any files) then you cant convert it just as you cant watch it through the software. PS. i am running Win2K on my pc – i got a dvd player but i dont wanna fork out for software. i cant crack any trial installs andmy old version of the dvd player software i cant replace or get upgrades for. i have tried downloads for all free dvd software compatable with win2k but it wont work. if any one can help i would apprecieate it.

PHIL

DVD COPYING

In reply to DVD software

Yes U can Copy DVD s, it will cost U about $45 to copy and $15 Movie, plus the FBI will Fine U $250,000 plus 15 years in jail. Cheaper to buy Used DVD movies at the Video Store, bye now, Miss_Cole@hotmail.com

No… Sorry, but good try…

In reply to DVD software

Having the DVD software is only part of the battle. The other part is having a actual dvd player.

They go hand in hand.

You can not have one without the other.

The authoring/decoding software actually allows your computer to decode the information on the dvd rom. This is comparible to a stand alone dvd player that has this software hard coded into it.

A computer needs the software installed. But this means you can not just install the software and throw a dvd into a cd-rom. The cd rom is not equipped to read dvd’s.

This is the same thing as putting a 12x cd into a 2x cd player. The player will be unable to read the cd because of speed differences. But you can put a 2x cd inside of a 12x cd rom player.

Hence you can play a cd-rom inside a dvd player, but not vice versa.

Which brings me to my last point. I have seen all to often people buy dvd players for the computers and throw away the dvd software cd. Do not Do This. Make sure you keep the cd. It will save you heartache in the future.

Correct on the DVD but whoa on the CD

In reply to No… Sorry, but good try…

In theory a CD is a CD is a CD, no matter if it was pressed in the factory, or burned in a 2X burner or 12X burner. I’m just talking about write once CDs

It should work in all PCs, the difference being that slower CDs will access the data slower.Early on in the days of CD burners(96/97), I did see some compatibility issues where this didn’t always work. And I still occasionally see it today – but its not by intent its usually poor design.

James

Nope…..Go ahead and try it…

In reply to Correct on the DVD but whoa on the CD

Let’s say a cd is written at 12x. Are you going to try to tell me that a 2x cdrom can read a cd burned at 12x.

I don’t think so. It is basically impossible, short of a miracle.

The phenomena that you are seeing are HigherGrade/Speed cd’s burned at slower speeds.

If I burn a 12x capable cd at 1x then yes, technically a 2x cd rom should be able to read it.

However, not all cd- manufactures conform to the 1x standard.

I have seen cd’s come from the manufacture burned off at 8x. Which sucks for alot of older systems that have 6x cd roms. It won’t read them. No matter how hard you try.

I did notice some of the older cd burners were incapable of using the newer higher grade cdr’s. But that is another issue altogether.

I must agree with LordInfidel here..

In reply to Nope…..Go ahead and try it…

He’s right, you can not expect with any sound logical reasoning that a cd BURNED at 12x speed with run in a 2x player. Sidenote: there is a misconception that the higher the “x speed” of a CD – Rom, the better the faster. If you want to get anal – after about 24x there is very little gains for each step up in speed, much like RAM.

For example: The speed difference between a 1 x drive and say a 10x drive is FAR more dramatic as say a 24x CD-ROM and a 50x CD-ROM (you can see the proof for yourself if you have any good benchmark software that not only records the access time, but keep an eye on your RAM usage – its pretty interesting).

I was shocked when I found out that THREE (and they were all different brands – Sony, Goldstar and HP)CD-ROMS from 24x – 60x speed, and the performance gains in the speeds were hardly worth mentioning. Yet a newbie computer user would make the common mistake of telling people his 60x CD-ROM is 3 times faster than a 24X CD-ROM, which is not really the truth at all. (And forget it if you throw a SCSI cd-rom into the mix! A SCSI cd-rom at 10x can actually outperform an EIDE CD-ROM at 50x!!!)

I did small research into why this happens because I’m just curious, appartently what I read was basically the “x speed” (which is “supposed” to be the transfer speed)really doesn’t matter much, its the caching ability of the drive and the connection media (like EIDE or SCSI) that matter the most.

Finally on the DVD thing, Lord Infidel is 100% correct…its IMPOSSIBLE, TECHNICIALLY IMPOSSIBLE for a standard CD-ROM to play a DVD disc, I don’t care what software is on your system. Why? Because a CD-ROM doesn’t have all the lasers that a DVD requires.

It’s like trying to fire a 9mm slug out of a Barret .50cal, you just can’t do it – its not MADE for it!

Thanx Tom…..

In reply to I must agree with LordInfidel here..

Even though I want to be nice at this point…

My evil black pit of a SysAdmin soul can’t help but wonder if this qualifies for my
“Lookin for an Idiot” discussion.

The only thing that is stopping me is because the poster admitted that he knew nothing and was looking for edumacation.

Besides, my wife says I need to learn how to play nice with others. I’m trying, but I’m just not good at it.

Remeber a drive has two values!

In reply to I must agree with LordInfidel here..

dont let the thought that a 4x writer will not be compatable if you only got a 2x writer,because i got a 4x writer and an 6x reader (plus my dvd is 24x) so dont worry abot compatability. because even though you cant produce cds as fast as your mates, you can still read it coz you can read faster disks than your own burning speed. its easy to overlook this fact and assume they are all compatable.

what are you guys talking about?

In reply to Nope…..Go ahead and try it…

the speed that you burn a cd at has nothing to do with the speed you play it at. The burning speed has to do with how long you have to wait for it to finish burning. once its done, then you can play it on a 2x or 24x or 50x for all it matters the only diffrence will be the speed of the playback.

What?What?What?….

In reply to what are you guys talking about?

Don’t ask me what I am doing here at midnight? But I saw this post and I have to be a little mean.

You can *_not_*, I repeat, Can *_not_* play a cd burned on a higher speed such as 12x on a 6x cd rom. It is, borrowing from tom, “Technically Impossible”.

As far as playback, I suggest you read TomSals post. He put it very eloquently I thought the semantics of playback.

I can’t beleive I am actually arguing this point.

The “burning speed” does not just dictate how long you have to wait until the cd is burned.

This is why it is called the write speed. It “writes” the data at a particular speed. Which is then read by another cd-rom at the speed the data was written at.

Whether or not the cd-rom can spit the information back via transfer/throughput rates is a whole other story.

Sorry dude, it’s late, I’m in my NOC because idiots had to break a component on one of my servers that I could not fix from home, so I am a little testy.

Open mouth, insert foot, not a pretty picture and gives you bad breath.

Ok, correct me where I’m wrong.

In reply to What?What?What?….

A 650Mb cd is made up of 650 Million 1’s and 0’s represented as bumps(-) and groves(_). A close up of a CD would look something like this:
-_—____–_-_—-__

Only 650 Million of these can live on a CD. Now you take a single image, you burn one at 1x and the other at 12x. What you have is 2 identical CDs with the same bumps and groves in the same exact place. If this where different then the information would not be identical. So explain to me how would a 2x CD-ROM know the difference.

The only difference I see is that one took longer to burn then the other.

If I am wrong then please elaborate as to how these two cds can be different without compromising the data.

Go to the manufacturers

In reply to Ok, correct me where I’m wrong.

They will tell you that any CDR written on one of their burners will work with any CDR.

The manufacturer I checked was HP.

The exception is that if you multi-session write a disk, some of the earlier burners will not be able to read it. But the solution to that is easy – write it all in one pass.

James

Understanding the technology

In reply to Ok, correct me where I’m wrong.

You have missed the point.

In your scenario, you in fact have 2 different albeit identical cd’s.

Sounds like an oxymoron? Well it’s not.

Even though the data is identical, technically the format of the cd is not.

Every cd has a TOC (table of contents) written to it. The TOC has some important information in it. Similar to the headers of an IP packet. One of things it says is it’s min read speed.

Minimum read speed you say? What the hell is that.

Well it’s really the writespeed that the cd was burned at. So if you burn a cd at 8x, you need a minimum of a 8x player to read it back.

If you burn it a 1x, then you need a minimum of a 1x player to read it back.

Now I know you are asking, why then does it take more time to burn at higher speeds then lower. That is the data transfer rate that the cd-r writer can handle.

Remember the faster you write to a cd just does not mean you are burning it faster, there are other repercussions. Data integrity can decrease at faster speeds (dreaded “buffer overrun”)

Here’s another question, you have 2 drives, one formatted ntfs the other fat16. You store the same file on both drives.

Are they the same or different?

davmaddn

In reply to Ok, correct me where I’m wrong.

ANY cd burned on ANY speed cd-r device will be readable aon ANY speed cdrom drive. The speed of the palyback device will ONLY become noticeable if you are copying files from the device…..playback of video or audio will be at the same speed as thesource.

The answer is No.

In reply to DVD software

Plain and simple. Without all the techincal bla bla. You will need to purchase a DVD player for your computer and they usualy come with the software you need to view DVD movies.

regards

The whole ball of wax

In reply to The answer is No.

You’re gonna need a DVD player to access the VOB files on your DVD.

Legally, you can copy the files onto your hard drive if they are not copy protected… You’re gonna need to read the disclaimer in the beginning of the DVD though to find out whether you legally have that right or not.

It’s going to take between 5-9G to copy them onto your drive and then you will be able to view the DVD without having the actual disk in your drive.

This all was just to answer some of the questions/comments that were in the post earlier.

To answer your question, you won’t be able to access the DVD-Rom without a DVD drive. Imagine playing a BETA tape in a VCR… Doesn’t work.

Anywho, I hope this answers your question…

If you would likeany further help, please send me a note.

mrafrohead@yahoo.com

Also, my recommendation, STAY AWAY FROM THE CREATIVE DRIVE IF YOU ARE RUNNING WINDOZE 2000. Their drivers suck and don’t work and they aren’t going to make a working pair. You canuse the Hollywood+ Drivers from Sigma Designs, but if you are going to use their drivers, you may as well buy their product. Just a little advice from someone who already made this mistake…

mrafrohead

Creative DVD drives work fine

In reply to The whole ball of wax

I’m been using a ‘bare” Creative 16X DVD drive for awhile using WinDVD under both W2K and now XP. Works fine, even if the drive itself is a little noisy.

I nearly forgot..

In reply to The answer is No.

I forgot one thing too..if you really want to watch DVD movies..do it right and watch it on a progressive scan component DVD player with a progressive scan digital HD TV attached to certified 5.1 (6.1 all the better) Dolby Digital/DTS sound system….After you experience that you’ll look at any PC’s DVD player and just smirk to yourself “child’s play”… 😉

Reply To: DVD software

In reply to DVD software

DVD’s are different from CD-RW. You could possibly do the equivalent of what you suggest, but a DVD holds considerably more than a CD-RW is capable of burning. If you had a DVD burner that might be practical, but you are talking a HUGE file, severalGigabytes compared to 650Mb max for a CD-R on your CD-RW.

DVD burners the last I noticed were extremely expensive, that may not be so true anymore.

LordInfidel, well said! LOL!

In reply to DVD software

You crack me up man – but right on! 😉

This would of been posted in the ongoing thread but it branched out so much it gave that “max message reached” thing.

I didn’t want to get so anal but since reading the other posts some are more or less forcing such a response here goes…

Some one suggested on a 650mb CD there are 650 million 1’s and 0’s — WRONG!

First off, you’re getting ripped if you only get 650mbs out of your CDs.

Secondly MB (megaBYTE) is what its referring to…Computers 101 tells us that a BIT (not a BYTE) is the smallest whole unit of information a computer can process. (There are units known as nibbles too – do you know the terminology of bytes, nibbles and bits arose out of visualizing data as a cookie (youknow the kind you eat)…a college professor told me that..oh well). Anyway, 8 bits are in a byte…going with that roughly take 650,000,000 x 8 = A really big number, that’s the number of 1’s and 0’s in 650mb. And before someone even more anal thanI corrects me…THAT number isn’t even 100% accurate because a meg is not a “clean” 1,000,000 k ..I believe its around the 1,048,576 vicinity. (If my memory serves me a kilobyte is 1,024).

As for explaining why speed makes a difference, LordInfidel already did.

Some side notes: As far as believing what manufacturers say – how CDs burned on their units will play on any CDR – if you believe that stuff, I have a bridge to sell you man! 😉 They are trying to get your money!! Compatibility is increasing nicely I will admit, but there have been CD’s I’ve burned on certain units that don’t play on CDRs (which leaves me to my last point…one of the reasons I stand by the stuff I say is because its from EXPERIENCE, not just because I read it. )

Later.

Happy burning!

My mistake

In reply to LordInfidel, well said! LOL!

Yes you’re right about the bits and bytes that was my mistake. But I am still not convinced that the speed you burn something at has anything to do with the actual data on the cd. Lord had made a reference to compare it to FAT 16 to NTFS. Yes these are completely different files systems but the file system used on CD for data is the same “iso 9660” and as for the TOC, how would that work if you burned a Music CD? Would it mater to a cd player what speed the cd was burned at? Do cd player look at a TOC for informat?

I’m not saying that I am right but what I am saying is I have nerver, until now, heard that buring a cd at 8x will not make it unusable on a 2x cd rom.

Correction

In reply to My mistake

I have been doing some searching on the net for this information and I was able to find that even audio cds have a TOC. The audo cd’s TOC contains the starting time of each track amongst other things.

Still haven’t found anything about burning speeds.

And I haven’t found anything either

In reply to Correction

My Laptop has a slow 4X CD Rom. And I read CDs burned at 8 times all the time. There are no setting I can see in HP’s software to set a minimum read speed.

Yes there have been problems in the past with A) Multi-session CDs not being able to be read by early CDRs, and B) CD Writers with bad software which wrote bad disks which couldn’t be read except by the machine that wrote them. But newer CDRs and CDRW have over come these things.

When I started burning CDs a long time ago, we used to find that only the Macintosh hardware made CDs that worked perfectly all the time. I suspect that Apple’s tight control of SCSI HW and software on its systems helped.

The answer is that there are ISO standards (9600/9660) for CDs. There is nothing in there about minimum read speeds.

I suspect that as burners get faster, tolerances get finer and that may cause some of the errors you no doubt see.

James

REad Speeds……

In reply to And I haven’t found anything either

As I understood it, the older CDROM drives don’t have enough signal sensitivity (or laser strength or something) to be able to read the CD writables or rewritables. Bought CD’s have a very clean signal, whereas burnt CD’s don’t return a strong signal due to the way the burn process works.

I have found problems with up to 6x speed CDROM drives, and my old 16x CDROM drive won’t read rewritables either. (normal writables are ok)

Some how the arguement about the write speed doesn’t ring true….

But I am willing to be corrected if I am way off line!

Stuart

I can buy that

In reply to REad Speeds……

Bought CDs are pressed(well most anyways). I have had some burnt CDs which work in some older drives and not in others – typically the “better” manufacturers stuff can read these iffy disks. But I also have to say I’ve seen difference in the burnersas well – some do a better job creating disks that older drives can read.

James

Ya know…Both of our points are moot…

In reply to REad Speeds……

I came to this realization.. Both of our points are 1- valid and 2- Moot.

Here is why…

There used to be, back in the days when standards was not a word in manufactures dictionaries. Vast differences in the read lasers in cd-roms.

So a cd that might work in one rom would not work in another. All because the read laser could not interpet the speed that another cd was burned at.

(Now this has nothing to do with manufactured cd’s, only home burnt cd’s. Commercial CD burning did have standards)

So now, as time progressed and CD-rom manufactures advanced their technology and standards became common place. It was pretty easy to burn cd’s and play them back without a problem.

However, if you take and older cd writer and anolder cd rom player. And burn at a different speed then the player can handle. 10 to 1 odds the cd will not play.

Now by todays standards I can burn off a cd at 12x (not reccomended unless you have a extremely good top of the line burner) and put it in any relatively new cd-rom and it will work.

First, I have not seen any cd-rom’s being sold commercially that are not at least 36x for the last year or so. Even a 2 year old 24x can handle anything that a 12x burner can throw at it.

Soin short, both arguments are valid. They just need to be applied to the time period context that they are referring to.

Writeable/ReWritable

In reply to REad Speeds……

There’s a difference in the media between a Writeable disk and a ReWritable disk… They are both burned in a mildly different fashion and the media itself is totally different. Unfortunately I can’t get any more specific than this right now as I am at work and all of my documentation on this stuff is at home.

When I got my first Burner I was quite excited about it and read anything and everything I could about it and how it worked, hence the reason I know this much…

So basically, youneed a multi-read reader to be able to read your CD-RW disks. It has NOTHING to do with the speed burned. It’s just that multi-read is kind of a newer technology, so your older readers won’t be able to read it.

Think of it like this, inserting a burned CD-R into your Home Theater’s DVD player. Unless the player specifically say plays Cd-R, they dont because they can’t read it…;(

Any questions, let me know!!!

mrafrohead@yahoo.com
mrafrohead

Hate to Burst Everyones BuBBle>>&g

In reply to DVD software

I just received my TigerDirect Catalog in the mail a couple of days ago and was looking through it this morning. Appearantly with this new software package called MYDVD 3.0 all you need is a CD/RW to make a VCD that can be played on most home DVD players.

Now thats what the add says. Personally i would be very skeptical…

BTW….I was reading an article on zdnet about people hacking the new M$ xBox… Now thats good for the industry 😉 Cant wait till the first xBox game is ready for the home pc.

Rad

Yes but …

In reply to Hate to Burst Everyones BuBBle>>&g

you still need a dvd player to read the dvd from.

A dvd will NOT play on a cd-rom, their is no arguing that.

Be vewy careful

In reply to Hate to Burst Everyones BuBBle>>&g

I have a friend who is a bit of an audio/video nut. He records with a Tivo and writes some of them to TV. He has found that there are a number of VCD formats and compression rates, and not all players which say they are compatible are compatible with all of the formats. He uses test CDs to test drive the units in the store.

VCDs use a different format and heavy compression – they aren’t as good to look at as DVDs.

james

MYDVD 3.0 is different

In reply to Hate to Burst Everyones BuBBle>>&g

VCD is different – it’s just a format that’s being burned. You can use NERO for that…

AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT YOUR DVD PLAYER WILL SUPPORT CD-R DISKS. If it doesn’t, as MOST don’t – you’re gonna be freakin PISSED because you spent themoney on that program and you can’t watch it on your DVD player.

Also, you’re going to lose quality from your DVD to the CD as your compression is so extreme.

If you are going to be compressing something that small, I personally recommend justusing DivX, making it yourself and watching it on your computer where you can squeeze a little bit more of your resolution out of the monitor than on your TV screen. And also enjoy the higher quality compression that DivX has to offer.

Remember, the difference between CD and DVD is the Media that you are using. They are two totally different things.

mrafrohead

Hopefully my last two cents

In reply to MYDVD 3.0 is different

One last thing. We’ve strayed off of the topic here.

It was can you read a DVD on a CD drive. The answer is no.

We are now turning more into a compression topic… If you would like some kind of help on the compression part of things, ie… making a dvd play on a regular CD-r, you’re going to have to change the file format of the DVD and then burn it onto your CD-r after you compress it.

For directions on how to do this, if you’re curious, let me know. Keep in mind though, you need to make sure that you aren’t working with copyrighted materials as that will get you a nice long stay in prison and your new best friend will be the soap that is attached to your body by a piece of roap to prevent it from falling onto the ground… If you catch my drift.

Anywho, I hope that this helps and answers any kind of questions that anyone may have or have had…;)

mrafrohead

@yahoo.com

I concur

In reply to DVD software

Pay attention, cd’s burned at higher speeds can not be read by slower ROM’s.

DVD’s can’t be read by CD ROM’s.

DVD players need to have the capability to read multiplatform burned discs.

Do some research and read all the posts. You willget a good idea of what’s happening to answer your query.

Dean Magnusson

Not possible

In reply to DVD software

You need a Dvd reader, with this cheap device, you can see Dvd’s in your PC, by software that replace the functionality of expensive mpeg-2 decode cards in full multimedia kits

With cd-* reader you can’t read dvd’s (they’re 2.6 GB per layer normally, i.e. 4 cd-rom’s in the same physic space)

[Author]

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