OptoRite with B's Recorder GOLD5 & Pinnacle Studio 8

[tig2002]

I am fairly new to this forum since I just ordered my first DVD burner - OptoRite DD0203 in retail box from www.accupc.com for $159.75. Sounds like a good deal for DVD-R/+R/-RW/+RW combo.

Hopefully I made a good choice because I read many good comments about OptoRite burner on this forum, although I saw some complaints about its HD-BURN function, but I don't really care about HD-BURN at this time, and may be the new firmware update from OptoRite will fix these issues in the future.

I will be using my DVD burner mainly for creating DVD movies with my Sony TRV240 Digital-8 camcorder and Pinnacle Studio 8 video editing software. At the same time I would also like to make backup copies of my favorite DVD movies that I own as well as xBox games to protect the original copies from being destroyed by my kids.

First question: does anybody on this forum have an experience using OptoRite DD0203 with Pinnacle Studio 8? Does Studio 8 recognize the drive at the final steps of creating movie and exporting it to DVD? Are there any incompatibility issues between OptoRite DD0203 and Pinnacle Studio 8?

Second question: how come I cannot find OptoRite in the list of supported drives on BHA's website while the drive is shipped with BHA software?

Third question: will B's Recorder GOLD5 allow me to make backup copies of my copy protected DVD's and xBox games? And if it will not, is there any such software on the market to backup copy protected DVD's and xBox games. I find the price of $99 on DVDXCopy ridiculous for making copies of DVD's that I own. May be it will save a lot of money for pirates, by to me this is too expensive when I buy a combo DVD burner with bundled software for $159.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

[Telstar]

1. I don't own and use the Studio 8 program, but since the Optorite DD0203 has come to the market for 4 months, you should be able to download the latest update or patches from the developer's website, which will recognize the burner. If not, then you got a very lazy software developer.

2. Download the latest version 5.32 to enable the HD-Burn function:

http://www.bhacorp.com/updater/GOLD5/GUP532EN.EXE

Most people actually prefer Nero ( version 5.5.10.35 or higher) to B's Recorder GOLD5 and they are the only programs currently supporting the HD-Burn.

3. To learn how to make copies of your DVD movies, please refer to the tutorials from dvdrhelp.com at the following link:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/guides.php?howtoselect=6;30

And you can use mostly freeware to make the backup copies.

[tig2002]

Telstar, thanks for your message with helpful links.

I hope there is somebody who uses this drive with Pinnacle Studio 8 and will read my message. I will be receiving my new drive shortly and will try it with Pinnacle anyway.

I currently have two hard drives on Primary IDE port and two devices on secondary: Epox 56x CD-ROM drive and Hi-Val 48x24x48 CD burner. Since I have no available IDE channel for my new DVD-R/+R drive and need to get rid of either Epox or Hi-Val to free up an IDE channel, I ran CD-Read tests using Nero Drive Speed in order to decide which of these drives to keep in the system.

I was surprised when Hi-Val 48x24x48 outperformed the Epox 56x by all specs, including start, end and avg read speed, seek time, load, eject and CD recognition time. During the test the read speed of Epox 56x drive never exceeded 16X(!) while Hi-Val showed 16x start and 34x end. I can't believe Epox sells 16x CD-ROM drive as 56x.

I will be running some test with the new OptoRite drive once I get it, and will provide the results, if somebody is interested.

I would like to see a topic on this forum where people post test results of their drives, including DVD-R's, using most popular Nero software, so the future buyers will have an information about various drives and can compare before making their final decision.