New DVD Burner

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Friday 26-09-2003 (september 26th 2003) I bought myself a new DVD burning rom.
A NEC ND-1300A

Specifications


gfd





(officially borrowed from http://necd.de)
Modes supported DVD single/dual-layers, DVD single/double-sided, DVD Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R(W), DVD+R(W), CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, CD-Text, CD-Video, CD-Extra, CD-DA, Photo-CD (single-/multisession), CD-R(W)
Memory capacity 4,7 Gbytes DVD, 700 Mbytes CD-R(W)
Access time 140 ms/ 120 ms DVD/CD
Data transfer rate Read: DVD 12x CAV (max. 16.200 Kbyte/s), CD 40x CAV (max. 6.000 Kbyte/s); Write: DVD±R 4x (5.520 Kbyte), DVD+RW 2,4x (3.300 Kbyte/s), DVD-RW 2x (2.760 Kbyte/s), CD-R 16x (2.400 Kbyte/s), CD-RW 10x (1.500 Kbyte/s)
Cache 2 MBytes
Interface ATAPI Ultra DMA 33 mode 2
Special features Vertical and horizontal operation, special anti dust seal, PC 2001, MultiRead, ACTOPC, Buffer underrun prevention

The ND-1300 is NEC´s 4x DVD writer supporting DVD+R(W) and DVD-R(W). This NEC DVD writer provides a complete solution for data backup, storage and distribution - from sharing films and music to archiving a massive 4,7 Gb/s of content on one DVD disk alone. It removes the compatibility issues that have slowed the take-up of DVD re-writers by incorporating all eight optical storage formats in one product. The ND-1300 removes the guesswork one and for all, enabling end-users to create disks for play-back in virtually all DVD video players and DVD-ROM drives with no compromise in performance. ND-1300 delivers a very fast and reliable performance at both reading and writing media. Its performance enables the ND-1300 to record one hour of DVD Video in just 15 minutes. The product also includes ACTOPC - NEC´s high resolution writing strategy to enhance the accuracy of written data. ACTOPC provides the user with improved quality of data copying - whilst allowing for local anomaly in the media- manufacturing tolerances, finger  marks etc.


Firmware

The burning of DVD's is subject to a lot of changes. The media isn't according to all standards, and the hardware isn't bug-free.
For this reason, new versions of the firmware are released allmost every month on the website of Nec.
At buing date this was 1.06. A month later it was 1.07 and now (begin november 2003) 1.08 is out.
Firmware update page at nec: http://www.necd.de/softwareoverview2.php/id/557/lang/ENG

lilo

Changes made to /etc/lilo.conf
image = /boot/vmlinuz
    label = linux82
    root = /dev/system/lvroot
    vga = 791
    initrd = /boot/initrd
    append = "hdc=ide-scsi hdclun=0"


As you can see, my dvd recorder is connected to hdc (primairy disk, secondairy controller).
The ide-scsi module is then loaded to emulate scsi over the ide bus.

mkisofs

the filesystem on a dvd/cd is iso9660.
example:
# mkisofs -o /media/space/install.iso -R -J -x /media/install/excluded1 -x /media/install/excluded2  /media/install/
-o    iso image to create
-R   ??
-J    ??
-x    exclude directory
/       files to inlcude on image

After this, /media/space/install.iso exists and can be burned onto the dvd

cdrecord

As you may have found out, normal cdrecord versions do not support dvd burners.
The homepage for cdrecord is: http://www.fokus.gmd.de for future reference and why dvd's are not supported.


my first dvd

not working yet

Windows XP

After realising that it takes a lot of time to get a copy of my dvd under linux I stepped over on Windows.
Burning tool is nero 6 and the cheapest media is bought with http://www.com4.nl at Eur 2.50 a piece. Strange enough, DVD+R dvd's are cheaper in Holland, So I bought a DVD+RW from Nashua and DVD+R from Platinum.
Since creating RW's under linux wasn't a problem, this also went OK under Windows.
The problem was ripping the dvd and converting it into a playable DVD.
I bought together with the dvd 30 Princo's DVD-R 4 speed, and 5 DVD-RW 2.4 speed. They all are useless to me sol I sold them to a collegue.

dvdShrink

The perfect tool to rip dvd from an original DVD and convert it into a smaller .vob file. This can be burned onto another dvd with Nero.
I had two problems with dvdshrink. At first, you needed a dvd player, So I installed my asusdvd that I allready used with my notebook.
After that, It still wasn't working.
When I played the dvd it was clear that I had to set my Region. So I selected 2 and now it works.

Nero

Nero 6 can use dvd's and I have found, until now, no errors. Only that the new software is very badly designed. Only the advanced version, Nero Burning Rom and not the other ways of creating an DVD.

Links

Nero Germany:
http://www.necd.de

How to create a DVD under FreeBSD with cdrecord
http://www.whiterose.net/~mrpink/freebsd/dvdr.php

Herries Page on firmware:
http://herrie.org/

dvdShrink
http://www.dvdshrink.org

Nero
http://www.nero.com


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