I ALMOST GAVE UP.....
Written: Sep 17 '03 (Updated Jan 21 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy as can be operation. Software does all the thinking for you.
Cons: Burning engine produces coasters. Use NERO setting instead. Program sometimes eccentric.
The Bottom Line: It works, but not on it's own. Careful with this one...you might not be so lucky as me. Read review for tricks and tips.
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| DENGNY's Full Review: 321studios DVD X Copy (0852192000715) |
I came to become familiar with DVD X-COPY because it was $29.99 with the purchase of my $99 DVD burner (read my other review on the burner). Anyway, I have a LOT of DVD movies and I thought making a backup copy was a good way to protect my substantial investment.
This piece of software is I suppose what you would call a ripper/burner combined. In other words it takes the files on your DVD original, decodes them, and then temporarily dumps them on to your hard drive for burning (writing) to the target blank DVD.
I did look at other alternatives out there, but there was really nothing I found that was expressly designed to make duplicate copies of DVDs. Most of the comparable software out there either ripped (extracted movie files from disks), burned (write movie files to DVD blank media), or did both but in separate operations. To be frank, I can't be bothered. Give me a one or two step operation, and I'll be happy. For ease of use alone .... this is the software to get.
So I go through a rather uneventful installation process (meaning it went good), and now I'm ready to burn me some DVDs, right? Not so fast. The first thing you'll need to do is make sure your DVD burner's DMA (Direct Memory Access) is activated. If not, you risk creating mini shiny Frisbees or rearview mirror ornaments because of Buffer Underruns.
Also, activating DMA on your hard drive will speed up the burning process as well. Seems that this program extracts all the files it needs, dumps them on your hard drive, and when it's ready, copies those files back to a blank DVD. So, activating this if it doesn't cause problems is a good idea. Don't ask if it will cause problems, cause I just don't know. But Windows told me that it might so I was a little cautious about changing this setting. But then again Windows once told me that it was experiencing an error reporting error number eighty-something-or-other (isn't Microsoft just wonderful?).
So, back to the task at hand. I insert a DVD into my DVD-ROM drive, and a blank DVD into my newly acquired burner (further known as 'my precious'). Well, the DVD in the DVD-ROM drive activated my DVD player, and 'my precious' activated Ulead DVD Studio suite. Now I already had DVD X-COPY running, so I closed these two other programs and then activate the copy process on DVD X-COPY. Big mistake. In about 2 minutes DVD X-COPY had just produced a mini shiny Frisbee.
What to do...what to do. Okay, to avoid this happening in the future I just set both drives to 'no insert notification' (this is the setting in Windows that automatically starts CDs or DVDs when you close the drive door). Problem solved.
So I go again and this time I'm ready ... no programs are running or are going to start. My second attempt is when I discovered about the DMA setting - remember? Okay, so now I had a mini shiny Frisbee, and a phat rear view mirror ornament. My precious wasn't doing too well and at this point I was wondering whether or not I had made a wise purchase.
Okay, so now I got everything all set and I fire up the software for the 3rd time and AH HA there it is my first DVD copy. Oh wait, not it's not. Who knew that commercially purchased DVDs are 9.4 giga-bytes and blank DVD media is only 4.7 giga-bytes? Not me obviously, and so I went through the required step of putting in another blank DVD for the second disk.
At least the task of deciding where to split the DVD copy was left up to the software - thank goodness.
Okay, so now I've got my second DVD of the third attempt. You're with me right? Good. So I go and put it in my DVD player and it seems okay with the exception of taking a long time to start the show. Well half-way through the movie, it starts messing up. The DVD I'm playing actually causes me DVD player to lock-up. GREAT!
So now I'm trying to decide what's the problem. Is it My Precious, DVD X-COPY, the cheapest media I could get my hands on at CompUSA, or my computer? Or, maybe my DVD player just can't play a burned DVD?
To make a long story short, I went into the advanced settings of DVD X-COPY and selected 'EXTERNAL NERO BURNING ENGINE', and set the UDF Compatibility (whatever the flock that is) to 'ON'. SUCCESS!!! Finally! By the way, you'll need the NERO BURNING ROM software installed on your computer in order to do this. NERO, as far as I'm concerned is THE software to have if you're burning ANYTHING. Get it for $69 at Costco.
Now I'm making copies of my DVD's just like I thought I would. Nice and easy, two steps, no problems. YAY! Guess I got lucky.
PROGRAM ECCENTRICITIES:
It won't burn DVD+RW unless you format them first in NERO. Both times I put DVD+RWs in the drive the program gave me a notice that the media wasn't ready to burn. So, I tried using the 'ERASE ALL' and 'QUICK ERASE' features in DVD X-COPY. Don't bother they don't work, and be prepared to do a three-finger-salute (CTRL+ALT+DEL) to unfreeze and close the program.
If you have a two DVD system, i.e. you have a DVD-ROM drive and a DVD burner in the same system it's best to put your original DVD in the drive you want to read from first. Then, start the program. DVD X-Copy will then scan both drives for an original DVD. If you start the program without an original DVD in the drive first, DVD X-Copy will default to the LAST drive you had an original in.
In order to burn a new original DVD copy, you have to close the program and re-start it. So far, I have been unable to find anything that resembles a 'START NEW PROJECT' option within the menu system.
Some DVD originals will not read at all and locks the program up. When this happens it's necessary to forcibly close the program using CTRL-ALT-DEL. Instead of blaming the original (scratch, dirty, etc.), switch drives (if you have a two DVD system as described above). Put the original in the alternate drive, and restart the program. I've tried it, it works more often than you would think.
Bottom line:
No installation problems
Works pretty well if no other programs are open that access your DVD writer.
Use the EXTERNAL NERO BURNING ENGINE setting for maximum compatibility with your home DVD player.
Some little used but necessary features just flat out don't work.
Who knows if what works for me will work for you.
Call me picky but I think if you pay money for something it should work on it's own, and without help from another software application that you may not have.
Further, if the software works why the lousy rating? Well, software like this should stand on its own and not rely on some other piece of software for a major portion of it's function. Hey, if your burning engine is so great why do you need NERO's to get the job done?
P.S. I saw another reviewer mention that you can't make more than one copy of any copywrited DVD. I have NOT experienced this problem and actually just burned two identical copies of two movies last night (one on DVD+R, one on DVD+RW) because I'm still not sure which media I want to ultimately use.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
DENGNY
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Member: Dennis G
Location: Morris County, NJ
Reviews written: 85
Trusted by: 38 members
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