Cannot Burn DVD's

[trin250]

Please bear with me I'm not that great with computers so I might not know all of the computer terms.

Okay so I wanted to make a DVD, I opened Windows DVD Maker, added the movies ... etc. But when i click Burn, a message pops up that says "The Disc in your DVD burner is not a recordable DVD. Please insert a recordable or rewriteable DVD." I attached a pic of the message, its stupid.bmp ... i was annoyed haha

I am using Memorex DVD-R 4.7GB, so i know that the DVD can be used.

I tried burning with the Roxio programme that came installed already when i got my Laptop. It completed burning, but when I ejected the DVD, only a tiny strip was written. When I put the DVD in my dvd player it says Bad Disc and on the comp, it has a DVD picture with DVD-R underneath it, and it says DVD RW Drive (E: ) name of dvd. It tells me that i have 4.38GB of free space. i attached a pic of this because i dont think i explained it well, its disc.bmp

I dunno if this is important but my laptop is a Dell inspiron 1521. the system type is 32bit. I have Vista Home Premium

Under Device Manager, when I expand DVD/CD-ROM drives, PBDS DVD+-RW DS-8W1P ATA Device shows. I dunno if thats important either..

this is my first time burning a dvd so i dunno if it once worked.

 

[johngalt]

Hi, trin250, and welcome to the forums.

First off, I haven't tried Windows DVD Maker, so I'll give that a shot tonight and see if I can figure it out.

Now, as to the Roxio program, well, unfortunately you just made yourself a DirectCD - which basically formats a DVD into a way such that you can copy files to it 'live' just as you would a HD - the reason I know this is because your DVD shows 4+ GB *free* - free being the key word.

If you had burned anything to it and it closed the session, you'd see 0 bytes free - because DVD-Rs are *not* rewritable, unless you use DirectCD (which is a packet writing software made for this sort of thing).

Trust me, it is not all that great - you cannot erase files once put on there (or, more accurately, you cannot recover the specs - you can definitely erase the file, but that only erases it from the disc in *appearance, not in actual data).

Going back to Windows DVD maker, did you try a different DVD?

 

[trin250]

thank you for answering

okay so what would I have to do to create a DVD in Roxio that I can view on my DVD player?

I havent tried another disc, I have to go and buy another type I guess... should I try DVD+R? or DVD-RW?

 

[wysiwyg]

DVD+-RW you need these discs.

 

[johngalt]

No, you do not need those discs.

You just need to *not* use the DirectCD (I think it is called something else now, DiscWizard maybe?) to create your discs. Read your help files for Roxio software carefully - if it says anything about 'formatting' the disc for use that is the DiscWizard. Don't use that.

Other than that Roxio is just a much more bloated, er, robust, DVD authoring system.

 

[trin250]

oh! okay it always prompted me to format before burning.

have you checked out windows DVD maker?

 

[johngalt]

No, that is for now - I was playing tennis earlier tonight. Now is cool down time before bed.

I'll play with DVD maker right now - I have some anime I need burning anyway....

 

[johngalt]

Well, I am trying to burn 6 DivX encoded videos to DVD and it keeps crashing on me....

 

[johngalt]

OK, I am not sure why it keeps crashing - perhaps my system has gotten a bit unstable because I foolishly tried out nTune again....

But I just created a simple DVD of 6 Eureka 7 (anime) episodes. So far it is burning without a problem - onto DVD-R.

 

[trin250]

so you think maybe its just windows DVD maker? i googled and a lot of others are haing problems creating DVD's with this programme.

you're burning with what programme? or did you just drag and drop?

 

[johngalt]

No, I made the full DVD through Windows DVD Maker - even though it was set to use the max burning speed, it took a long time b/c it seems to encode on the fly, so it was a really slow process - but the result is that it worked.

Now I have to make more discs for the other 44 episodes :P