Best burning software?

[Ghamu]

Well, just got my pioneer a04 a week ago, and so far have only burnt 4 coasters in a row. Have tried Nero 5.5.6, Nero 5.5.8.0 (couldn't even get this to work, kept wigging out) and have tried Nero 5.5.9.6. Please, can anyone recommend a good stable DVD burning software?
Is there anything special I have to set up with Win XP (I already disabled the recording tab as someone already suggested). Any yes, this is with cheap media (should at least be read by the burner that burnt it right??) Should I seek some sort of drivers or firmware updates? BTW, I am using the computer while its is buring, but cache never drops below 97%, and the burning is on a master with a cd-r as slave, seperate from the Hard Drives.
I am also only currently buring data, should I only use a certain amount of data (less that max)?

[colebert]

Can you read the disc in your DVD Reader? Every coaster I've made has been the result of the following two things:

1) Screwed up my IFOs so the player got confused
2) Accidentally selected the wrong format for the disc [should be UDF/ISO]


-cole

[Ghamu]

...Well, these aren't even video dvds I am trying to burn, just data (DVD-ROM ISO). As far as format goes, the only option thats really given to me when I burn is whether it is multi-session or not, I always select burn without multi-session support.
The first DVDs I tried to burn were absolute disasters, I used the cheapo dvd-rs that I bought with my burner (from Hyper-micro). The most recent one I used a PrimeDisc that I just got, while I did get a readable disc, one of the files one disc was not able to be verified my nero, and sure enough, it can't play the last file on the DVD.
Some one said I should not use over 4 gig, is this true? Is the last .7 (.5 allowed by nero) causing my problems?
Should I abandon Nero and pony up cash for a different burning suite?

[tonical]

i'm new to the dvd recording world myself , but i have managed to burn 7 titles (with no coasters) using prassi's primodvd 2.0 using the instructions given by more experienced members.

[gulikoza]

Same thing here...One coaster so far. Burnt with Nero 5.5.8.2 on a laptop with Pioneer A04 connected via firewire interface. About 3.8 gigs are readable, the rest is not even written on the disc! I can clearly see...the tracks are getting sparse and the last 0.5 cm looks blank. Any ideas...anyone?

[sarahjh69]

these problems are always caused by cheap media
(bulkcrap usually screws up after 3 gig)

use datasafe dvd-rw at 89p each and Nero to burn
perfect results every time...........

[Ghamu]

...well just found out from sarahjh69 in another thread that XP could also be causing me problems. The discs I using are PrimeDisc, which are cheap, but fairly well recommend, at least no one else had problems.

So far I've burnt 7 coasters, the later ones all readable for the first 2 1.4 GB files, the last 1.4 GB file always unreadable. I have tried GearPRO, RecordNOW max and PrimoDVD, all simular results (but I like Neros interface the best).

Will probabley try to burn once more using Nero, this time shutting EVERYTHING down, and maybe using the burn image, them buring from image, might be less overhead.

[gulikoza]

It's not cheap media...I'm using Pioneer DVS-R47A/E discs that cost $7.5 (yes, that's seven and a half bucks a piece!) where I live. And that's the only brand they have...

So what's with XP...turn DMA off??

[Ghamu]

Not sure, I don't get those kind of errors when I burn, so that might not be my case, read Here (http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php3?ID=4557) for more info, I might try switching to PIO I guess, I'm a bit confused now. I'm trying to free space for a image to DVD burn right now (as opposed to on the fly)

[cybercrap]

The best burning software I have used is dvd decrypter. I use it to burn images made my imgtool on my a04. The only coasters I have made is because motherboards are stupid and when you enable dma in your bios it assigns drives on the same chain different dma. My a04 got ultra dma 2 while my dvd player got multiword dma 2. Well, this causes problems and makes a coaster about 1/3 to 1/2 the time. So simple fix is to go in your bios and disable dma for chain your burner is on. However, keep it activated in windows. Windows will assign the best dma that is compatible with both drives, in my case this is multiword dma 2. Now i can burn, play mp3s, use cce to reencode, use ifoedit to strip movies, and use imgtool to make images all at the same time. Sure my pc slows to a crawl, but my dvd burner doesn't spit out bs about retry fail on device blah blah blah. Instead if it has a buffer underrun problem it uses superlink and there aren't any burning problems. I have had over 550 write retries in one burn( don't ask how) and the disc was still perfect.