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What software makes auto play / high res DVDs?


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I am using Movavi software. It makes DVD's that are playable in a TV but not as auto play. When I input 1280x720 it gives me a max DVD option of 720x480.

What software do I need that makes auto play DVDs and makes them higher res?

Thanks

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DVDs only support standard definition video.

If you want more than that, you need to make blu-rays.

Some TVs support flash keys or other USB devices with higher resolution files on them, but compatibility needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

P

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I'm not sure what you mean by auto play DVDs.

Naturally DVD player will play them when they're inserted. If you want something that'll auto play when put into a PC, that's doable but it's slightly complicated; most people will happily play a DVD on a PC. Also, is that even a very viable distribution method anymore?

P

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I used Apple's DVD Studio pro for most of my authoring. In that program, you simply add the titles and tracks then you tell the disk to playback yout track upon disk insert vs the menu. Thus, when you put a disk in the drive, it will playback the track automatically, which is nice. You need some sort of DVD authoring software to make it work. 

You can put HD material onto a DVD and compress it as .h264. Many BluRay players will play it back as a media disc, rather than a movie disc. Just need to check your players capabilities and make sure the disc is formatted properly for DVD players. However, in this mode you can't autoplay. 

Like stated above, DVD's are 8 bit 4:2:0 480p Long GOP MPEG 2 files with a maximum of 10Mbps. 

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20 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

I'm not sure what you mean by auto play DVDs.

Naturally DVD player will play them when they're inserted. If you want something that'll auto play when put into a PC, that's doable but it's slightly complicated; most people will happily play a DVD on a PC. Also, is that even a very viable distribution method anymore?

P

I mean to play automatically when inserted in a DVD player.

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Thanks Tyler, all I have is Windows. Anything you can recommend for Blu-ray burning software for a PC?

If auto play is going to be a hassle, it is not that big a deal. I thought it would be a nice touch to add instead of the viewer having to push buttons to play. I got a Blu-ray burner now just need some software.

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https://www.scenarist.com/

Is what the pros use for PCs. Before that Spruce was great.

As Tyler states DVD studio pro on the Mac is probably the best "affordable" masting programme.

The professional tools allow you to set up a "first play" command for auto starts, you can also build in loop points, chapters and menus.

The more domestic DVD tools (iDVD) tend to have burned in menus.

Perhaps one of easiest ways of making an auto play DVD is to use a stand alone DVD recorder - one where you hit Play and Record and burn the DVD directly in the same way as a VCR.

Personally I've not touched a DVD in about 5 or 6 years. Optical media is pretty dead

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4 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Thanks Tyler, all I have is Windows. Anything you can recommend for Blu-ray burning software for a PC?

If auto play is going to be a hassle, it is not that big a deal. I thought it would be a nice touch to add instead of the viewer having to push buttons to play. I got a Blu-ray burner now just need some software.

I'd just google search, there are dozens of powerful authoring tools for DVD and BluRay. I'm not aware of the names because I'm a mac guy, so I don't have a clue on windows software ?

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23 hours ago, Phil Connolly said:

https://www.scenarist.com/

Is what the pros use for PCs. Before that Spruce was great.

As Tyler states DVD studio pro on the Mac is probably the best "affordable" masting programme.

The professional tools allow you to set up a "first play" command for auto starts, you can also build in loop points, chapters and menus.

The more domestic DVD tools (iDVD) tend to have burned in menus.

Perhaps one of easiest ways of making an auto play DVD is to use a stand alone DVD recorder - one where you hit Play and Record and burn the DVD directly in the same way as a VCR.

Personally I've not touched a DVD in about 5 or 6 years. Optical media is pretty dead

Thanks.

I like DVD's. They are a step closer to film than a HDD can offer. (Not in film look, but with archival ability.)

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Take care to do your research on what DVD stock you use, some are more stable for archive then others. 

I'd assume the archive grade is better then HDD but at this point its still a guess.

I think the main issue with DVD's is they don't hold much data. A 4TB HDD would take a lot of space if written out to DVDs. 

Blu Ray of course is better data wise - but I wonder if its more or less robust for archival purposes. 

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I wouldn't trust optical media for backups. Ever. and I've personally burned about 250,000 discs over the past 19 years (on high quality media), and they simply don't last. I also wouldn't believe claims about "archival" optical discs lasting for 100 years as some claim. 

For one thing, the odds of finding a player for the media in the next 10 years are questionable, let alone 20, 50, 100 years from now. Any digital backup strategy that doesn't involve migration of data from one format to another is doomed to fail, either through mechanical/media issues or technological obsolescence. 

There are some cloud storage services that might make sense depending on the volume of material you have, but right now the best bang for your buck is LTO tape. yes, tape. It's robust, designed to be bulletproof, and is widely adopted by the enterprise IT world. Hell, Amazon Glacier is on LTO...

But even that needs to be migrated to a new format every few years.

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On 6/4/2019 at 10:45 AM, Phil Connolly said:

Take care to do your research on what DVD stock you use, some are more stable for archive then others. 

I'd assume the archive grade is better then HDD but at this point its still a guess.

I think the main issue with DVD's is they don't hold much data. A 4TB HDD would take a lot of space if written out to DVDs. 

Blu Ray of course is better data wise - but I wonder if its more or less robust for archival purposes. 

Fade testing is in progress for Blu-ray. Also testing 'M' disk and numerous other disks.  

Regular DVD's are poor with fade testing. They die within 30 days of sun. Gold is about 5% better than silver. More tests underway. Including rare original Kodak 24K gold 'up to100 years' DVD from 2007. 

But if you keep optical media in the dark they seem to hold up OK. 

My previous tests:

https://danieldteolijrarchivalcollection.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/gold-dvds-are-better-than-silver-dvds-at-least-somewhat/

Here is a 15 year test on CD-R video from an ancient Terapin recorder.

https://danieldteolijrarchivalcollection.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/15-year-cd-r-archival-burn-test/

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Well you need $$ for LTO. Cloud is nice as long as you don't miss a payment. If you do, all your data is deleted when account is 30 days in arrears. 

I have CD's from 1985...play perfectly. That is 34 years old. (Although that is factory made and not burnt at home.) My previous post  tested a home made 15 year CD-R...works great. But yes, as Perry said, put it on as much varied media as you can.

But if a EMP ever hits, LTO, SDD & HDD is said to be wiped out. Only optical discs will survive unless the magnetic media is in a Faraday cage. (But may not matter anyway. If EMP, much bigger problems at hand.)

'M' disk is said to be highly archival. Laser etches a hard layer and not dye. We will see, 'M' tests underway as I write this. Only issue with 'M' is not that mainstream.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Burned media and replicated media are completely different things, and you can't compare them. A disc pressed in a factory is physically molded by a press and is significantly more robust than a disc you burn on your desktop. Of course CDs from the 80s can work - they were designed to last. Burned discs are throwaways and were never meant to be a long term storage solution.

Any disc you burn in a burner is going to fail sooner or later, marketing claims aside. Our business was DVD and then Blu-ray authoring, for almost 20 years. Believe me, we've tried hundreds of different types of discs, used quality burners, etc. They can't and shouldn't be trusted to last long term. And even if they were trustworthy, they're too small to be useful as a backup medium, especially for video files.  

Trying to find a single format that will last for a long time is a fools errand - it's a waste of time at best, and at worst, it's putting your backup in jeopardy. Aside from the fact that nobody can definitively prove that discs will still work in 50-100 years like some claim, there are the much more basic issues of:

1) Can you find an optical disc reader to read them with?

2) If you're setting one aside now for future use, will it still work?

3) And if you did, will computers 10-15 years from now even have USB? 

The only sane strategy for digital backup is to put the files on multiple formats, and keep migrating it to new formats so you don't fall behind. Thinking back 20 years... try working with a ZIP drive today: if you can find a drive, good luck getting the cart to mount. 

I suggested LTO because it's cheap per gigabyte, reasonably fast and easy to work with and is widely supported by the enterprise IT world, with a published development roadmap and schedule. It's not tied to a single company, it's a consortium, with agreed upon standards. It's the best long-term physical media backup solution out there right now. 

The best overall solution is to have multiple copies in multiple locations and to periodically copy them to new media. Cloud storage makes the most sense and is where things are headed, for obvious reasons. There's too much IT infrastructure needed to make a personal cloud viable - for one thing, if you have a fire or flood in your basement server room, you lose everything. You need to piggyback on what large corporations are doing, and take advantage of the underlying technology (which is making sure there's redundancy and plenty of backups so you don't lose anything). 

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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Sure, everything you say is true...in a perfect world and if $$ is no object. 

Since we are having this media conversation I pulled down the M (4.7gb) disc I was testing to give it a try. I was planning on keeping it up for a year in the sun, but tested it after 3 months. Worked great. All other optical media (silver / gold) failed after a month in the sun. The M disc seems promising, providing you can get the hardware to read down the road. They have M discs that hold a good deal of data, but nothing like tape. I think 100gb is the max. Still a lot of data in a disc...if you can't afford LTO. 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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LTO-5 and LTo-6 drives and media have become much more affordable, interfacing them to a machine can be a trick as can the LTO software, especially on MAC but then you have a good backup with a decent amount of storage for each tape that will be recoverable in five or ten years, possibly more so fewer migration steps to be taken.

Optical Discs are everything that Perry said especially the part about not having a drive that works in five or ten years.

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As Rob said, stick with LTO a generation or two behind the current one and you'll be fine. An LTO 5 tape holds 1.5TB uncompressed and costs about $20 - cheaper in bulk. A used drive will run you about $300 and a PCIe SAS HBA card about $50. If you're on Windows or Linux, just download the LTFS drivers and you drag and drop your files to it. Mac is a bit more of a pain (you need a drive with a thunderbolt enclosure, and software like YoYotta or similar, or you have to jump through a lot of hoops). LTFS tapes will open on any platform - they just show up as if they're a hard drive. It's not an expensive format, and when you upgrade that LTO5 to an LTO7, it'll still read your LTO 5 tapes so you don't need to migrate as frequently. 

As far as your experience with those DVDs, I mean no offense but that's just anecdata. It's your experience only, and while you're stress testing them, that's not telling you anything about how they'll hold up over time or how likely it'll be you'll find a machine to read them on in the future. Basically, you know you can keep them in the sun for a while - at least, that batch of discs you tested. 

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LTO is by far the way to go with local long-term storage. With some newer LTO6 drives coming with thunderbolt, it's so easy to plug and play with the appropriate software of course. 

My biggest problem with cloud storage is, they don't automatically backup your media. So it's a crapshoot that you have no control over. If something were to go wrong, you could lose it all unless you pay exorbitant amounts of money to back it all up. 

Sadly optical media is dead. 

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21 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

As Rob said, stick with LTO a generation or two behind the current one and you'll be fine. An LTO 5 tape holds 1.5TB uncompressed and costs about $20 - cheaper in bulk. A used drive will run you about $300 and a PCIe SAS HBA card about $50. If you're on Windows or Linux, just download the LTFS drivers and you drag and drop your files to it. Mac is a bit more of a pain (you need a drive with a thunderbolt enclosure, and software like YoYotta or similar, or you have to jump through a lot of hoops). LTFS tapes will open on any platform - they just show up as if they're a hard drive. It's not an expensive format, and when you upgrade that LTO5 to an LTO7, it'll still read your LTO 5 tapes so you don't need to migrate as frequently. 

As far as your experience with those DVDs, I mean no offense but that's just anecdata. It's your experience only, and while you're stress testing them, that's not telling you anything about how they'll hold up over time or how likely it'll be you'll find a machine to read them on in the future. Basically, you know you can keep them in the sun for a while - at least, that batch of discs you tested. 

Thanks Perry...but I've never seen any tape drives remotely priced like that. More like a few thousand $$ each, albeit new. And that is the issue...LTO's = $$.

I'd be scared buying used $300 tape drives unless I really knew the backstory on them. Too bad the LTO's don't come down to an affordable price like $500. 

Have any of you bought used tape drives? How did you do?

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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12 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

 I'd be scared buying used $300 tape drives unless I really knew the backstory on them. Too bad the LTO's don't come down to an affordable price like $500. 

Why?

It's either going to work or it's not. We've bought plenty of them - DLT4000 (at least three), DLT7000, DLT8000 (2 of these), DLT80, LTO2, LTO4, LTO5, LTO6, LTO7. All used. All have made hundreds of tapes with no issues. All tapes verify correctly, and all of the tapes made work on client systems. These are robust machines, designed to run tens of thousands of tapes in their lifetimes.

Most of the used ones were upgraded by IT departments when they moved to a newer format, so they've depreciated somewhat and they're just looking to recoup costs. Just look on ebay and you'll find them used and refurbished. You might need to buy an internal drive and a separate enclosure for it to get the best deal, but putting them together is as simple as installing a hard drive. 

 

Here are recent sales on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lto5+external+drive&_sop=15&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

 

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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14 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

LTO is by far the way to go with local long-term storage. With some newer LTO6 drives coming with thunderbolt, it's so easy to plug and play with the appropriate software of course. 

My biggest problem with cloud storage is, they don't automatically backup your media. So it's a crapshoot that you have no control over. If something were to go wrong, you could lose it all unless you pay exorbitant amounts of money to back it all up. 

Sadly optical media is dead. 

Why do you say optical is dead? Use it all the time. Only issue I have with optical is the amount of data they hold. 

OK, now who uses floppy any more...but you can still get lots of USB floppy drives in 2019. So tech seems to stick around a little longer than many think.

usb-floppy-drive-black-p1333-2475_zoom.j

The reason I brought up CD's earlier was in response to Perry saying the hardware will be gone in a few years.  34 years later and no shortage of CD readers...with no end in sight.

Personally I keep my material on HDD, a very few SDD and DVD's. I'd like to add LTO, but the cost is prohibitive as of now. It is all magnetic media so to speak. The closest thing to film is optical, not magnetic. (Not in terms of film look, in archival qualities.)  Although I have some early reel to reel tape from the 50's that is still good. So tape may offer good archival qualities as well, but I think 'M' discs are more stable. 

 

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Why?

It's either going to work or it's not. We've bought plenty of them - DLT4000 (at least three), DLT7000, DLT8000 (2 of these), DLT80, LTO2, LTO4, LTO5, LTO6, LTO7. All used. All have made hundreds of tapes with no issues. All tapes verify correctly, and all of the tapes made work on client systems. These are robust machines, designed to run tens of thousands of tapes in their lifetimes.

Most of the used ones were upgraded by IT departments when they moved to a newer format, so they've depreciated somewhat and they're just looking to recoup costs. Just look on ebay and you'll find them used and refurbished. You might need to buy an internal drive and a separate enclosure for it to get the best deal, but putting them together is as simple as installing a hard drive. 

 

Here are recent sales on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lto5+external+drive&_sop=15&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

 

OK, will check them out...Thanks!

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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3 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Why do you say optical is dead? Use it all the time. Only issue I have with optical is the amount of data they hold. 

Well amount of data would be the #1 stand out issue. If there was a 50gb single sided format that could burn in a few seconds, then yes it would probably still stick around. However, DVD's are the fastest recording media and I don't have a single folder on any computer that's anywhere near small enough to fit on a DVD, even my documents! DVD for video is worthless as everyone is doing UHD delivery. 

In terms of pre-recorded media, the big physical media stores are long gone. Yes, some big chains do still sell physical media, but it's in very limited supply, only current releases in most cases or the top US films. Best Buy is blowing out BluRay's at $5 bux right now and UHD's aren't selling. Physical media is not something the studio's care about anymore and the days of things making money on disc, are long behind us. Used media is still around, but new is dying fast. I give it a few years and I think the studio's will discontinue all physical discs. 

 

3 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

OK, now who uses floppy any more...but you can still get lots of USB floppy drives in 2019. So tech seems to stick around a little longer than many think.

Well sure, you always need a drive for reading archives, but you aren't writing new data. 

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