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02-05-2008, 04:59 AM
dannyboy dannyboy is offline
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My Laptop is my main computer at the moment and I've started to do a lot of video work, I have another thread running with regards storage.

To take a lot of the work off my laptops dvd burner, I was thinking of getting additional burners and a dvd rom and may be a lightscribe burner.
These again would have to be external but wanted to know your ideas before making a purchase.

Do they need there own power supply? if so could be a negative with all the plugs!
Is it possible to have them in like a tower and then linked upto my laptop via usb/firewire
Did a bit of research and you can get duplicator towers with controllers but can I connect it up to my laptop so I have control of which burner or dvd rom to use?

I looked at another thread running and the burner that was favoured is the pioneer which seems a good choice for the burner, any advice for the dvd rom or lightscribe would be appreciated.
regards
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  #2  
02-05-2008, 04:52 PM
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My favorite burner at this moment (and the favorite by many other folks too) is the Samsung drive. I recommend the Sony DRX-830U or DRX-840U, which are both easy to find, and are Samsung drives in a Sony branded enclosure (USB2).

Office Depot had the DRX-830U on clearance at several stores in Nov-Dec, and they ran about $50 total. Even at Walmart or one of the office stores, you're looking at about $90-100, a good price on such a drive. They're online too.

My only complaint about the Sony drive is it has a mirror finish on the drive door, so you can see yourself smile as you put the disc in. I'm not a mirror person.

Pioneer is certainly a good choice, too. The 111 or 112 models (or one of the "retail" re-numbered versions sold by Best Buy -- 111 was S701, don't recall what the 112 is called, but it's probably the only one on the shelf). I have several Pioneers, and three recent Samsungs.

LiteOn 20x drives should have LightScribe, as well as the HP and Memorex re-branded 20x LiteOn's. I know some LG drives do too, but I'm no longer a fan of LG drives (slow, reject good media, other issues -- stubborn drives lately). LiteOn's also have some issues at being slow burners (long lead-in/lead-out times) and readers (2x-4x reads on burned media).

Lightscribe sounds nicer than it really is. It's a lot like the old Daguerreotype prints (1800s photography). Be sure it's something you really want, as the burners that have it tend to not be the best at actually burning the data onto discs.

The drives have their own power supplies, yes. There's too much draw to pull from the USB power.

The Sony has a tower mod in the box, so it can be set vertically, yes. It must be horizontal, however, for double-layer burning. It works best horizontal, all optical drives do, always have. Most folks learned this with the original Playstation 2, or with vertically mounted car CD players.

DVD-ROMs are almost the same price of a DVD burner these days, so it's often a good idea to just get a good burner. Then again, you can buy a $25 enclosure and a cheap DVD-ROM (I've got 3 older-model LG's new in box for $15 each), and get away for a lot less invested.

Duplicators are self-sufficient, they don't really connect to computers for any reason.

The Sony drive stack nicely, that's how I have mine most of the time, wired to laptops.




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02-05-2008, 05:04 PM
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I just noticed you're in UK. These days, pretty much divide a dollar by two, and you get pounds ($10 = £5). Our exchange isn't fairing too well in the past year or two. However, I know some things are about 25-50% higher priced in UK, for video/computers.

Best Buy is a big electronics chain, similar to Curry's.



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02-07-2008, 04:00 AM
dannyboy dannyboy is offline
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Thanks again for your input it's given me a better understanding of which way to go.
Have since seen some disc's that have been burnt with light scribe, wasn't to impressed either so I'm going to go down the route of a couple of suggested burners.
Like the idea of the sony, that stack well.
I have a dvd rom which is not that old so may well take the enclosure advice for that and then will be ready to go.

"Duplicators are self-sufficient, they don't really connect to computers for any reason."

Am I right in thinking that this set up is purely burning on the fly from the source disc.

My initial thoughts for this setup was, that from my laptop I could rip dvd files then transfer to one of the burners. Can now see that this setup is mainly for producing copies from the already ripped source disc.

many thanks
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02-07-2008, 01:07 PM
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If you want to have images on discs, please note to NEVER USE LABELS on a disc. Get inkjet media and use inkjet printers. Personally, I see no such need to label a disc, aside from neat handwriting with a Sharpie marker. A person only looks at a disc for 30 seconds maximum (usually much less, if at all). Effort is better placed on DVD menus (clean quality imagery, helpful navigation, adhere to design rules, understand video issues like overscan area and the need to tuck and bleed on-screen menu content). Next comes a DVD case. People usually choose to read/view DVD cases, and they are pretty much required to read/view a DVD menu. The effort and costs of disc imagery is mostly a waste, unless you're replicating thousands of discs as a business item. I do design artwork for replication, but never small runs of burns.

Duplicators are to copy discs. If I had one, I'd burn a master on an archival-grade disc (some PVC media, or some Taiyo Yuden media), then let it copy to duplication-grade discs (Ritek, Prodisc -- though I often go for higher grade media like Mitsubishi or Sony).

I'm a content producer, I rarely have need to rip other's DVDs, aside from minor re-editing or re-authoring. Those almost always come from customers that were unhappy with their previous service (somebody else did a tacky quality job on their discs).

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