321 Studios cranks it up a notch

The blurb is here: http://www.dvdxcopy.com They *say* it only takes about an hour for a full backup. They *say* they use NO freeware or shareware; that the software is totally their own. They *say* it's virtually a couple-of-mouse-clicks kind of program. (Insert DVD; insert DVD-R or RW. Click some buttons. Come back in an hour.) They *say* it takes only 1 dvd-r for some movies, but may take 2. (How does that translate in terms of a broken-up movie?) They *say* we can download it on Oct. 28. The FAQ is here: http://www.dvdxcopy.com/faq.htm Based on their previous (dodgy) offering with CD-Rs, who is going to plunk down $100 US, before (maybe) the US court rules the package to be illegal? Mostly, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. {sigh} -- Mike --

Hope its not as complicated as the older ones

If they do a bit-by-bit copy, then they are doing nothing illegal as no decryption is taking place. If you want to backup a DVD over 4.7GB, a double sided DVD-R would come useful, although you'll need to flip it over halfway through the movie! I remember the original double sided DVD movies that this had to be done. This was before the time of dual layer. ;-)

AFAIK, bit-by-bit copy without decoding in order to remove CSS is impossible. I might be wrong, but that's my gut feeling -- this would make even the DVD-5 to DVD-R copying identical to the one that we describe in our guide for DVD-5 to DVD-R, using DVD Decrypter. Basically just ripping the full disc to the HDD and burning it back to DVD-R. And as far as DVD-9 goes, splitting to two discs IS the method that virtually everybody uses nowadays anyway, using IFOEdit. It's cool if they really have produced a software that does this AUTOMATICALLY, but I seriously doubt that anyway due the various methods how original DVD might have been authored. So, we're probably going to see something like this: -tool that rips the movie to HDD and if DVD-5, burns it back to DVD-R (as in DVD Decrypter, which is free) -if movie is DVD-9, it re-encodes the movie weakening the picture quality to fit it on one DVD-R (as in REMpeg2, TMPGEnc and CCE methods.. just wondering whose MPEG-2 encoder they're going to rip off if they use this method) -if movie is DVD-9, it would ask the splitting point, showing IFO information that 99.9999% of the users don't understand and asking to select splitting point and would use two DVD-Rs (as in common IFOEdit method) Ah well, we'll see.

One-click (or 2 or 3 ...) dvd backing-up doesn't seem technically possible despite their positive assurances to the contrary. Those who have been laboriuosly encoding/ripping/burning video for years (us)pretty well know it's impossible. They make a pretty big deal about warning us of copyright infringement (and well they should with a pending lawsuit staring at them), so I don't know if they'll 'let' us remove the FBI warnings or not, but did you also notice? In order to help protect themselves, their software will also be inserting an additional _mandatory_ warning even in *front* of the usual FBI one! (Non-defeatable, I would assume; oh joy). So CSS will be in full use. They won't be trying to defeat or remove it. For those of us who probably know better, they really really really need to provide a lot more product info than they do. A detailed FAQ is not something they offer. They don't have to give any trade (software) secrets away, but if their package is to gain any legitamacy or trust among knowledgeable users, they really need to explain HOW their software works. What is does, and how it does it. (Too much to ask, I know). I wouldn't buy it today, that's for sure. They *say* they're working on a demo version. *That'll* be a telling story. -- Mike --

Your skepticism is understandable. However… DVDXCOPY DOES work! DVDXCOPY DOES NOT include any freeware or shareware and is completely proprietary and is the result of 8 months of intensive, internal development DVDXCOPY will be available for download on or before Oct 28, 2002 DVDXCOPY will be available in a demo/time limited format which will burn 15 minutes of video and audio. You will need to use a DVD/RW so as not to end up with a DVD/R coaster for the demo DVDXCOPY DOES NOT use DeCSS DVDXCOPY DOES NOT re-encode or compress video in any way DVDXCOPY technology IS patentable and is currently underway THIS HASN'T BEEN EASY, but the results are unbelievable and well worth it! DVDXCOPY WILL be available in retail in November. Retail orders have already been received that will ship by the end of October, 2002. Burning DVD to DVDR has been simple, but restructuring Video pointers in IFO and VOB files has not. Proper splitting and common sense behavior have proven to be a most difficult undertaking and are at the core technology of our product New legislation that would completely eliminate all cloud of illegality has been introduced within the last 3 days by Congressman Rick Boucher. Read all about it at http://www.house.gov/boucher/internet.htm This is the DMCRA (Digital Millennium Consumer Rights Act) of which we are a staunch supporter and have been in contact with the Congressmen’s office before this bill was introduced. Any one of you that post here can receive a FREE PRE-RELEASE BETA by emailing me at Robert@321studios.com This will be available around Oct 16th. Also, email me with any more questions and I’ll be glad to answer them. Although, DvdCopyPlus has been very popular, I’ve never been completely satisfied with the end product. But…DVDXCOPY delivers on every level. Cheers!

Also, I must point out the three technology initiatives we incorporate to discourage piracy and encourage fair use only. These are not unbreakable (neither is CSS) but to the extent that we are trying to reach a fair compromise and a sense of balance with the copyright laws, DVDXCOPY will include the following three anti-piracy measures: 1. Disclaimer in front of FBI warning indicating this is a backup/archival copy and is not to be sold or redistributed 2. Anti-copying technology using our software that will prevent a copy of a copy 3. Electronic watermark embedded in video stream. As long as the product is used for its intended purpose there will be no knowledge gained of legitimate copying. However, if a video stream is released into piracy mainstreams, the license of the DVDXCOPY product can be determined from this watermark and potentially, the original infringer could be identified. At the very least, the license will be deactivated for the DVDXCOPY product which will disable the product. Again, these measures are not hack-proof, but neither is a door lock. It is important though to demonstrate to the community at large that we are willing to be reasonable so long as fair use is acknowledged and protected. Cheers!

CORRECTION: Pursuant to my first post, I mistyped and wrote Digital Millenium Consumer Rights Act, when in fact, it is the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act (DMCRA).

Thank you very much for correcting my misbeliefs with facts. =) I tried gathering facts before posting the news article, but had to rely on our old news item for reference because I was unable to access your site (or any other site for that matter) at the time of posting. I'm very exited about the software, as is everyone here at AfterDawn.com, I'm sure! Let's hope all goes well, and that you'll be able to release the software without delays and problems.

Robert, I'd just to add, *thank you* for responding to my questions and skepticisms. Many people's assumptions, whether right or wrong, are often based on lack of information, which is not necessarily their fault when little or no information is available. I tend to be a little cynical when given so many wonderful claims -- one sees that every day, everywhere; when it comes to new software, we're *bombarded* with it. You've given more detailed, important, necessary, (and positive!) information in your answers above, than in toto on your own website. I'm impressed with your answers too. I don't yet have a dvd burner, but it is this kind of software, carefully explained, that will probably convince me to get one sooner rather than later. For now, I will 'sit on the fence' a bit and see how other users fare with your software package. I *do* wish you resounding success! Thanks too, for choosing A/D to help us sort it all out. According to Petteri/dRD (webmaster), this site is getting something like 1,000,000 hits+ per month, and you can just bet, a lot of those visitors are burning dvds these days. If your package can help simplify the enormous complexity of this task, and give good results, you deserve to WIN. I'll be able to ask more informed questions after I get my burner. Best Regards, Mike Bennett

Thanks Mike! Appreciate your confidence, even if you are still sitting on the fence. :) Email me and I'll add you to the list for the beta version, so you can have it to play with even if you just get a burner for 14 days from Best Buy! ;) Just so you know, your beta version will be upgradeable to a full featured version at no cost when it is released. And as an added thank you for helping us test this product, we'll send you five, usable once, activation codes to give to your friends so they can have a free copy when it is finally released too. Cheers!

Private message just sent, Robert. I hope it goes through, because my regular, normal emails are a bit screwed up these days. (Explained in message). Thanks, -- Klingy --

I'm receiving a lot of requests for the BETA. Unfortunately, due to spam problems with our affiliates, some of our email is blocked. We are working to resolve this problem. If you have requested a BETA and have NOT received a response from me, try sending your request from a HotMail account and I will respond. Unless I can send you an email without it bouncing back as undelivered, I cannot add you to the list. Cheers!

I have tried the original 321 software and liked it although it was a little hard to use. I look forward trying the beta. As far as the watermarking... I dont have a problem with that and I dont think the As for the new legistation I have ties with some of the Reps. from my state and will be calling them to gain their support for the bill. I wish your company the best of luck in court! Thank God someone will stand up to our these big companies buying and selling our rights!!!!

Robert, what I meant to say, was that I sent a private message to you via _this_forum. (There is a send_private_message link under your user-name). I don't know whether this means that you will receive an email directly, in the usual fashion, or that the message is only available to you via this website. (???) Anyway, did you receive private message? Thanks, Mike.

To clarify a little bit, we had some problems with replying to private messages yesterday, about 10 users were trying to reply to their PMs during this time until we found the bug and fixed it. But yes, the private message sends a reminder to the receiver to visit the specific URL to check his/her private message inbox at our site. Should work as long as the user's email address is valid (but then again, you can't register your account if it's not valid).

It seems to be working ok now. I have sent and received PMs, and just now received notice of same in my (usual) email inbox. :) -- Mike --

Robert, if your offer still stands, I would also love to be a "beta tester" for your software as I myself have been sitting on that fence.. if your software proves to be as good as you claim, and with your confidence it seems to be so, I may just keep that DVD burner longer than 14 days !!! Cheers! ;-)

Once again 321 Studios has devloped crap software. DO NOT BUY THIS ! IT DOES NOT WORK ! They call themselves Pilgrims of Free Speech but are ruthless criminals. I bought DVD X COPY and it did not do anything on 3 different computer systems. DO NOT DO NOT BY another one of their crap software!

I don't know where this last post came from, but since we haven't even shipped the beta yet, let alone the full version, I have to say this person has no idea what he is talking about. We are accepting PRE-ORDERS on our website at a substantial discount, but will not release it to the public till October 28, 2002. So I assume this is a rogue post. We'll let our software do the talking! Cheers!

rhmoore: True, accusations of software's capabilities that isn't even launched yet, are kinda pointless. But you must admit that your previous software (and to add the pain of our inboxes, about 3 gazillion other similiar packages from other vendors) have created a _REALLY_ bad image for commercial DVD ripping packages by ripping off freeware software authors and such. I'm anyway optimist and specially since you decided to comment and clarify things up, it has put some confidence, at least in my eyes, back to your company and I'm anxiously waiting to see your upcoming product in near future. One thing what I seriously recommend to you in future is that you cut all the dirty details that surround the commercial DVD ripping scene on your part. Few steps to achieve this: -get rid of your in-house-run affiliate program and use reputable affiliate manager, such as CJ -- I know they cost $$, but they give you much more credibility AND most importantly they will boot automatically all a**holes who promote affiliate links by spamming and other illegal/semi-illegal means. -use clear website, get rid of all "porn-y" flashy animation crap, too annoying popups, excess advertisement wording (if I visit a site that sells something and uses those hyper-annoying chicks showing software discs and use wording familiar from day-time 1-800-CHEAP-LAWYER advertisements, I leave the site. immediately.), setup a GOOD and FAST customer service, setup a well-moderated discussion forum to help people with your software, show your company's exact contact details clearly on your site and tell people what EXACTLY the software DOES and HOW it does it AND what user needs and can do with the resulting copy. Clearly. ...just some basic stuff I've learned by working _way_ too many years in this biz. Credibility is damn easy to lose, but takes years to get it back.

dRD: Thanks for the confidence and insight. After reading your two suggestions, I have to make a few things clear. #1: There are plenty of scam outfits that have tried to mimic our success, and to the extent you mention "porn-y" flashy animation crap and scantily clad women advertising in this space, I know to whom you refer, and it is not us. The only URL's we have ever offered our product is 321studio.com, 321studios.com, copymydvd.com and copysuite.com. All other URL's known or unknown to us do not represent us, even if they appear to look like us. They are cheap rip-offs and imitations. #2: With respect to affiliates: Our affiliate base has been whittled back from 15,000 to around 600 primarily because of affiliate spam. We continue to take action against those who spam our product, but it has been a tough road. It seems for everyone we find and terminate there are two more to take their place. But we keep persevering. Also, we have had many others fraud spam our web site in an attempt to take us down and make us look bad. It's exasperating to have to defend yourself for something you had no part in, but it seems to be par for the course and in some measure, the price of our success. Anyway, we've looked into CJ and though they are more expensive, we would gladly use them if we were assured that they handled the spam problem better than we could. So far, we remain unconvinced, but on your advice, we'll look into them again. Also, our contact page contains, and has always contained, our address, phone number and fax number. We answer our phones live in tech support, provide online support and maintain an online knowledge base for our customers. That is probably why our return rate is less than 3% on average. We stand behind our product with solid customer service and technical support. Thanks for your insightful comments. Cheers!

Drd and everyone else. This site is really great and I'm glad there's something like this out here. You guys have made my education at backing up relatively headache free(except 1st few days). I've learned a lot since getting my burner, and keep learning everyday. I was VERY skeptical about the software, via the post in the message board, but reading this board I'm a lit'l bit more relaxed. Robert, your candid responses and willingness to 'prove' your product has eased some of my doubts. I'm interested in trying out the software myself since anything is easier than the current way of making backup's. Needless to say I've been unsuccessful in getting any DVD9's working using the split process with anything I do, so I'm willing to try 'almost' anything at this point to put my $1100 investment to use. But spending more $$$ and getting ripped off wouldn't be cool either. Anyway, at work and I'm rambling, but I look forward to trying it out, you'll get an email from me too! I have several friends and co-workers waiting on my success b4 they go out and get a burner, but I'm still a 'newbie' at all of this. If anybody can take a look at my playback issues thread and offer any insight I'd appreciate it *smile*

Robert, If your company has created software to address these sometimes complex and sometimes mundane processes, all I can say it "Hat's off" to the 321Studio.Com Team. Good Luck!

We can all try the beta when it arrives, and make a more informed judgement then. Frankly, I *like* the idea of not having to sit through h-o-u-r-s of compressing/encoding. -- Mike --

Robert, can't get thru to your email account but I'll keep trying. What does your software do about backup's that are bigger than 4.36G?

Phil: the 4.36GB+ issue was adressed above. Robert: Thanks for the response, again. I'm glad that you guys have a healthy attitude towards marketing, since "this business" -- DVD ripping, whether commercial or publishing -- is full of controversial stuff and as a whole can be compared to "penis enlargement" industry by its advertisement methods, websites and overall sleaziness of the public image. This can be easily noticed by observing DVD ripping sites over past 2-3 years -- only four of us, "big ones", were left at the end, even though many, many smaller ones tried to squeeze in with various tactics, ad campaigns, flashy sites and such. Only honest and clean approach towards users has paid off -- ddigest, afterdawn, vcdhelp and doom9 are left and pretty much cover 95% of the English-speaking genre, all of which have objected intrusion of porn advertisements, excessive popup bombarding, spamming and other similiar means. I hope that in future you can distinguish your product from scam artists and that there will be healthy software industry with two-three major players left at the end, to keep the competition and innovation running -- and obviously your biggest challenge is from free software advocates who originally "launched" the whole phenomenom. But as always, I also believe that there's room for commercial software approach as well. Anyway, all the best and we will definately run couple of in-depth test runs with your software once you guys get it ready :-)

Robert, Count me in on the BETA. I shot you an email.

I found the 321 studio very complex and did not always do what it should.I went to nero and it has not failed me yet.Is the new 321 as easy to use?

If 321 Studios DVDXcopy lives up to all the hype then it will be a godsend as I have had a few of my dvd's ruined by my 5 yr old grandson. My fault of course for leaving them where he could reach them. The only problem with forking over $80.00 is there is no demo available right now and who knows if the government will stop the sale of this software. People may have a hard time getting their hard earned money back. My 2cents worth.

mechanic: Be sure to send 321.com (or Robert Moore, right here in this forum with the link under his name), an email requesting the beta which I think you will be able to d/l some time next week. I am getting very good vibes about this thing. It's automatic. *WAY* automatic. Not quite the same thing as 'one-touch' vhs vcr tape recording perhaps, but damned close. Much closer, perhaps, than we've ever seen before. In return for the advance beta, I think we should all try to help out in attempting to uncover bugs, or at least reporting our findings, either good or bad. Finding a bad thing is a *good* thing, because it means that the bug has been identified and can be eliminated. The beta is not the end-all program it's going to be. We can all help to make it better. Particularly, I'd be interested in seeing reports of any dvds whose menu structure causes problems. That is, specific dvd titles which "fooled" the beta and created a bad or faulty menu. The beta will be attempting to include all menu options incorporated into the original dvd, which frankly, is a courageous and up until now, 'never-before-done' kind of thing. I suggest we keep a list of dvds whose menus managed to defy the beta (if *any*), and if I can find a local copy of that title, I'll try it out as well. I think this software is going to generate *huge* threads in here. As I say, although still too early to tell, I *am* getting very good vibes about this thing. If it works, I urge everyone to visit 321.com and check out the petition found there. (Fact is, even if it *doesn't, that petition makes a hell of a lot of sense). Enough for now. Get your hands on the beta. -- Mike --

Oops! I *meant* to say: www.321Studios.com , <not 321.com? -- Me --

I think we should probably now cool down the beta requests for 321studios -- they wont be happy to receive 15,000 guys asking for beta ;-)

Thanks dRD: We already have a huge number of beta requests from this forum alone. We'll continue to honor beta requests until Midnight CST tonight. Cheers!

Robert, 1 question. Is DVDXCOPY going to be compatible with DVD-RAM also? Thx

gmn17: You should know by now that even if you COULD backup your movies to DVD-RAM, there isn't even a single DVD player, AFAIK, in the world that plays DVD-RAM discs.

http://www.epinions.com/Panasonic_DMR_E20_Backward_Compatible_DVD_Video_Recorder__Component_DVD_Player_DMRE20 Isn't there? ;)

*Bows and takes the hit* Ok, convinced. There is this 0.01% of players that do support DVD-RAM. But I'm convinced that it is one of those formats that will very, very soon become just another glossary entry that people who are history freaks, find amusing :-)

Just as I've proven you wrong on the previous point, I can do the same again. This is a question of technology superiority but also numbers. Matsushita, Toshiba and Hitachi all produce DVD-RAM drives and there are technological reasons for DVD-RAM being superior to other rewritable formats, such as 100,000 times rewritability vs 1,000 on other formats and low seek times. You can read this at vcdhelp.com and other good sites. If only more people would read up before making a decision and not make assumptions like you did. Cheers

Right now, we have no plans to support DVDRAM. Like dRD, I believed there were no players on the market that would support the DVD File Structure in this format. For the time being, we only plan to support +/- R(W). Cheers!

BetaMax was superior to VHS, Amiga was far superior to Wintel-PC, miniDisc is superior to C-cassettes, etc.. Economics, simple economics. I know DVD-RAM's good sides -- it's kinda my job to know those -- and I know that its foremost purpose is to serve as a seriously big floppy, not as a replacement for CDs or for DVD-Video backups. But as its discs cost far more than any other recordable DVD format, its discs can be read (virtually) only with other DVD-RAM drives, you can't backup DVD-Videos and throw the discs into regular, "everybody has three of these" DVD player and not even DVD-ROM drive, my personal opinion is that the format is doomed. I don't seriously care -- and I'm fairly convinced that no one else cares either -- if I can re-record the data 100k times. Blank DVD-R costs £0.40 ($0.60) and is dropping to much lower than that and DVD-RW is going to same way, I can hardly see the reason why this creates ANY cost effectiveness for DVD-RAM. But this ranting doesn't really belong to this thread anyway :-)

A_Klingon...are you planning on using this forum to post bugs and problems w. this new software..or will there be another section on the www site for this... I do agree it would nice if we help them along and try to find the bugs...please post a response in the newsgroup

rhmoore: All the best for DVDXCOPY, as a Customer in the UK (have pre-ordered) and already paid for DVDXCOPY, just cannot wait to get my mitts, (slang for hands) on it. If you require Beta testers in the UK, Just let us know, roll on the 28th.....

hula73: No, I don't imagine I'll have to initiate any new beta threads. Everybody will want to comment in the appropriate place(s). For now, we're just here because the beta hasn't rolled around yet. I suggest we use the DVD sections of the forum. Or dRD can open up a new section at his discretion. I just want the final (first stable) release to be as bug-free as possible. Keeping a list of dvds (any Region code) whose menus the beta 'couldn't figure out' might be a good place to start. It's possible we won't find any. Actually, I've thought a lot about this software and have a_lot of question to ask, but it might be more appropriate if I/we wait. I just picked up a couple of Hewlett Packard DVD+RW discs - with local taxes, $14.97 Canadian *each*. Absolutely *ridiculous*! Even the DVD-RWs were $11.50. Kinda takes a lot of the fun out of making your own backups, huh? Especially if you have to use two of them for a single movie. I wish I could have found a double-sided one (they exist in the DVD+R/W format), but I bet, even if you could find one, it would be as expensive as two single-sided discs. (I'll have to look around). Eventually, the prices will drop, as will the price of the burners. These were the *only* two blank DVD offerings in the entire store. The DVD+RWs were, as I say, HP. The DVD-RWs were Verbatums. There were NO write-once DVDs at all, and everything else were just recordable CDs. (And this is supposed to be a high-tech store!) And only two burners too! The DVD-R/W = $599 + taxes; the DVD+R/W = $699 + taxes. Evil, evil...... -- Klingy --

We've made special arrangements with Tritton Technologies to offer DVD +R Burners at a discount from retail. $299 for internal (retails for $399 in Office Depot and $399 for external (retails for $549 in Office Depot). Also, they will supply our cusomers with media at 50% retail discount. So a DVD+R is 3.00 US each and DVD+RW is 4.00 each. This special pricing was arranged in exchange for an OEM deal with Tritton for our current product and DVDXCOPY, so they are basically pass-through costs. Cheers!

What a weird and sometimes whacky place this Internet is. With nothing substancially better to do, (I just got off work), I did a rough 'n ready Google web search for "dvdxcopy". What turns up? "Posted......Message A_Klingon, Senior Member, .....AfterDawn Forums, etc. etc. Geeze.....of pages and pages and pages of references, *this* is the first google entry that showed up. Cool! - mgb -

DVD X COPY and Sony's newest DVD burner would make an awsome bundle. Check this out! http://www.sonystyle.com/home/item.jsp?hierc=9683x9714x9715&catid=9715&itemid=50044&type=o

*violation-of-afterdawn's-rules--removed-the-msg-and-the-user*

Bang. One user managed to get his account deactivated and banned.

OMG where did this guy come from...Nice...hey Jimmie Dean Sausuage...isn't everything in Kazaa track in a log via Ip address...hmmm...nice trail ur leaving...oh well...

Well, today is the "big" day...beta release day! Anyone heard anything? regards

I see a couple of posts which reference dvd's larger than 4.3GB but have not seen one that actually answers the questions. One post says that the size issue has been dealt with in an earlier post from rhmoore, and another prophesizing about the way dvd's that are larger than 4.3GB are going to be handled. Can anyone say how this is handled within the software, is it compression (again there was an artical that said the software uses a bit by bit copy so I rule that one out),or is it going to be split onto 2 pieces of DVDR media. I presume that is the way this new software is going to handle the task. Also are there any hardware restrictions on PC requirements or DVD burners that are going to be supported? I think there are a lot of questions that remain to be answered, and as they say the proof will be in the pudding!! If the software professes to do what it says on the box then I take my hat off to the developers as I am fairly new to this game and have spent weeks getting to grips with working methods. I know there will be a lot of interest and a lot of very happy people if this product turns out to be as good as the developers say it is. On the other hand there is a lot of interest and if the product turns out to be a toatl waste of time the developers will find them selves down the swannie without a paddle.

DVDXCOPY Beta will be available sometime this week. I never promised it would be available on the 14th. We're shooting for Wed morning release which is the 16th. It's important to me to have it out and in your hands by this weekend. Bear with us, we're working as fast as we can. Also, I have still been accepting beta requests up till this morning. However, I can no longer honor any more requests. We simply have too many at this point. Cheers!

ATTN RHMOORE and 321studio team. A thousand pardons. The week of October 14th. I stand corrected and extend sincere apology. Well just one more mistake I've made! That's it, I'm gonna quit making mistakes and become perfect...lol. "Oh Lord, it's so hard to be humble when I'm perfect in everyway!" Cheers back to ya !

Those who have dvd-changers at home will be very lucky for those times when it requires 2 blanks for a single, long movie. After the initial disclaimer screen, the second (or even third?) disc will not enter it's menu right away, but pick up directly *with* the movie. This helps to minimize the irritation at the changeover point. The menu will, of course, be available via the remote for those options which appeared but weren't burned on the first disc. So even if I *could* find a decently-priced source of double-sided discs, it might be better to use separate ones after all. I do have some questions though... (sorry, I just can't wait for Oct. 16 or thereabouts to ask) - will the software itself be determining the break-point of longer movies? Or will the break-point be user-selectable? When making videocds, I always manually choose that point. I always seek to make it at a place where there is little or no action taking place, and very quiet. *Then*, I will usually 'recap' a bit - that is - I always make a gentle overlap of perhaps, 5 to 10 seconds or so. It could be very tricky if the software chooses the break point - it could be at a very inappropriate place. (Middle of an action scene, or cutting someone off in mid-sentence). Also, it would be nice if the software would flat-out refuse to process all dvds with weak, stupid plots and really crummy acting - you know - the kind of land-fill which Hollywood hypes to the sky and then jams by the truckload into your favourite rental or retail store, only to junk the title a month later to make room for the next "must-have-can't-live-without" title. (Yes, that last bit was just a joke); I'm just trying to allieviate my impatience as we wait for the beta! (But it's true, too.) I bet you can't remember 5 of the core, absolutely "necessary" titles of the last year or so. I can't. They dissappear as fast as they show up. Pure trash. And the ability to eliminate the really annoying, superflous, weak, crappy extra stuff which appears more and more often these days -- will be a definate plus point, even if you *have* the room to fit them all on one disc. Another question: In the final version(s) to come, can *some* extra material be retained? (Rather than a total *inclusion* of all extras, or a total *elimination* of all extra stuff). If the extras are individually and selectively delete-able, how will this effect the look of the menu? I may, for example, tire of the 6 billion pieces of extras nonsense included on the "Shrek" dvd. Will those 'links' still be showing up on the menu (even though non-selectable)? I would imagine - just guessing - that those options *would* appear, but just not be selectable. Being a minimalist in nature I will be looking forward to a version of the program that allows zapping of ALL extra stuff. Fact is, I don't even really require a menu. Some carefully chosen extras ARE certainly worth keeping, but I'd rather burn them to a separate disc anyway. (But that's just me). Any thoughts? -- Klingy --

"off-topic" Hi, A_Klingon, how you can wrote so long messages? :)

A_Klingon, I am with you.....I mainly would just like something to burn *JUST* the movie onto DVD with one mouse click leaving all the extra junk (I dont ever watch) off. Guess I am just a simple man MMhmmm <Sling Blade>

Hi jake !! I was wondering what had happened to you! (Jake is an a/D member from the Finnish Forums). Well, yes, I tend to wander off a bit when I'm really interested in something, and I am *very* interested with this upcoming beta. So maybe, rather than just being 'off topic', these posts are more like, ....ummm....'topic-related'. How do *you* feel about this new software, jake? -- Mike --

A_Klingon, I didn´t mean that you post is off-topic it was me who wrote off-topic :) Are you sure DVDXCOPY is good? I think DVD2SVCD&CCE is best, 4-pass encoding. Or what you think? And don´t f*ck, if I write something wrong I´m Fin guy :)

ABCMan; Yep, after all, it's the *movie* that takes center stage. <pun intended> Bonus materials are nice, but I can only handle "the making of the making-of-portion of the movie" so many times. Now that I'm back here, I have even *more* questions! Will we be able to pull off *just* certain bonus materials to a separate disc, and leave the movie itself for a separate dvd? (In other words, will it be possible to outright leave the movie behind for later burning to another disc?) Also, to save needed space, will we be able to choose which audio soundtrack(s) we want? I can't understand French, Spanish or German for example, but if left on the disc, these sountracks can eat up a LOT of real estate. Also, we probably won't need *both* the English Dolby-2 pro-logic soundtrack along with the AC3 5.1 Dolby surround. Can we nuke one or the other? Also..... (you got me going now).... :-) .... what about these FULL, movie-feature-length director's and actors/actresses comments? (Commentary tracks that expand the *entire length of the movie.) Are *these* nukeable? There's a screenshot of the software in action on one of the 321Studios.com website pages, which shows certain portions of the dvd being selected, but I require (would like) more information. Also, since we're not dealing with any pesky re-encoding or video compression, is it safe to assume that all our previous audio/video sync problems will now vanish? (I sure *hope* so!) Also........ <nah>, I'll wait a bit. :-) C'MON OCTOBER 16TH !!!!! -- Klingy --

Hi again Jake. I don't know how good DVDXCOPY is, that's what we're trying to decide here. It just *may* turn out to be revolutionary. (There is no video compression involved, saving SCADS of time and preservng *maximum* quality). Read the comments w-a-a-y up above from RHMoore; he explains it better than I can. We are just waiting now for the beta release, Jake. (Your English is fine) :-) - Klingy --

The beta features will NOT include some of the requested features in this forum. What we are trying to accomplish with this version is a simple (from user perspective) application that will automatically and intelligently split a DVD9 (or not if unnecessary) and burn to one or two DVD R(W)'s. This has been a most comprehensive undertaking, and in fact, paves the way to future versions which will include a lot of the neat features discussed here. Things NOT to look for in the beta (or initial release for that matter) Strip out extranneous material (i.e. advertisements, bonus features, trailers, additional audio tracks, etc.) User selectable split if DVD9. However, DVDXCOPY attempts to split the DVD at an appropriate point. Much of this functionality will be tested in beta by testers like you who will initially burn many different titles. All those we have tested, split at an appropriate place, but that is not to say a DVD9 won't be split in the middle of a fight scene or a car chase scene. These desired features will be added in future releases. We're just wanting the main functionality working and proven in beta and first release. Cheers!

"My English is fine", I don´t think so :) But ifoedit is best, when I learn that. No compression. All shit in recycle bin what found in DVD..

RHMOORE, This may be a dumb question, but uhhh if you are going to release your BETA version to those of us who have contacted you and we are testing it for bugs, how can we test 15mins of the movie? I think I read somewhere in one of your earlier posts that the version your going to send us is fully functional and will play the first 15mins of the movie......how are we going to know if the DVD9 split works? Did I miss something???

I agree. That's a good question. I think it's fair to assume that the beta won't be so restricted. We could hardly test the beta in any meaningful way if it *was* restricted to only 15 mins playback time. Very little would be accomplished that way. The reference mentioned above was for a "demo" version, which I hope is not the same thing as 'beta'. I don't think I'd be willing to commit 2 (presently pricey) dvds just *automatically* every time I wanted to do a backup, until I could clearly see where the breakup point would be occurring ahead of time. I suppose that's why we'll be testing with rewriteable discs first. And another point about all this 'extra' bonus tracks stuff: The screen shot provided on the 321studios.com page may be a little optimistic at this point. In the screen shot it shows three titles. (TITLE1, TITLE2, TITLE3) - of which Title 1 has been selected. There is also a 'preview' button for viewing that particular title. Is not the purpose of this to determine IF we wish to include that particular portion? All of this would tell me that the various portions of the dvd *are* selectable (and viewable) ahead of time. So I can only guess, that that particular screen shot would only be valid for *future* post-beta versions of the software. -- Just a quick observation -- -- Klingy --

Sorry for the confusion. The beta version will be "fully" (did you see the wink) functional. There will be no limitation on the beta in terms of time limitation. The demo (time limited version) will be a marketing tool to push the product on download.com and tucows and other download sites. As far as the screen shot goes of the software, that is it! Crossing my fingers for tomorrow! Cheers!

I can't wait to see if this works....the 16th...almost here...

Ouuuu..we've got the *good* one, guys, THE BETA. ;-) October 15th, 5:32 pm Atlantic Time and counting...... 6 hours & 29 mins., 28 mins, 27 mins...... "All systems are GO Houston, we have the green light." "Clear the Pad, People, all systems are committing to final launch!" (I'm *tho* dramatic). :) _A_Thilly_Klingon_

Probably won't release the beta that quick. Silly Klingon :) Look for my post and emails tomorrow around this same time. We're *hoping* to get it out tomorrow, but geez, don't have a heart attack if it gets delayed by a day. I think we'll be fine for tomorrow though. Although, I would expect a newer version of the beta to ship by weeks end as well. In other words, expect problems with the first beta. If you don't have any, then you'll be pleasantly surprised. OK? Cheers!

Geez guys, seriously. No one but 321S has any idea if this tool can somehow perform better than IFOEdit and you guys are already planning a rebellion if the beta doesn't arrive on time. I suspect that it will give various good aspects and relative easiness to the DVD-9 splitting to two DVD-Rs, but wont surpass IFOEdit in usability for some time -- who knows, maybe ever, but will be the first one to do it commercially and will probably ease things for total newbies. So, lean back, relax, don't panic and wait for the official release, read couple of reviews, wait them to fix the most obvious bugs and look again when the tool gets into version 1.2 and make up your mind by then. I respect 321S's attitude and the fact that they're willing to contribute towards the conversation over their not-yet-released-software's abilities. And as a marketing move and such, it works pretty damn nicely as well :-)

But ifoedit is *so* scary to look at! I viewed a couple screens'-worth of it over at doomy's, and I thought I'd just seen a ghost. Althought I haven't *quite* got the burner yet (few more days; fingers crossed), I did, nonetheless, look at your dvd to dvdr article for the first time; borrowed a single-sided disc from the Library; downloaded DVD Decrypter; and made an iso disc image. One nice thing from what I can understand, is that DVD-Decrypter also acts as a burner -- so will be interested in seeing how the disc image turns out in comparison to the beta for the same dvd. (Should I really get a (reasonably-accurate) playable dvd from the iso?). Your guides have never steered me wrong. Of course, DVD-9 is a *whole* 'nother can of worms, and will be an "acid test" all by itself. (And yes, all my kidding aside, I would have gladly waited for a beta-2 if it were more appropriate). Wishing all-the-best for 321Studios !! -- Mike --

As a complete novice to the art of backing up even my own PC. I am very scepticle of the claims of this software. Count me in on the BETA version. I sent you an email.

Beta news to follow in about an hour. Keep your fingers crossed. :)

Engineers say they need another 24 hours. :( Will post back tomorrow.

Yeah, I want that beta too. imho, once a scam artist always a scam artist, but hey, some alcoholics have quit drinking, so maybe.....

It's the calm before the the storm.....

Any updates?

DVD2SVCD After a 30 year relationship, I put the smokes down 29 months ago. It's possible!

Quote: DVDXCOPY DOES NOT use DeCSS Ok, so what does it use then?! When you read the disc, surely you strip out the CSS - dont you? The whole thing is kind of pointless otherwise.

As I've been following the developments here at 321Studios of the DVDXCOPY product, I thought inquiring minds might want to get the skinny on the latest: I'm Bruno, Creative Director at 321Studios and have been working in conjunction with our developers in preparing for XCOPY's Beta Release 1. We are working out last minute bugs that our team feels are necessary to extinguish before releasing *anything*. I realize RHMOORE may have posted an earlier release date, but the technical details are ultimately left up to us to fix. As many of you probably know, things come up that prevent you from meeting specific deadlines. For example, yesterday we were battling a driver issue that squeezed 4 hours out of our day. It's impossible to calculate in those sort of problems, and our beta release is delayed yet another day. Ok, the good news is I think everyone is going to be really happy with XCOPY. Our team has poured blood sweat and tears in to this project, and have been whipped in the process. Just kidding. Today I was burning ZOOLANDER (not the greatest movie) to a Memorex DVD+RW disc with a Ricoh RW5125 on Windows XP. I think one of the most impressive aspects of XCOPY is how incredibly easy it is to use. You push over TITLES with a single click and hit a big COPY NOW button. For extremely novice users we've built-in a Tutorial for those that like things explained before doing anything. For most of you, I doubt you'll even glance at it. It was exciting to see some of our first DVD movies come through in perfect quality. Since so many of you are anxiously awaiting your beta copy, we want to meet your expectations with a release that FEELS like a beta, and not an alpha. Below is a link to a couple screenshots of the software I took today. Hopefully that will fill your imaginations a little before we wait yet another day to release it to you. Thanks to all of our future beta testers in advance. Trust me, you won't be disappointed. Main Screen - http://www.321studios.com/beta-shots/screens.01.gif DVD Image Building Screen - http://www.321studios.com/beta-shots/screens.02.gif Burning to DVD R(W) Screen - http://www.321studios.com/beta-shots/screens.03.gif ~Bruno

I was unable to post this afternoon, due to a previous engagement so I asked our creative director to keep you posted. I see that he did. I apologize to you all for the delay. I was sincerely hoping that we could have the beta out today. But it was not to be. We incorporated some new technology to increase performance and that has apparently broken the burning process. Everything works now as expected with this one exception. The engineers tell me this should be fixed by tomorrow. As with any development, milestones can be difficult to achieve on time, and apparently this is no exception. But once again, I can tell you, the wait will be worth it. I know many of you are waiting anxiously for this release, and I assure you we will release the beta just as soon as this last issue is cleared up. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and a few other things besides ;) Cheers!

Warning to everybody. DO NOT PRE-PAY THESE GUYS. Don't pay them a daim before you get word from the Beta Testers. Thess posts "Beta not to day sorry, maybe tomorrow" can continue forever. I don't say they haven't anything I just say keep your money until you're sure you get your values worth. And in reference to LIGHT_UK's inquiry. I too would like how you circumvent CSS, I mean, you put stuff of your own into the video stream like watermarks and warnings. Sorry, but this it smells bad.

dvd2svcd; Patience is a virtue. What are *you* or anyone else _paying_ out for this beta? It's free. Bottom line. If it doesn't work, you're not out a dime. If they release a crummy beta because gents like yourself have their knicker's all in-a-twist, then you really *might* have something to bitch about. And I'm sure, if the beta doesn't meet general expectations, we will hear about it soon enough without your help. *Encourage* this thing, don't diss it just because it hasn't arrived in a timely manner. Sure, I have *lots* of questions too! 321Bruno: Thanks for popping in. My hopes for your project continue to soar high. I appreciate the screen shots. I just got hold of my first-ever dvd burner yesterday, and am eagerly looking forward to using the beta with it. Nothing like this comes either easily or quickly. -- You're doing fine. -- -- Mike --

As I always try to sit on a fence and observe things neutrally, I must say that I agree with both parties in here. Obviously I know that two of the critics in this thread are _highly_ appreciated members of ripping community and I agree with their point of view. Seeing other developers to be ripped off in the past by various companies, you can't expect anything good to come out from a company who has involved in such scam. But I also agree with dvd2svcd's comment about the fact that it IS possible still that some of the companies clean up their act and release something truly on their own that offers an easy-to-use solution for average users. To be serious, DVDXCopy wont ever -- if I've understood the concept correctly -- replace IFOEdit and similiar tools, since they offer much wider range of options that you can do. But if something like the DVDXCopy that we haven't actually tested yet, but just heard the specs and seen few screenshots, can offer something that average users can use with IQ below 148, then good. Then company actually has a product that's worth to mention -- not necessary to recommend for everybody, but to mention anyway. And if so, I respect the company, playing in a pretty damn big sandbox where 99.99% of the available tools are free and usually open-source. I also agree several technical issues SVCD.cfm" class="forum_link" target="_blank">DVD2SVCD and lighting_uk (sorry, I know the issue with nick's length ;-) pointed out earlier -- you, 321S, might not use specifically DeCSS to extract the data, but to my mind, you have to use some other methods to strip the video from the DVD and remove the CSS, right? Even if it's not DeCSS or VOBDec. Also, the watermarking issue sounds weird, since -- as SVCD.cfm" class="forum_link" target="_blank">DVD2SVCD pointed out -- how I understand it, you need to re-encode the video in order to add anything to the actual video file. Several copyprotection schemes can be added, but technically I can't see how anything could be added to the physical video without re-encoding the video. And obviously the delays -- however necessary and urgent -- always destroy credibility. You need to be size of Microsoft so that this kind of things wont matter. My €0.02.

dvd2svcd As a person who has already pre-paid for a copy of DVDXCOPY, (and willing to do so) I eagerly await for the beta, I take people on trust, And at the end of the day, if I felt I was ripped off, then I would fight tooth and nail to get my money back, But I find that most companys I have delt with to be honest, and have never had a problem.. So I take 321 at their word, and have put my money where my mouth is... Please let it be to-day........

Hey Bruno, judging from the pics I can tell that you are pretty close to nailing this thing! The interface looks clean and easy to use. Nice work!

I think skepticism is healthy, it brings up valid points as to the "behind the scenes" functionality of the software. BTW, DVD2SVCD, thanks for creating one of the greatest software packages to date.. I have donated via paypal, and I don't do that often, I was seriously impressed. I would like to see what 321 has to say about the questions brought up, CSS and watermarking.. if they don't re-encode the video, the so called watermarking will probably turn out to be a few bytes of data, just enough to pinpoint the serial number of the person who copied the DVD in the first place.. as for CSS, either they have a breakthrough technology or they are using traditional methods, but I agree.. they have to be DeCSS somehow. I don't even have a DVD burner, so chances are I won't be much input yet, until I can afford the investment (hopefully soon).. but still my interest in this is very deep. Here's hoping 321studios has revolutionized DVD copying, and if not at least it was interesting conversation ;-)

dvd2SVCD: When did I ever ask anyone in this forum to go prepay for an order? In fact, when did I ever in this forum ask anyone to lay out one thin dime? Go back and reread the thread. You will see that I have offered a full version with 5 additional activation codes, FOR FREE, to all beta users. Anyone that is on the beta list NEED NEVER pay for XCOPY. I accepted everyone that emailed me as a beta tester, even though I clearly stated that I would accept only those who posted here. But I did it anyway until I was inundated with beta requests from this forum. And in fact, still receive beta requests after I closed the opportunity window and now have people sending me very rude email expecting to be put on the Beta list. Saying things like, ‘I think this is probably crap and another scam, but I’ll give it a fair try’. If you think you will ever be added to the beta list by saying such things, then you are as inept as you are illiterate. Then I get called a *scam artist* and compared to a recovering alcoholic? I am literally shaking my head in disbelief that some of these same people have requested a beta. I take personal exception to anyone that calls our company a *scam* outfit. We are the ONLY ones who have tried to do it right, and if you don’t believe me, do your own research. Lawman: Why did you prepay for an order? Because you found this forum AFTER you placed an order? I expect you to call customer service today and have your order cancelled if you are on the beta list. They will gladly refund your money, as they do with every other customer that has requested a refund, since we've been in business. Any one of you who has PAID for a PRE-ORDER and is now on the beta list. CANCEL YOUR ORDER. Call Customer Service and ASK FOR A REFUND. Your money will be refunded BEFORE you hang up the phone. dRD: Maybe if we WERE Microsoft, we would just turn out CRAP and let the rest of you debug it for us. Since when are delays that uncommon in development and new product releases? XCOPY DOES NOT use deCSS in the strictest sense. And our proprietary technology is just that, proprietary. You will be able to read about the technology once the patent is granted. I'm beginning to think my initial posting here might NOT have been such a good idea after all.

rhmoore: Don't get it wrong -- I agree that some of the comments have been rude and probably not good for your company's image, but as I said in way up this thread, that I and others who _RUN_ and _OWN_ this site will definately give your product a fair chance. __BUT__ you must accept the very high level of skepticism from us and our users -- like I said, I respect you guys a LOT since you are producing your own software and I'm curious to see it. But still, last two years in this business have taught the old-skool guys to be extremely skeptic about commercial entries to this arena. I still thank you for getting yourself out of the closet and posting to our forums -- obviously you couldn't predict the amount of feedback, nasty comments, praises and overall enthustiasm cause by the comments. Now, before skeptics or the anxious guys can actually say anything further other than building warzones around the opposite sides your product, we just have to sit back and wait for the beta and see how it works. And about the DeCSS -- this basically didn't refer to DeCSS itself, but I assume everybody used it as a terminology for "piece of software that strips out the CSS from DVD". And think it like that: I'm fairly certain that the amount of publicity and hype your product has gathered only by posting to this forum, is worth getting couple of rotten eggs towards your face as well. Am I right?-) Obviously, we (we as in AfterDawn) are pieces of shit for many in DVD ripping scene, since we actually try to make money -- even by selling advertisement space -- from this sector and not go with "pure, ad-free, opensource spirit". But that's life.

rhmoore, remember that you will always have obstacles in your path, and people who want to throw sticks in your spokes.. your last post is a testament to how hard you must be working these days considering how much pressure is on you and your team to complete the beta, and how much anguish about the fact that people are skeptical.. I sincerely hope that in the near future you will have no need to respond to skepticism because your software will be so damned good it will speak for itself!! but then again, I have been optomistic about your project so perhaps I am a bit biased. Those of us who have been in the computer industry for years know how things can come up during development. Your beta and eventually your final release will be your true response to anybody's comments. I must say that it will be very interesting to find out more about how you get around CSS once your patent has been released. That is a topic of conversation for another day though, for today I can't wait to see if you and your team can kick this projects ass and deliver the product so that our beta testers and critics can see first hand what you have been working so hard on.. (heh.. I said hard on) All kidding aside, best of luck!!!!

and dRD was right, I didn't mean to say that you use DeCSS, but rather some method to remove the CSS from the DVD.. again, a topic for another day after your patents are released of course!

dRD: I never posted to this forum for marketing reasons. I posted to this forum to help clear up confusion. After the beta has proven itself and the product has been released, AfterDawn may prove to be a very worthwhile marketing venue. But until then, I am putting my neck in the noose, presumably with some of the toughest critics around. If the beta doesn't perform, this forum and the product will be of no use to 321Studios and we will have lost significant credibility. However, skepticism is a word, best reserved for deliberation of a business transaction. Since I have asked for nothing in return from any of you, skepticism might be better defined in this case as extreme curiosity, especially when pondering how we might defeat CSS without using deCSS. Since blank media will not accept disc keys, this was a problem we had to face and solve right up front. We will deliver the beta. It will work or it won't, and we will let the product stand or NOT stand on its own. For those of you on the beta list, we will notify by email and then start addressing any problems. It makes very little sense to me to attack a company who is *trying* to cooperate with you, before the beta has even been released. If you want to blast and attack us after the beta has failed miserably, how could I stop you?

rhmoore Thanks, Have sent you a private email. Stand by what I said, I take people on trust..

rhmoore: Yes, I agree that your messages weren't marketing the product, but actually clearing the confusion and the original skepticism we raised in the news item. But you probably agree with me that your post has caused huge hype that has driven significant interest towards your product and if your product succeeds to deliver with the first beta versions, your online store counter can probably be used as a high-powered fan after that. And I DON'T mean that your messages have been marketing, but instead fact-feeding to the audience, but I mean by this that the whole discussion makes me seriously smile :-) Just think about it, everybody. Take off your stress for a minute and think about it.. We posted a skeptical article, the guy behind the company replies and clarifies facts. People get interested and within two weeks, the mushroom effect has caused a situation where posting 3 links to pre-beta screenshots managed to cause "This site has reached its user limit." messages appearing on 321Studios' server last night. Power of Internet is sweet :-) But obviously the fuss and hype has also raised the expectations level to so high that you really _HAVE TO_ deliver a working product, otherwise the "community" will crusify your product, probably permanently. Stakes are high, but when the stakes are high, the possible rewards are very high as well. And yes -- nailing product beforehand is premature and I hope that I personally -- or any of aD's members -- haven't given you a false image that I object or have anything against the product. Also, obviously one of the beautiful things with the Internet is this now-diminishing basic right for free speech. And I assume every soul who have participated in this discussion, must agree that in this particular case, every opinion has been allowed to go through (if not using offensive language) to allow free-flowing discussion and speculation. Peace and such for everyone. We will wait for beta and hope to release some news about the product once guys at 321Studios get something launched.

I gotta say that this statement from you: "XCOPY DOES NOT use deCSS in the strictest sense. And our proprietary technology is just that, proprietary. You will be able to read about the technology once the patent is granted." Is a load of bull, there is no such thing as "NOT use deCSS in the strictest sense" either you decrypt it or you don't! And we know what you call "proprietary technology" like you did with DVDx, that is before you change your homepage to let people know that it was infact just DVDx you used which was freely downloadable anywhere. If any of you doubt my word you can read this thread which is prior to 321studios chaning their politic about being public using DVDx: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88142&highlight=321studios And I never said you had said anything of pre-paying. I just saw on your homepage that you sold dvdxcopy cheaper when pre-ordered, and that's what I warned people about.

dvd2svcd: It is easier for some to spread wild rumors when they don't understand something, than it is to educate themselves with the truth. Gotta get back to work! Got a beta to get out...

Two set's to One RHMOORE.... 40 love final set. match point. 321 studio serve.

You obviously can't defend the program any longer and you start using stupid phrases. That's a typical reaction when asked in depth questions. Well, enough's said people can judge themselves. Lawman: I pity you.

ooooops!

Gee Thanks Pity (Pit"y) (?), n.; pl. Pities (#). [OE. pite, OF. pité, pitié, F. pitié, L. pietas piety, kindness, pity. See Pious, and cf. Piety.] 1. Piety. [Obs.] Wyclif. 2. A feeling for the sufferings or distresses of another or others; sympathy with the grief or misery of another; compassion; fellow-feeling; commiseration. "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord." Prov. xix. 17. "He . . . has no more pity in him than a dog." Shak. 3. A reason or cause of pity, grief, or regret; a thing to be regretted. "The more the pity." Shak. "What pity is it That we can die but once to serve our country!" Addison. ^ In this sense, sometimes used in the plural, especially in the colloquialism: "It is a thousand pities." Synonyms -- Compassion; mercy; commiseration; condolence; sympathy, fellow-suffering; fellow-feeling. -- Pity, Sympathy, Compassion. Sympathy is literally fellow-feeling, and therefore requiers a certain degree of equality in situation, circumstances, etc., to its fullest exercise. Compassion is deep tenderness for another under severe or inevitable misfortune. Pity regards its object not only as suffering, but weak, and hence as inferior. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pity (Pit"y) (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pitied (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Pitying.] 1. To feel pity or compassion for; to have sympathy with; to compassionate; to commiserate; to have tender feelings toward (any one), awakened by a knowledge of suffering. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Ps. ciii. 13. 2. To move to pity; -- used impersonally. [Obs.] "It pitieth them to see her in the dust." Bk. of Com. Prayer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pity (Pit"y), v. i. To be compassionate; to show pity. "I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy." Jer. xiii. 14.

I said it before, and I'll say it again.. a little skepticism is healthy. Once bitten, twice shy. I don't completely open up and trust people like I did when I was younger, this has led to me being bitten in the ass, but I will give a person a chance to prove themselves. Lawman, pity is not the word I would use for you, but I wonder if you have ever been screwed over by anyone before. I have, and I can spot a liar a mile away.. I don't mean to say that rhmoore is lying, just the opposite, I think he is telling the truth to be so bold about this in such a public forum, but again I will wait and see if his product is what he has promised. again, heres hoping that DVDXCOPY is all that it is cracked up to be, I really do want to see this thing succeed!

VCDJunkie: Yes I have been Screwed over before! And no Doubt will be again, but I stick to what I said before, most company's I have delt with are honest. And the few who tried to screw me, got a fight, and I did get a refund in the end. I will always, meet people at face Value, I will not shout Stop thief, until, the person has, stolen (or tried) to steal from me, No i do not look thru rose coloured Glasses, but at the end of the day, Criticism should be Constructive, not destructive. And what is the word you would use for me. (keep it clean)

I don't have a word for it.. perhaps several though. rhmoore already told you that since you will be beta testing the software for him that the final product will be yours for free. I can't speak for him or 321studios, but it doesn't seem like they are in this for charity, but would rather prove themselves worthy. I didn't mean to say that you look through rose colored glasses, and I think constructive criticism is great, but if I had pre-paid $100.00 for software that the president of the company openly told me to call customer service for a refund, I would have dialed those digits right then and there.. but then again, these days are not the richest of my life, and hopefully soon I will have money to throw away, but until that day I would take what I could get. To answer your question, pity is not the word I would use.. I don't *pity* you, I *envy* you. I truly wish I did have the money to donate to rhmoore and his company, because that's what it sounds like you are doing.. I would also donate money to afterdawn considering that most of the people who help everyone in the community, such as myself, do so without getting paid, because we want to give back to the community as a whole. I would like to say that I don't disagree with 321studios trying to make money in this arena, such is the way of the world, and I sincerely hope they make a lot of money in the process. enough rambling, hope you get your moneys worth!

It seems to me that although this software seems cool on the outset, who wants to change disks in middle of movie. A movie compressed to 5MB/s is very nice quality and the whole thing fits on one 4.7 DVD-R. ??

VCDJunkie: You are right! rhmoore did tell me and others to get in touch to claim a re-fund, As I had prepaid, before the offer to the beta tester's had been made, And I do not mind, admitting that I have made a request for such a refund. But for the love of me, I just cannot see, what I have done against the community, in being willing to to pre-order a piece of software, that will hopefully make the backing up of DVD's less time consuming and easier. I am capible of ripping and I do have the tools to do it, and enjoyed the challenage when I first learnt (and still learning) how to do it, but at the end of the day, we all want a piece of software that will make our lives easier, and to enforce our right to back up what we legitimatly own.. My comments on the Pity aspect, was for the reason, I do not want or require any pity, I just puzzled, how someone who does not know me, gives me pity. I am neither rich nor poor. I'm in good health, we seem to agree on hopeing 321 Studios make a lot of money out of DVDXcopy, Because that would mean it is a success. And nowhere did I suggest otherwise, Not one piece of my previous ramblings did I show any disatisfaction...... Thanks for your last comment..

zhaozlong, I would have to say that all of the millions of people who don't want to have to learn everything involved in ripping/converting/burning. I think 321studios may have found the pot of gold, many people get frustrated trying to learn how to do this.. just check out the forums at this site, you will see what I mean! for those people who just want to point and click and wait, it will apparantly take a lot less time using DVDXCOPY because there will be no converting, therefore for your average new user this software is perfect! I think the only thing left to wonder is how 321 is going to combat piracy, because I guarantee there are already people waiting to reverse engineer the software!

VCDj: point taken. I think I will stick to 1 disk until something better comes along. I agree....they have their work cut out for them. This area of software is gauranteed to get messed with.

lawman, I meant to say enough rambling on my part, not yours! I tend to get off on a rant when excited! Glad to hear you are in good health, too bad you are inbetween rich & poor, such as myself! rich would be nice.. the economy here in the USA is not what it used to be, and I should be making almost double what I am, but for lack of jobs you take what you can get! I don't think we will see the beta released yet, or else we would have heard something by now. and as far as 1 disc copying goes, if you can use DVDXCOPY and get 1 disc, why bother ripping/converting when you can just point and click! You would have to have a movie that would fit 4.7gb though, not going to happen that often, but if you did.. makes sense to me to use DVDXCOPY for those times.. As for future enhancements to the software, who knows.. perhaps they will add functionality making it so that you can leave out extra audio tracks and unwanted extras/commentaries, etc.. There I go rambling again!

This is my first posting and even though I will make some people mad, I could not stay silent any longer: #1, any of us who work for a company knows that a rollout rarely goes on time. #2, mr. Moore does not have to give out beta versions, but he does, and all he gets is a bunch rude comments and attacks from people who think they are experts but who are not. #3, the comments attacking whether 321 is using this or that method of decrypting sound like someone is jealous someone else thought of something that they did not. #4 who gives a rat's ass how it works if it does what it is supposed to and lastly I think this is the reason for so many rude comments and arguments -many people have spent a lot of time learning these complicated programs to strip video, edit it, compress it, etc. and basically, if this dvdxcopy does half of what it claims, all of these dvd "gurus" will become obsolete overnight and they know it!

VCDJunkie: Last word from me on subject, I do agree with you in the fact that, you and your forum colleague's have done a great job, on these forums, and are to be commended, I wish I had found this site, when I first started to learn, It would have saved many hours of internet searching, and a few dvd coasters, but I suppose knowledge earned is worth learning, anyhow for what it's worth, good luck to you all..

VCDJunkie: Thanks, the economy here in the United Kingdom is supposed to be the best in the world at present. Interest rates held at 4% for the last 10 months, unemployment a down, just we dont see it in new hospitals, or schools, it's the rich what get the pleasure, and the poor what get the blame. People taking risking their lives to get here and claim asylum. Now that's rambling.

mikemary, you should not speak of things you know nothing about! those so called rude comments and attacks, I am assuming you meant the comments from dvd2svcd who is one of the most respected members of the DVD ripping/converting community, and has developed the best software package to date! He knows exactly what he is talking about, and has reason to be skeptical, because he knows better than any of us what goes into copying DVD's. I think rhmoore should have a chance to prove himself, but in order to do that he needs to be able to stand up to criticism. Please let him do that for himself without your uninformed babeling!

Is anyone able to get to the XCOPY homepage?

Firewall problems were preventing access earlier. Everything should be fine now. I may have good news about the beta tonight. Check back soon... Cheers!

@rhmoore, Oh goody...I cant wait :p (Oh damn, I forgot to sign up for the beta) Have you ever thought about adding an XP manifest to your code so that themes are enabled? It can make even the most boring programs look kinda cool! @mikemary, Quote: 'all of these dvd "gurus" will become obsolete overnight and they know it' Rubbish! This program will actually be doing us all a favour by taking away all the 'newbies' and just leaving us with the hardcore rippers that would never touch a simple 1 2 3 program. Ok, so I dont know just how flexible the program is at the moment...but I bet you cant even do 50% of the stuff possible with other 'free' tools and half a brain.

I think we need to give this program a chance before anyone starts blasting it.....After you try it and if you dont like it.....YOU ARE NOT OUT ANY MONEY! This guy was nice enough to let us beta test, and for the help give us a free copy plus 5 free keys for friends....I mean damn people. I am going to wait untill I try the thing before I make a comment either way. This type of "knee jerk" reaction seems to happen with a lot of new software when it doesnt come out the minute developers say it will. I have develope several programs and can tell you that major bugs CAN tend to pop up at the last second. Put yourself in this guys shoes a minute...... Would you want to send out something with a MAJOR bug for the VULTURES to pick apart and say "told ya so". Hell no and he is not going to either. Just rip a few movies while you wait and lets give this thing a chance when it comes out.

rhm>> I may have good news about the beta tonight. Check back soon. << Oh poo....I was just getting ready to head out to work, but now I'll have to wait around for an hour or so. I wonder if dRD couldn't put up a few 'flashy-porny-ads' with pretty girls or something to keep us entertained while we're waiting........ Dum-de-dum......[whistle, hum-hum], shuffling shoes, checking watch....... By the way, dvd2svcd, I meant absolutely no disrespect to you in my post (about 100 yards up). I checked your link and read *every single post*. (Thank you). I was already aware of most of it, but that was *quite* a body of distrust, to see it all spelled out in front of me at once. God, I hope that beta gets here soon. Regards, all. -- Mike -- P.S. Have we set a new a/D world record now for all-time longest thread? It might not be Guinness Book material, but it certainly is just as interesting! ===

ABCman: Exactly -- like I said earlier, rhmoore kinda put himself in seriously weird position (not avail even on those glossy upper-shelf mags) with this one. Now the hype is SO big that it better be good or they will get lynched -- or they make a blockbuster. Either way, stakes are high. And A_Klingon, totally off-topic, but it will still take a while to beat this: http://keskustelu.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/3137 ;-)

I guess if the reveiws are decent 321 can say "endorsed by 8 out of 10 rippers" at....picture of a hacker banging on a keyboard infront of a computer, smoldering cigarette in the ashtray, smoke rising...no I foprgot wrong image, going for the efficient, clean, cut and dry 1 button solution crowd....just kidding lol

ROTFLMAO !!!! :-) Ok,ok, how did you put it? *bows and takes the hit* (?) 277 posts vs. 120 posts - well, we're *getting* there! The night is still young you know, and I it might be 277 vs. 835 by the time the beta arrives! (Just joking, RHM) :-) - Geeze, I gotta go to work, I just gotta..... - -- Mike --

Bruno, what's your status? Over.

Holy Christ, the size of this thread. I never noticed it got this big in so little time!

Copies Are Red, DVDs Are Blue, DVDXCOPY, Where Are You?

to vcd junkie - certainly 321 has to be able to stand up to criticism, but how about we not judge something that we have not even seen yet. When a company says they are coming out with a new product to make a task better and easier and a bunch clowns tell them what it's not going to do or that it can't possible work (this all before they even see it) and at the same time want a free copy to test it, well that just sounds to me like a bunch of sour grapes from people who are jealous that they could not come up with the program themselves. to light_uk - i will gladly leave the "hard core" rippers behind. you guys can play with your rippers and editors all you want, i have better things to do with my time (like enjoy movies made with dvdxcopy) even if you don't. Good luck 321 and dvdxcopy.

Engineers just left. Good news and bad. We now have disc 1 completely working from end to end. Disc 2 is still not burning the disclaimer. The IFO files are quite complicated and fixing this problem on disc 2, I am told, is a known solution but will still take another day possibly through the weekend to fix. I've put a lot on the line and I'm pushing the engineers to get the beta out ASAP, but I'm not going to let this thing go out an alpha. That would create more problems than I've got now. We will work through the weekend and hopefully get it out over the weekend. Hang in there, I believe the wait will be worth it. Cheers!

Disc 2 disclaimer not working you say....well I've got a simple fix for that. Dont waste your time with it. Nobody wants it there anyway! Im sure one per disc set is plenty although I understand that you want to cover your backs. BTW, since when have programmers been called engineers?!

My first post & I openly declare my ignorance. Doing my little bit to get past the 277 mark ;o) I share the hopes of most here that this software does what it says on the tin. Having only learned (through this expert site) how to do a simple(?) conversion from DVD to VCD some weeks ago, I don't understand half the stuff enthusiasts mention in this thread. However I do identify the attraction of understanding most if not all the complexities around backing up a DVD and, god & this site willing, I probably will over time. Having a one click backup tool would (will?) be great, however I look forward to continue to learn from the enthusiasts on this site. It is perhaps best if I sit in quiet anticipation from now on & be thought an idiot than to continue to post & remove all doubt ;o) Thanks to all that contribute to the site & good luck 123Studios.

oh, & good luck 321Studios as well ;)

don't want to sound ignorant, but has the California Supreme Court made a ruling on the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act (DMCRA)??? I think with all the hype and excitement (add my excitement to the rest), I can't recall any mention to the fact of whether or not this was passed by law yet to be legal.. Any thoughts?

I cant really see a problem backing up your own DVDs and I dont think the police are going to care if you do either......I mean think about it.........As long as you are not out there mass copying rentals and selling them for a profit they are noting going to care or know.

Rolling Out The Red Carpet.... Hello Floyd! May I be the first to extend my hand in welcoming you to our Merry Little Band Of MisFits. :-) You may never be the same. This *may* be your last chance for escape though! Don't forget, I *did* warn you. :) If you've already made a VideoCD, then you are "one of us" so-to-speak. Most people don't even know what a VCD *is*, so you see? You're a 'veteran' already ! :) Thank you for contributing to our magic goal of 277 posts, a daunting number of single-thread posts established by those crummy Finns over in the Finnish AfterDawn Site. I ask you: Are WE gonna stand for this? Are WE, the English-Speaking members, (who, after all, are *much* smarter than those guys), going to let our (treasured-but-upstart) Finnish counterparts show us UP like this? Are we going to have to cringe in embarrassment every time someone looks us in the eye? Are we, dear membership, to be the laughing stock of all the other A/V websites??? N-O F-R-E-E-K-I-N-G W-A-Y. (Ouuuuuu..... it's just to *horrible* to even contemplate).... Therefore, I urge all of you to send in your posts today. With your help, we should be approaching the 150 or 160-mark by, perhaps, next mention of the beta. (Beta? What beta?) Thanks For Your Support. --- A_Klingon of your acquaintance ---

you may not see the problem with this ABCman, but if you follow the letter of the law.. QUOTE: "321 Studios asked a San Francisco court to rule on the legitimacy of their product. According to DMCA the package, intended solely for backing up DVDs owned by the consumer, is illegal, because it uses a copyright circumvention algorithm to descramble the CSS encryption used on DVDs. However 321 Studios argue that the DMCA in this case is unconstitutional, because it prevents the fair use of a product. Consumers are allowed to make copies of VHS movies for personal use, but thanks to DMCA, it is impossible to do legally with DVDs." "Major movie studios, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice have asked the Californian court to dismiss the case altogether. Clearly a ruling in the case would have noticeable consequences -- if the software is deemed legal, then DMCA is invalid, and if it's ruled to be illegal, the court, in essence, rules that DMCA takes precedence over the United States constitution." If you are not sure where this quote came from, please re-read the original News Article titled "321 Studios cranks it up a notch"

And that is exactly why we filed the DRA in California to begin with. If you haven't done so, please read and sign the petition at 321Studios website. http://www.321studios.com/Petition.asp

Good morning Robert! Ho! Ho ! HO! Well, bless-my-whiskers. Hope you slept well. Last night there were visions of 'Fairies And Sugar Plums' dancing in my head. Looking forward to a beta for Christmas! [[wink wink]] -- Mike --

when trying to submit a petition, receiving "page cannot be displayed"

likewise

I know we made some DNS changes since yesterday and when I clicked on the link in a/d I got page cannot be displayed. Then I refreshed and it came up. If that doesn't work, try going to http://www.321studios.com and then clicking the link at the bottom labeled 'Defend Your Rights'. Still working on the beta today. It's getting very, very close. Cheers!

Here is an excerpt from Zoe Lofgrens *proposed* legislation. Of particular import is the House Judiciary Report that originally accompanied the DMCA. SECTION 1: Designates the title as “The Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002.” SECTION 2: Sets forth factual findings with respect to the traditional balance of copyright law. That balance has been altered by the development of digital technology, the rise of the Internet, and federal laws enacted to cope with the new technologies. On the one hand, digital technology threatens the rights of copyright holders. Perfect digital copies of songs and movies can be publicly transmitted, without authorization, to thousands of people at little or no cost. On the other hand, technological control measures give copyright holders the capacity to limit nonpublic performances and threaten society’s interests in the First Amendment and fair use rights of individuals. The DMCA was enacted as an attempt to safeguard the traditional balance in the face of these new challenges. But in practice, it has endangered the rights and expectations of legitimate consumers. Contrary to the intent of Congress, section 1201 of the DMCA has been used to prohibit lawful users from circumventing technical restrictions for any reason, even to pursue their fair use rights. The authors of the DMCA never intended to create such a dramatic shift in the balance. As the House Judiciary Report accompanying the DMCA stated: “[A]n individual [should] not be able to circumvent in order to gain unauthorized access to a work, but should be able to do so in order to make fair use of a work which he or she has acquired lawfully.” House Report 105-551, Part I, Section-by-Section Analysis of section 1201(a)(1). It is time to restore the balance and give consumers a legitimate alternative to piracy that is affordable, reliable, secure and respectful of their reasonable rights and expectations.

page comes up ok, enter name / email add/ but still cannot submit

When I submit it says page cannot be found :(

I've sent an email, and hope I'm not too late to request a beta. I like to keep an open mind, and use as many alternatives as I can. Now, please don't anyone tell Derrow.

rhmoore: Just to take this absolutely off-course, I must ask why you guys support Zoe Lofgren's DCFA instead of Boucher-Doolittle bill, DMCRA? For me, the DMCRA sounds more accurately designed and seems to have gathered better corporation support from tech companies overall. Obviously, I'm fairly certain that these two separate bills get bundled into one when it finally hits Congress sometime in 2003. But I'm curious anyway :-) (oh, for those who wish to get bit more info on these acronym-monsters, read this: http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3410.cfm)

Pinging secure.321studio.com [66.179.42.231] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 66.179.42.231: bytes=32 time=79ms TTL=115 Reply from 66.179.42.231: bytes=32 time=77ms TTL=115 Reply from 66.179.42.231: bytes=32 time=77ms TTL=115 Reply from 66.179.42.231: bytes=32 time=77ms TTL=115 Ping statistics for 66.179.42.231: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 77ms, Maximum = 79ms, Average = 77ms I think that the DNS is working fine, otherwise I could not ping you like this.. you may want to check your web servers to make sure this page is available..

Actually, we were in touch with Boucher's office long before the legislation was introduced, but what is really interesting about the Lofgren bill, is the casual reference to the House Judiciary report that accompanied the DMCA. To the extent both bills attempt to *clarify* and *reaffirm* fair use, we back them both. I agree, these bills will be bundled in some form *if* they leave committee. Also, we are working on the web problem. Apparently, there is a problem with the DB server. Our CTO is looking into it now. Cheers!

Hi, guys - before buying this stuff from 321Studios.com i would advise you to visit the following link and read all 3 pages http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88142 Might help you make a better decision.

0_kewl: I think this issue has been covered in past 100+ posts pretty well and the consensus at the moment is pretty much that 321Studios _has_ ****ed up things in the past, but we (at least we at AfterDawn) are willing to give them a fair chance to clean up their act and come back with a good, self-made product. And I hope they do.

I’ve tried to be silent on the DVD COPY PLUS issue, but I can't anymore. While it is true DCP includes freeware that can be downloaded anywhere, you are missing the point if you believe we are simply selling freeware. It has been our contention from day one, and still is, that we have never sold anything that wasn't the direct result of our own work. Case in point: If you read the message threads posted at vcdhelp.com, you will notice that many of those posts talk about installing the software, taking the tools for free, printing the instructions and discarding the software without paying for it. If we were selling this freeware, we would have made it very difficult to use these tools without first paying for the application. We could have encrypted the files; we could have encrypted the links to download inside another document that was encrypted, or about a thousand other things. We didn’t! And the reason we didn’t is we were selling an application that provides in depth telephone, email and web based technical support. I received a US Patent for cryptography and encryption work that I did back in the 90’s and we could have very easily prevented the use of these tools if we had wanted to and required the customer to pay for them before using them in any way. Another argument is that we never asked for the author’s permission to include this freeware. Since the author of both SmartRipper and DvdX are unknown to us, this is an impossible scenario. We used to include a trial version of Nero (with their permission) but after exchanging emails with an individual who declared himself to be the author of VCDEasy, and consequently gave us permission to include this software, we dropped Nero and incorporated VCDEasy. Then after Tucows received complaints from another author who claimed to be the author of VCDEasy, we were asked to investigate. We came to believe that this first individual lied to us and we consequently dropped VCDEasy and made a deal with SAD in Germany to include PowerCDR (author of CDRWin). Now, we have been selling DCP since July 01. When this was started, it was started as a hobby. It was never seriously thought by myself, or anyone else, that it was ever going to make any real money. When it did, I was completely surprised. But when it really started taking off, I didn’t pocket the money and fatten my bank account. I got an office, hired technical support staff, hired programmers and other administrative personnel. I figured, since this business was obviously going to take off, I wanted 321Studios to deliver the best possible product I could to the public. Then the *famous* article in USAToday came out, saying we might be in violation of the DMCA and could go to jail. We could have closed down then and just went into hiding. We didn’t. We called the EFF, we talked to dozens of attorneys and found out that we had a choice to stand up for what was right. Sure, it was going to cost us plenty in legal fees, but it was more important to return something to the public rather than just fatten our wallets! So we filed the declaratory relief action in April in hopes of bringing this draconian law to the attention of the public and helping to change something that would benefit us all. And believe me, Keker & Van Nest don’t come cheap either. Their average bill rate is right around $600/hr. We are self funded and never asked anyone for financing, other than our local bank which provided me with a signature loan in the form of a revolving credit line, which I personally guaranteed. Now, in addition to all that, we have, for the last several months, been quietly developing a completely *proprietary* application called DvdXCopy. I wanted to return something to the public for their support of our product, for which we have many very satisfied customers. But as a developer for the last 24 years, I was personally dissatisfied with an application that was primarily an interactive guide to copying DVD’s to CDR’s. So we set out to develop an application that would deliver everything I believe our customer was looking for. A simplistic, one click application that would make a perfect digital copy of a dvd movie. I think we have succeeded, but as dRD so logically points out, if we haven’t, we’ve probably sunk ourselves in the marketplace. If that is the case, all will be lost including the 28 jobs here and the lawsuit. DvdXCopy has to succeed to further our business, law suit and to hopefully bring about some changes to the DMCA, or we will simply cease to exist. Now before they even start, I’d like to address the accusations and issues of SPAM. 321Studios has suffered tremendous backlash for the affiliate spam, fraud spam (now I know them as ‘joe jobs’) and competitive spam that we unfortunately get credited with. We made some mistakes in this regard, being naïve to email campaigns to begin with, but we have continued to make strides to reduce affiliate spam and terminate any affiliate who refuses to abide by our AUP. We have whittled back our affiliate base from 15000 to somewhere around 600 (and counting). We will continue to take quick and positive action against those who violate our policies and anti-spam objectives in marketing. I’m not asking for sympathy, nor am I asking for your respect. I am asking that you review the facts and the truth before jumping to a conclusion that we are a *scam* outfit, stealing freeware and pilfering the poor dumb public out of millions of dollars. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thanks for reading!

rhmoore: Thanks for clarifying things, although I must point out that DVDx is, AFAIK, GPL'd software, with appropriate credits and such in it and since it is licensed under GPL, it restricts the bundling of the software with any commercial packages greatly. Also using the idea that when you can't get in touch with developers, you can use their software is slightly flawed. I would say that the package would be much, much more acceptable among developers and users alike, if you would advertise it as a guide, not "DVD ripping solution" and would allow free downloading for the software from your site that you now distribute within the package. Our advertiser (who we don't have other than publisher-advertiser relationship), Expert-Guides, took this path after we recommended that way (actually we declined to allow their ads on our site if they would sell freeware software+guide package as "DVD ripping package") and various other authors in DVD ripping scene over the last year or so have agreed that this method "makes their product legit" from "DVD ripping scenes'" point of view.

But as said many, many times -- it's always possible to clean up your act, death sentence doesn't exist on Internet :-)

dRD: Actually, that is incorrect. Please review the following from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money? Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.) Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site? Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary. Does the GPL allow me to require that anyone who receives the software must pay me a fee and/or notify me? No. In fact, a requirement like that would make the program non-free. If people have to pay when they get a copy of a program, or if they have to notify anyone in particular, then the program is not free. See the definition of free software. The GPL is a free software license, and therefore it permits people to use and even redistribute the software without being required to pay anyone a fee for doing so. If I distribute GPL'd software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge? No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.

I for one would like the chance to help testing this product if it makes life easier for DVD ripping. I am not sure about the current legal arguments, surely dRD would know more on the legal issues, but i used to run a (small) public domain software company called electra in the UK for Amiga 500 software (remember those??!!) and there were never any issues about the charges for distributing the software, although credit always went to the source and the software was unaltered. Even so, anyone with key software in this arena would be hard pressed to find a better way of getting the product in the right hands than through Afterdawn. Paul.

Ok, as you can see, I'm definately not an expert with licesing issues :-) But I think the biggest issue has been the permission -- whether required or not, but asking it beforehand would be appropriate. With SmartRipper this is obviously more than impossible -- at least I don't know where Tron can be contacted. But then again, there are several alternatives for this kind of situations -- and to add the problematic issues, SmartRipper is NOT GPL'd software, but closed source instead. Alternatives would include using other rippers, such as lightning_uk's DVD Decrypter as lightning_uk is easily contactable author. So, legal or not, immoral or not -- the blur surrounding your previous product is one of the biggest issues that has spiralled this thread to what it is now and has contributed 100% of the skeptic comments. And you probably agree to this, am I right?

We never altered any of the freeware applications in any way, including the installation packages. All freeware was always distributed with all licenses and documents intact. In addition, these tools were left unencumbered in our installation package and were never restricted in their use or installation by our application. DEFINITION OF FREEWARE: (Like SmartRipper) Freeware refers to programs or databases for an individual to use without payment of money to the author. Commonly the author will copyright his work as a way of legally insisting no one change it prior to getting his approval. Commonly he will issue a License defining the terms under which his program may be used. With Freeware there is no charge for the license. In the 90s the term Copyleft arose to describe this. Since there is no such license in SmartRipper prohibiting redistribution, and as long as we redistribute the software in exactly the same original condition as we found it, there is apparently no special permission needed for such redistribution.

dRD: I agree with your conclusion that this has led to skeptical perceptions, but if anyone has ever used the DCP application, they would clearly see the benefit of our application, and it is NOT in the area of distributing freeware. The DCP application is MUCH MORE than a guide. It is an interactive application and tutorial that guides the user through each step from end to end. Included in the application are clear paths to technical support and help. Our tech support department is the largest department in our organization, in terms of personnel. I definitely believe we return significant value for money. And I should add that we have never once refused a refund or a return of our product, whether 30 days out or 130 days out, even though our 30 day policy is clearly stated on our web site. We still have less than 5% total returns and literally thousands of customer testimonials, primarily a testament to our support department.

Not to change the subject, but how goes the beta? ;-)

dRD: At any rate, I've already admitted in a previous message, that I'm basically dissatisfied with DCP and always have been. This was truly a product that succeeded in spite of itself. DvdXCopy has the ability to redeem us, even in the skeptics eyes. I hope :)

tumbar: I got so caught up in this conversation, that I forgot to post the GREAT NEWS! We have resolved the problem with disc 2! The beta should be distributed tomorrow after we finally finish the packaging for dvd drivers. We have them, we just need to refine the installation a bit. Hey Mike: "All systems are GO Houston, we have the green light." "Clear the Pad, People, all systems are committing to final launch!" :) Cheers everyone!

rhmoore: Congrats for cracking the problems. My sympathy is with your developers -- being myself a developer in "real life" as well, I know exactly what they must have gone through in the past couple of days (LOL, boss amounting 10-fold pressure by discussing openly about the product that guys are desperately trying to get to work and now they also need to meet high expectations :-)). And I want to clarify things from my side as well -- if I've seemed hostile, I apologize, I haven't tried to be (ask any of our forum regulars and you know that I've been extremely nice actually ;-)). My position is obviously -- as "the face of AfterDawn.com", a title that I haven't asked, but it has fallen to me -- to try to balance between different sides on the debate, while trying to squeeze people to admit their faults AND also to encourage people to work together in order to get this thing that we all love (well, helloz to all MPAA readers out there, I know that you visit our site as well ;-) even better. I have always taken somekinda non-personal pride from the fact, that for some weird reason, DVD ripping scene has been the ONLY "big thing" where there are several big sites, several big software authors and virtually NO conflicts. Ever. I've seen the rise and fall of "MP3 scene" from websites' point of view and if sites get their kicks by telling in their headlines how badly other websites within same genre suck, I can't feel anything but sorry for them. And if you're into hardware sites, you know what I mean. I can't imagine situation of AfterDawn.com blasting stupid accusations about ddigest, doom9 or vcdhelp -- or vice versa. So, by pushing you "to the edge", I've tried to get skeptics to hear your point of view and you to understand why skeptics exist. Hopefully we've succeeded and we can see a future where freeware and commercial development can work hand-in-hand and (other than annoy MPAA :-) produce even better software tools.

I myself have tried to bundle software licensed under the GPL with a little software package I created that never sold a single copy, mostly due to my non existing marketing strategy, anyhow I do know that you have to bundle an entire copy of the General Public License along with the software. I kept these sites bookmarked in case I ever wanted to try again to repackage and sell my little project.. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html#SEC3 http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/page6.html In case anybody cares, using BASH scripting I was able to create a way to have a Linux RDP only operating system using Red Hat Linux.. RDP - Remote Desktop Protocol, allowing the system to boot either directly to a terminal server session for Microsoft Windows 2000 terminal server, or boot to a menu allowing you to choose which Terminal Server you wanted to log into. To make this incredibly long story short, as long as the software that 321studios was packaging was licensed under the GPL, they were legally allowed to re-distribute and charge for this software so long as you follow the GPL license (link above) I personally never purchased DVD Copy Plus, so I wouldn't know if it came with all the licenses and that it followed the GPL license to the "T", I will just have to take Robert Moore's word that it did. Robert, glad to hear that your project is finally complete and I can't wait to see first hand how well it works!

dRD: I never took you as hostile at all. Your messages were never rude and were never attacking. You did as you said, encouraged debate and maintained an objective attitude. Thank you! I don't mind tough questions either, but I do mind people being rude with a keyboard, when I know in real life, they would never be that way in person. Skepticism, as I said before, is a term best used in a business transaction. If I were trying to sell our products in here, I could understand. I know you might think what I'm doing is marketing, but to be honest, we have so many people coming to our website now, DvdXCopy will sell plenty just by redirecting the traffic. Of course, your subscribers will help us flesh out the beta (very quickly I hope) and they'll get something in return as well. And hopefully, we'll win a few converts in the process, but I'm not assuming a whole lot of A/D users will buy our product. However, I might try to leverage your subscriber base by providing *free* copies to all their friends. And that is marketing :) Anyway, thanks for the objective words and the willingness to evaluate first, judge later approach. I very much appreciate it. And thanks for providing this forum to help me explain our side of the story. Cheers!

dRD: I'm not sure why, but my signature has dissapeared from my messages. I tried to edit my account settings, but could not. I apologize for posting off topic, but I wanted to assure everyone that it was indeed still me who was posting. Can you advise? Now it's back. I must have unchecked the signature box, sorry!

Hi again! To rhmoore, With my previous post i wasn't assuming you are cheaters nor was i making any personal statements about your software - just wanted to inform people who read this thread about different opinions that exist to help them make a better decision. To everyone, As i understand, this software will make EXACT copy of DVD on 1 DVDR (that is what is claimed in this article http://www.xp-erience.org/comments.php?id=760) - this claim can't possibly be true because of the current DVDR making technology. To better understand the implications, please read this page http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=116313 Regards

Hey Robert. Nice to hear about your company succeeding. As for marketing, You can bet the sweet thing the software will be on Kazaa before you can say "I just emailed the beta copies!" ^_^

gmn17: Unfortunately I must agree with this -- P2P networks will cannibalize any given product pretty damn well, but I assume one point of the software is to offer support facilities and many newbies are willing to buy the software just for this reason. And I believe that there are people, like myself, who test the software -- by whatever means, is it P2P or beta or trial -- and if they like it, they buy it. rhmoore: Cool, we're on the same page with this one. And slightly surprisingly -- or not -- a/D's userbase is actually much more commercial software-friendly than probably most of the other sites. My assumption is that this is due our quite high average age, around 29yrs (generally speaking 29 year-olds have higher disposable income than 17-year-olds :-). And yes, I know the bug with signatures -- the sig doesn't get used if you log in when you write the post, but if you log in before you go to post writing page, it works. Stupid bug, I will hopefully take care of it at some point..

Well, I'm sure we all needed to hear that one gym17. Nice of you to tell us. Good luck on finding keys there. rhmoore: <heh-heh> Just got your message, thanx. Green light it is. I'm all set up to run the beta. But I can't *tell* you what a delight it will be to finally, in later versions, be able to strip things out. I could write you a novel on that one, and maybe I will, but right now I know you have a lot of pokers in the fire so it can wait. Of course, you will notice how 'conveniently' & tactfully I sidestepped all that legal stuff, and didn't comment because I know little about it. In fact, I just don't know nothin' about nothin'. Just ask anybody in here, they'll tell you. And yeah, dRD sure is a cranky ol' codger, that's for sure. He's never happy, always whining and moaning about something-or-other. It it wasn't you, it'd be someone else. Yells at me constantly in private messages and stuff, but you get used to it after a while. (He's got a nice smile). :-) Am patiently awaiting the good news. -- Mike --

Anyone Notice, how quite I've become lately, Blood pressure rising, in anticpation.(or was that due to the Viagra) I'm waiting, waiting, good luck 321.

I have been keeping a close eye on this forum since around the 5th october and have just plucked up enough courage to join ( i aint done this sort of thing b4 im quite shy for a scotch guy ) Anyways i just wanted to thank all ( youve been a great source of information and help) and would especially like to wish Rhmoore, 321bruno and all there team the very best of luck with there software . p.s i tried to e-mail you guys for a beta but no reply :( no worrys though im sure itll b great.

well i have have to set some things straight here and make a (reasonable) request. the request first. can 321studios please rename there upcoming product (dvdxcopy) to something else. why ? beause it could be considered to be playing on (and thus using the recognition of) DVDx. it cannot be claimed that 321studios doesnt know of DVDx either since it was used in there previous package. yes the 2 softwares do different jobs (in the end) but they both deal with dvds so are in the same field. now on to some corrections. the claim that the auther of DVDx was unknown and unreachable is rubbish. why ? because the readme.txt that comes with DVDx clearly says the (main) programmer is Jean Luc Pons. it also says that DVDx's homepage is labdv.com . so the claim that permission wasnt possible for the reason stated is ridiculous. it would have taken 2 minutes reading a txt file to get the information. labdv has gone membership based now because of costs of running the site. that has nothing to do with any of the authers who dont get 1 cent. also the forums are free to read and you can find the email of me (dragongodz) there with a bit of searching. since i am 1 of the programmers (junior) i could have easily been contacted. all this required again was a bit of effort. the claim by rhmoore that the GPL allows you to sell software is wrong. yes it allows you to charge for downloading and support etc. it does not allow you to sell the program though. even if it did its of questionable morals to sell someone else hard work for your own enrichment without them being contacted. i wonder how long it would take 321studios to sick their lawyers on me if i decided to give away software that they wrote ? that of course is a flip side analogy but the point is you should at least respect others hard work when it is truly theirs and companies making money from other peoples free software isnt. i truly do hope that 321studios new program is all that they claim and totally their own work. hopefully it will give some understanding to how us free programmers feel to see our hard work constanly used (by several companies now days) for the enrichment of people who had nothing to do with it to see something you have worked on until your eyes start to go square (from staring at the moniter) used like that is maddening.

dragongdz: Again, we still claim that we have NEVER sold anyone else’s software, GPL or otherwise. I was simply making a point that the GPL gives you permission to redistribute GPL software for a charge or not. This is quite clear from the excerpt to the GPL FAQ I listed above. Regardless, in our case, it is NOT for a charge. We don't add to, take away from or modify this GPL software in any way. And at the time we started bundling DVDx, there was no contact information listed. If the contact information is there now, that is news to me. I should also point out that we have NEVER ONCE received a complaint from Labdv or any of the Dvdx authors during this entire time. Also, the similarity with dvdx to dvdxcopy is purely coincidental. I'm sure someone in the forum here can back me up. The product name is DVD XCOPY. XCopy was an old Dos based tool that would allow you to make a copy of a folder and all subfolders. This utility was quite often used to back up a computers hard drive to another hard drive when upgrading a computer. I'm sure you can see now why we picked that name. That is one of the primary reasons behind our naming the product. I can positively assure you, the similarity between the names is purely coincidental and is not part of a larger conspiratorial plan to leverage the success of dvdx. Cheers!

rhmoore: Hi, just a matter as of interest. Their was also a another piece of software/Hardware called XCopy during the late 80's early 90' used to backup Games, although I think it was used more on the Amiga. Just goes to show how many times a name is varied, Just like gone in 60 Seconds (1974) ver. is compleatly different to the Gone in 60 seconds (Nicholas Cage Crap) or home alone / home alone 2 if you get my drift.

rhmoore, Have you been sending out messages to the beta testers? Are you going to email us a link when it is out? Just making sure I was still on the list. -Heath Jones

As I posted yesterday, it appears as though the beta will finally ship today, although I am reluctant to absolutely commit because as you know, we were supposed to release the beta on Wednesday. At any rate, I will be emailing all those on the beta list and providing a download link. I expect the file to be around 16mb. A couple of caveats: There are some titles in house that this is failing on. So do not expect this beta to work with every dvd title. For some reason it is failing on Zoolander and The Beach. The Beach appears to be a badly authored dvd. At any rate, it may fail on some titles, and we need to know about those right away. Also, when using the beta, use DVD RW's. DO NOT USE DVD R's unless you have the money to waste on coasters. Also, in addition to any posts you may make, please forward a copy of all bugs to bugs@dvdxcopy.com I would not expect our beta testers to begin posting negative and counterproductive messages on A/D or anywhere else if they have problems. That's why it's a beta. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't post bug reports in A/D, I am just suggesting that you keep your remarks factual and objective if possible. As I mentioned yesterday, the final step in preparing the beta is the package. The two engineers responsible for this packaging will be at the office at 3pm CST today to hopefully wrap this up. I will be there as well, and as soon as they give me the nod, I will post the download link and send the email. Cheers! p.s. One more thing. This version of the beta will absolutely expire and cease functioning at 30 days, but my guess is that it will be updated many times between now and then.

One more thing. If you requested to be a beta tester, and you received a reply email back from me, you are already on the list. If you did not receive a reply, then you are not. This was not a personal choice, but a business choice, as we were getting so many beta requests that we had to cut it off at some point. I actually extended the deadline twice. Cheers!

Yipee!!! it's almost here! Congrats Robert and 321! On a different note, I thought that the reference to xcopy (dos utility to copy drives bit by bit) was OBVIOUS.. I never even thought somebody would even think it had to do with DVDx and copying their software.. ;-)

I imagine there are all sorts of sloppily-mastered dvds out there. One of the Monty Python TV-Shows DVDs (from the boxed-set of 14 discs), has a glaring glitch. I don't know what the glitch is because it was (apparently) sidestepped neatly by the menu pointers. In other words, one of the episodes is repeated entirely on the disc because the first one had errors. They didn't bother to delete the errant show from the disc master, but simply modified the menu to point to the fixed episode. Even the disc volume has the word "FIX" in it's title that the other dvds in the set do not. It's gaffes like these that will probably force us to use two dvds for any given title when one would have sufficed. If there will be numerous successive updates to the beta, I hope they will all re-extend their lifespans by 30 days. What is your personal preference -- that we post (as politely and as factually as possible) any found bugs here at a/D, or at the bugs link you listed? It's not a shame to find a bug - I've tried to assert that finding a bug is a *good* thing not a bad one. Others may want to explore problems that have previously been identified as known bugs by other members. What is your preference? -- Mike --

Another Caveat. I hope it doesn't ruin your day. This beta is NTSC only. It will not currently write PAL although we expect to release the PAL version within about 10 days after we release this version. If you are international and have signed up to be a beta tester and do not have access to NTSC equipment, you will not be able to participate in the beta. Cheers!

rhmoore: ah shucks, just as well my equipment does both then, my computer burner, and my stand alone philips. and lucky got some region 1 as well. and away we go..

Mike, As I stated before, the updates will not extend the life of this beta. But I will stand by my word and give each beta tester a free full version, plus 5 full license activation codes each to share with their friends. As far as the bug reporting goes, that is entirely up to you where to post, as long as a copy of the bug report goes to bugs@dvdxcopy.com. I don't think it is my place to tell you or others, you can't post on A/D! All that I ask is, if you do post, post factual and objective comments as beta testers. And remember, IT'S A BETA! We're working round the clock to identify even more issues and resolve them, as we realize we have about a week to release to PRE-ORDERS! [[After thinking about what I just wrote]] Have you ever seen the look of total fear and panic in someones face? I'm pretty sure I just made that look...

Good Lord Man ! I have NO idea how much/little can be accomplished by you or we or *anyone* in that narrow window of time! The beta can be a 30-day exploratory kind-of-thing for the rest of us, but it won't solve squat after your Pre-Orders have shipped! Hint -- (Send lots of free update keys to your Pre-Order customers!) -- mgb --

Close to 1000 people now visiting a/D. Updates sluggish, page slow to materialize for us modem users. Think I'll stay connected for an hour or two. Probably not necessary to check for new messages re: forum posts; -- just press browser's 'Refresh' button. Provide beta link toot suite s'il vous plait. -- Le Klingy --

Klingy: The performance issue is known and not only due this thread, but overall forum traffic -- I mentioned this earlier this week in here: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/9283 Solution will come within next couple of days, although it means that site might/will be unaccessible for hour or so (and might bring up weird errors for couple of hours after that).

Not a problem dRD, it was just an observation. BTW, as a PAL-only-beta, this will affect you as a UK resident, won't it? I know schedules are tight over @ 321, but a week to Pre-Order is cutting it kind of fine. Beta testing will have to serve (primarily) for after-the-fact release. Random Point: Crappily-mastered dvds are no reflection on dvdxcopy. If the masters are full of errors, how could any software automatically anticipate or correct them? Right now, I'm watching Monty Python's Holy Grail *re-issue* movie, and English subtitles are occassionally showing up at different points throughout the film, even though I have specifically requested NO subtitles. This poorly mastered re-issue could easily dupe people into thinking the beta is flawed. Would suggest people try dvds they are quite familiar with. Will be interesting to test beta's copy-protection out on backed-up copies. (Straight one-to-one disc copies possible of backups possible? Not supposed to be. Are disc's macrovision flags removed?, ie, are backups directly copyable to vhs?). Al sorts of questions - am DYING to see where dvdxcopy 'thinks' a film break ought to occur! (Roughly an even 50-50 break, or most of movie on disc 1 with remainder on disc 2?). Nothing like having 15 mins of movie burned to disc 2 at $15.00 Canadian for dvd blank. These 'extra' _boner_ tracks (bonus)-- have got to GO in future releases. There is more trash recorded in these boner tracks than the accumulated weight of garbage bags left for curbside pickup on our local garbage day. (How much time you got?) DVDXCOPY's forte will have to remain with dvd-9s, because your article on dvd5 to dvdr has got DVD5 discs covered *totally*. _Perfect_ replicas afforded by DVD-Decrypter and your article. (Hello, 321?) My ass is getting numb from sitting here. :-) -- mgb --

A_Klingon: Hi I know your Question was not to me, (I am in the UK) but I thought all DVD' Burners capable of running Pal & NTSC, I know mine are, surely the software allows you to choose what format, and the same for play back it's upto software and monitor. only asked, theirs no need to send the B52's over

Lawman: Obviously the issue is with the actual testing, since PC can't be used as a reference player (heck, it views Word docs as well -- my stand-alone DVD player doesn't). But what is different from US in Europe is that 95% of the players are perfectly capable of playing NTSC movies and as region code removal is perfectly legal within EU, virtually all players are regionfree anyway. So, you just need to have R1 movies and otherwise most of us are good to go.

dRD: got that, just did'nt find the correct way of putting it, hence my comment about sending over the B52, make's a change for us Limey's to have one up on the Yanks!!!! I did read in some Mag, that the EU, was better served to do both format's, My apoligies, did not mean to sound patronising..

OK, sorry, here's my ignorance showing again. I have signed up to be a beta tester (just ordered a DVD+ burner) and I'm in Scotland. Can I get R1 movies here in the UK? Would I be able to convert Pal into NTSC & then test the Beta? Will I have to wait until the PAL beta is released? Will I get away with telling my wife the burner only cost me £90 ;o) Cheers

Finally, We are releasing the beta version of DvdXCopy. There are a few things to bear in mind: 1. This is a beta and some of you will likely have trouble installing, running, burning and/or playback. 2. For this reason, DO NOT USE DVDR’s unless you have money to throw away on DVDR coasters. 3. USE DVDRW’s ONLY 4. XP users may experience problems when installing or running the program 5. The shortcuts created on the desktop and in the startup menu will not launch the program correctly. Please run the program directly from the Program Files\321Studios directory or create a new shortcut on your desktop from this exe 6. After downloading, please run the exe and DO NOT CHANGE ANY OF THE DEFAULTS, including directory location 7. When you have run through the first step in the installation, then proceed to the following directory C:\Program Files\321Studios\DVDXCopy_Beta\driver_install and run the setup.exe program 8. This program will install the necessary drivers on your computer 9. If you receive an error during this process, ignore it for the time being 10. YOU MUST RESTART YOUR COMPUTER at this point 11. After restarting, again launch the program directly from the Program Files\321Studios Directory or create a new shortcut on your desktop from this exe. 12. If when you start the program, you get a page cannot be displayed in the left side of the screen, you have not followed step 11 13. It is a good idea to go ahead and have an original DVD Movie in your DVD Rom when starting the program 14. This beta version will expire in 30 days 15. Please report bugs, suggestions, comments to bugs@dvdxcopy.com 16. The rest should be self explanatory This beta software and all accompanying documentation has been copyrighted by and is the property of 321Studios 720 Spirit 40 Park Chesterfield, MO 63005 636 728 0100 THE USE OF THIS BETA IS STRICTLY AT YOUR OWN RISK 321STUDIOS WILL ASSUME NO LIABILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES CAUSED BY THE USE OR MISUSE OF THIS SOFTWARE

Some more instructions from our engineers: DVDXCopy Beta 1 (20OCT2002) Please read through these release notes. * Before running the DVDXCopy other drivers need to be installed. Driver Installation Instructions: Method 1: 1) Go to the DVDXCopy Beta 1 Program group on the windows start menu. 2) Select the "Drivers" short cut. This will run the driver installation program. 3) Reboot your PC after the drivers install. Method 2: 1) Open the directory where DVDXCopyWasInstalled (Default is \\Program Files\321 Studios\DVDXCopy\). 2) Change to the "driver_install" directory 3) run SETUP.exe 4) Reboot your PC after the drivers install Notes: 1) You MUST reboot your PC after the driver installation. Not doing so can cause problems with reading and writing DVD's. 2) When the SETUP.exe is run under windows XP it will, on occasion, report a "Missing file: -1" error. This error can be ignored, and the drivers will install correctly. We are searching for the source of this error. * Other Known Issues These are currently known issues with the software; please remember that this is BETA software, so all functionality is not yet enabled, and some functionality might not preform as expected. 1) Dr. Watson Errors under Windows XP - the software has been known to cause Dr. Watson Errors in isolated cases. Please report this behavior if it is seen because we are having a difficult time reproducing these errors. * Reporting Bugs Please report all bugs to bugs@dvdxcopy.com. Please include as much information as possible, including: - Operating System Version and any Service Packs - Amount of physical memory - Amount of free disk space on the installation and temporary drives - Brand name of DVD (R) and/or DVD(RW) drives - The Type and Frequency of Error - The severity of the Error - Name Brand and Model Number of your Home DVD Player (if used) - Name of the DVD that caused the problems - Which Title sets were being copied at the time of the problem - Which Disk was being created/burned at the time of the problem - Any other information that might be helpful in recreating or diagnosing the problem Thank you, The DVDXCopy Team.

Just got the email with the link to dl the beta, but instead of the 2 beta files, the link takes me to a whole bunch of folders and files. In there is DVDx_2_0.zip, so I thought, maybe that's it and dl'd it. That turned out to be DVDx, so what gives? Was the link wrong? Files not there yet?

The reason you are getting the primary anonymous FTP site is because you are not entering the username and password in IE. You cannot use Internet Explorer as your ftp client unless you are familiar with putting the username and password in the URL. So you would do something like this ftp://username:password@ftp.321studios.com For security reasons, I did not include the username and password that was emailed earlier to the beta list. However, if you lack a basic FTP client, like WSFTP or CUTEFTP (I would recommend getting one of these, at least the trial versions) you can also get to the FTP site by using a command prompt and typing ftp ftp.321studios.com (at a command prompt) This will prompt you for username and password and you will see the two files in the directory. Cheers!

Any one else get a server not found when trying to register program?

We're having some firewall issues. It's back up at the moment. Please try to register again. Cheers!

RHMoore, I don't know if you are the right one to ask this to or not, but is the new Sony DVD+-RW drive the 500RUA I believe it is supported by your software?

I don't know if that drive is compatible or not, but I believe that it is. You might want to send an email to bugs@dvdxcopy.com and ask the same question as the engineers are monitoring that email inbox. If you buy it, make sure you can return it, if you need to. Cheers!

Just wondering if anyone else is having long timeframe just to create the image to the temp folder...I am just trying to burn Hackers = 4.2 Gb file and it estimates 2 hours just to make the image Oh yea almost forgot...i have tried to email bugs@321studios.com and I get a NDR....they must be having alot of firewall issues

The correct email address for bug reporting is bugs@dvdxcopy.com

arrgh my bad...sorry Robert

BTW, for those of you experiencing some burning issues, until we resolve them, you can use Nero to burn the contents of the temporary folder onto the DVD RW.

At this point, I have to bow out of the technical process. Our engineers will be monitoring this thread and answering emails to bugs@dvdxcopy.com. Remember, it's a beta, and it may take a few days to get everything running smoothly. Cheers Everyone! Thanks for helping us test this product.

Robert, on behalf of everybody, I'd like to say "thanks" for getting us the beta as promised and best of luck to you and 321 studios with this product.

Yes Robert, Thank you!! You have gone above and beyond the call of duty. I cannot get the software to write to my Sony DRU-500A recorder, but I have sent an e-mail to bugs@dvdcopy.com with all the information needed to help out. Again, thank you.

well hopefully you will read this thread at least once more rhmoore. i was civil in my first post but it seems some people need it spelled out to them in blunter terms. now lets get things straight since obviously some people cant read. i never said 321studios sold DVDx. i corrected the statement by rhmoore that the GPL allowed selling of programs. it does not. its allows charging for downloading etc. go back and read my post again. the authers name and homepage have always been in the guide that comes with DVDx so to claim it as "news" means you obviously didnt bother to read the guide in the first place. since 321studios werent breaking the law or GPL by giving away the software and charging for theirs guides etc how exactly could we complain ? yes we could have said we dont like it and then been told to get stuffed. since 321studios was the one that decided to use that software then it was up to it to do the contacting if only on moral grounds. yes i know all about xcopy, both the dos and amiga versions. to say though that its obvious thats whats reffered to is wrong. when you see dvdxcopy you are saying that people will only see dvd xcopy (or dvd-xcopy). bull. hows this look then, dvdx copy (dvdx-copy) ? to say that no one would/could confuse the 2 is plain ignorant. yes both programs have a different end result as i said in the first post but both deal with dvds. so as i said, you are trying to say that no one would/could confuse them ? a simply name change to dvd-xcopy would solve that i would think but you do not seem to want to even consider it. says something of your respect of free software.

I am a real neophyte when it comes to ftp. I currently have a dos command-line window running and have successfully logged in TO the ftp site. The command "dir" identified the two files I must download, and gave me their filesizes in bytes. Does *anybody* know what I should *now* type-in to get these files? I'll stay online for awhile in hopes someone can reply to this. I'll leave the dos window open. I don't have any ftp software installed, but if no reply is to come this evening, will install an ftp client sometime tomorrow, like cuteftp or whatever, and try again. (Grrrrrr.......) -- Mike --

did you try get, or copy? Those are some somewhat dossy commands that may work.

why dont u use ie... goto link then goto file..then login as and input correct info the 2 files will automatically appear because of the login info u provided

you should have an FTP> prompt.. type this command: get dvdxcopybeta.exe <hit enter> that should do it ;-)

cpukiller: You're going to go to heaven someday for that! :-) :-) Downloading the beta as we speak. (thank you!) I used the 'get' command as you suggested and got the readme file. Now doing the same for the beta. It says I'm receiving it in "ASCII mode". (Well, the readme is obviously ascii, so no problem), but the beta binary (which I won't completely receive for some time as I'm using a dialup modem), well, will IT be in some 'ascii' form? Or does 'ascii mode' just refer to some download protocol like x-modem or y-modem? (I can't believe I just asked so many dumb questions). Anyway cpukiller, will reply again as soon as the beta fully arrives over the modem. *Much* obliged !!! -- Mike --

Boy, do I feel stupid. The end of a long day - I saw a link and without thinking clicked on it, not realizing it was ftp. btw, I don't use MSIE, but that's another story. For FTP I use Windows Commander (Norton's Commander clone), dl with no problems.

as long as u got it...=p now start burning!!!!

<heh-heh> :) hula73 and VCDjunkie, thank you both. (still seem to be receiving the beta ok - something's definately coming through). Using just "get", and ftp asked for a filename. Typed "dvdxcopybeta.exe", and ftp said "Local File?", and I typed "c:\download\dvdxcopybeta.exe". (Perhaps I could have got it in the shorter way you suggested vcdjunkie, ie, "get dvdxcopybeta.exe". Regardless, something's coming through. Thanks, guys. -- Mike -- P.S. Hmmmmm.... approx 25 megs @ 56k - should take about 16 hours right? (just joking) :-)

Just backed up Liar_Liar and at least on this backup everything went smooth. Using a Pioneer A04 DVD recorder and using windows xp pro. One thing is that this software is really easy to use. I will try other discs tomorrow. This copy plays on my panasonic rp56 and toshiba 4800 with no problems. My many thanks to 321studios and rhmoore for allowing us to d/l the beta. So far I think that 321studios has bent over backwards to get this out.

Beta Received. Took 1 Hr. 50 Mins. Shut-eye time. Nite. -- mgb --

Hi. No Problems with Install, but when reading dvd, I get the following error message, ( Cannot read Archive.txt) this happens at the end of the read ie:100%, the films tried so far are - Junkman / region1 / NTSC & - Godzilla / region1 / NTSC equipment used WindowsXP home edition, 512meg 333ddr - Asus gforce4 4600i / Athlon 1900xp CPU - Pioneer 106 multi region DVD Rom - Philips 228 DVD Writer, but did not get too write stage, as when you acknowledge above error is proceeds to close down the DVDX COPY, will keep trying with other Films and try to work out what the error means. any Ideas anyone. copy of error sent to (bugs@dvdxcopy.com)

Only one small bug that seems to be in most DVD copy stuff..... I had to get another program to start the movie before DVDxCopy would pick up the movie. Most all the programs out do that from time to time. Great software and VERY EASY to use!!! I was using Rush Hour 2. WinXP Pro p4 1.8g 1024MB Rambus Asus P4T 523 (motherboard) Pioneer DVR-A04 Generic Sony DVD drive (OEM)

from memory a_klingon to download in binary use the command MODE B before using get. you should see a "mode set to binary" or something similar. been a long time since i did ftp that way. :) real reason for this post. notice what lawman just called the program ? DVDX COPY. note the space between DVDX and COPY ? that was why i asked for the name change. so now maybe those that said it wouldnt/couldnt be confused with DVDx should think again. ok it was probably a simple typo by lawman but it does illustrate the point. since dvdxcopy hasnt been released (except the betas of course) then it should be easy for them to make a small change to the name (as i already suggested dvd-xcopy) to save confusion. if they are unwilling to then what other conclusion can i come to except they dont mind and are willing to use any name recognition (from DVDx) they get.

Just to let everyone know, I haven't left the thread as might be interpreted from my last post. I will continue to monitor and reply, but I am going to let the software engineers work through the bugs and issues. Also, if you remember, we put off the beta for 24 hours because of the dvd drivers. I'm not entirely sure they are right, because the alpha version worked fine on my laptop and now the beta doesn't. So I think we probably, for the most part, have a driver installation issue in a lot of cases. At least that's my theory. We'll try to get at least those issues resolved today. Also, I don't mind anyone sending me personal email, but if it's a bug, send it to bugs@dvdxcopy.com since I am also on that recipient list. That way the appropriate parties will also see it. Cheers!

dragondz: Actually, we cannot change the name at this point. You might think we have very little in it at this point, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. We are already in mass production for retail boxes, dvd cases, inserts, marketing material and the like. So changing our name at this point, is simply not doable. I've explained why we chose the name, it had nothing to do with DVDx, but you apparently cannot accept my answer. So, why don't we try and work together? Perhaps we could give labdv some banner space on our web page and do some cross promotion to help differentiate our products? What do you think?

where can i download the betaversion of dvdxcopy can anyone help me please

darryl: Isn't it clear based on the 100+ messages above? You wont be able to download it unless you have participated in beta program -- and you can't join the beta program anymore.

dRD ; ok sorry buth i had not read all the posts ;my english is not that good ; i am from belgium and i am searching the net for a programm that makes it easy to copy my movies

DragonDZ: Yes it was a typo, its a bit perdantic to jump on though, if you look at the way I typed the message, I put a lot of spaces between quite a few names, but every one reading it new I meant DVDxcopy, as that is the one we are all beta testing and disscussing on this forum.. Sorry RHMOORE, for giving someone more ammo to have a dig..

Lawman: NP! But I want to assure everyone, that our choice of names had absolutely nothing to do with DVDx. The similarity is purely coincidental. I just hope MS isn't the next one to claim some type of product name infringement! :) Cheers!

rhmoore, actually i do understand the difficulties of changing things once you have started printing and so yes i understand that. it is possible to also insert a slip with each package clearing any possible confusion by stating that any confusion people may have between the 2 programs names (being similar) was unintentional and stating where dvdxcopy got its name from. if this is not acceptable then something similar on the dvdxcopy website would be something at least. i never said the naming was intentional at any time. i simply said that there is the potential for confusion because the names are so similar. it only take a single step from dvdx to dvdxcopy, its just copy on the end. as for labdv, i nor Jean Luc Pons have anything to do with the running of it. labdv hosts the website, initial distribution and forum of DVDx. we have no say in how they run it or what they do or do not advertise. as such i can not speak for labdv. after dvdxcopy goes on sale they may to do a do review or not. it will have nothing to do with me one way or the other. the thing i do find hard to believe is that you say you couldnt find the name or webpage of DVDx. as i said before, its always been in the guide that comes with DVDx and so the only way you couldnt have seen it is that you didnt read the guide. if you didnt read the documentation that comes with DVDx then you could hardly say you made every effort to find out can you ? none of this has been said with malice i hope you will note. as i also said before, i do hope dvdxcopy turns out to be as good as it sounds. ok i will never use it as i dont have a dvd burner and wont for the forseeable future (unless i win lotto :) ) but it always interesting to hear about these types of things.

actually lawman it was meant to illustrate a point and i fully acknowledged it was probably a typo. the fact that this forum knows the difference is not true of the rest of the people out there. take this scenario. joe wants to backup his dvds. bill tells him he should get DVDx as he has seen it mentioned on many dvd/video related web sites (as it is). joe finds dvdxcopy and buys that thinking thats what bill was talking about. does that actually sound impossible to you ? it shouldnt as it would be a simple mistake to make by joe public. yes joe may be happy with dvdxcopy and good luck to him if so. again though, thats not the point. the point is that dvdxcopy would have sold from DVDx name recognition. the reverse could happen aswell of course. the difference being we (the programmers of DVDx) dont actually sell or make any money from DVDx. that isnt DVDx's intent.

Dragongdz: Point taken! and yes you did say it was probaly a typo, but again how far do you take the it, do you (don't mean you personally) argue that MS would confuse people, Bill says to jack buy at MS, now is that Marks & Spencers Or Microsoft, Surely Joe, would ask Bill, Which was the right Web Site, if he was confused. I do not know what Country you are from, but MS in the UK is often used for Marks & Spencer. (Marks&Sparks)Their must be 1000's of Sample's and yes could be confusing, but at the end of the day. the Purchaser also has a responsibility....

Ok, Enough of this Name Game !! I freaking don't care what it's call, as long as it works. Now that the Beta is out and some of you have installed it, lets hear some results. From the threads above, I saw only 1 confirmation of backup success. Anyone else have good/bad results? :My Gerbil Own Your Gerbil !

First backup was a failure...Burner is a Philips DVDRW228..movie was "hackers" ..lol..had to use that movie.. P41.6, 512 meg of ram, XP Pro...backup of the image took 1.75 hrs and then when it went to burn it canned out....because of Roberts post i went into the temp dir and was going to burn it in nero...but to my surprise...nothing was found in there...will have to try it again when i get back from work...hopefully just user error

HELP!!!! Any other Beta testers getting the - Cannot read Archive.txt - message at the end of reading DVD. if so did you get around it

lawman ,i agree that there is probably hundreds of examples of name confusion. should it then be ignored ? i dont think so. the solutions i proposed to help clarify and differentiate the 2 programs have been simple and straigh forward. also once dvdxcopy is for sale i will be talking to Jean Luc and the head of labdv about it. i will try to get added to the DVDx homepage and in the guide that comes with DVDx a statement that these are 2 seperate programs done by different people and though both are aimed at dvd backup they do so differently etc. surley it is not a big ask for 321studios to do something similar ? your question about joe asking bill if he was confused asumes he would be. you'd be suprised at how many people would simply go "that must be it" and not check. yes people do have a responsability to know what they are getting but a little help from we who do know these things is simply a curtious thing to do. especially when it requires only a tiny bit of effort. i am from Australia since you asked. yes snapfu i understand this is of no interest to probably most of the people on here. that doesnt mean it isnt of any importance to some of us. instead of berating us try aiming your messages to those that have got the beat and tried it and not posted their results.

Hula73, I got my beta last night and ran the prog w/o any problems. Came up to the screen asking where to burn it and since my burner wasn't installed yet told it to exit. Looked in the directory I told it to save the files and they were now gone. Ran the prog again and on the second attempt I copied the directory that was used for the files before clicking cxl or to exit out of the program. I then used PowerDVD XP to play the movie and it came up to the menu however it kept playing the same little advertisment over and over no matter what I told it to do. Not sure if this was a bug or not so I sent an email to Robert after I tried sending to the bug address which got returned. Putting the burner in tonight when I get it back. Let all know then how it worked...Program is extremely easy to use and having the window on the left of the screen walk you thru everything is a nice touch..great job in the layout of the prog guys..hopefully between all of us helping with the beta they can get the rest of the bugs out and get a rock solid solution.... James

Am I right in asumming that the - Cannot read Archive.txt - error I recieve at the end of the Reading of the source Drive, is refering to the Archive.txt in the DVDxcopy_beta folder. if so, I will uninstall the program clean out any ref. to it in Windows Registry. and re-Install (just in case) Dragongdz: have to agree to disagree, any how good luck, and sorry about Austrailer's recent loss..

dragongdz: My understanding of DVDx was that the author could not be located. Now, I have to confess some ignorance here because when I first started DCP, we didn't use DVDx, we used TMPGenc. It is possible that I was given incorrect information regarding DVDx. But let's try and agree on the following point: We don't sell DVDx. We don't charge for it, we don't restrain or restrict its' use or installation in any way. We don't modify it in any way. It is simply included in the tools folder, unencumbered on the disk that we ship. We make no reference to it on our site. We have been attacked for this, but if you look at it from our side, we're not trying to gain market share from publishing the names of these packages on our web site. In other words, if we were truly *selling* DVDx, then we would make mention of it somewhere on our web site, but we don't. If you don't believe me, download the complete product from our anonymous ftp site. You will see that you can quite easily install all the tools we reference in DCP without registering the DCP application (i.e. buying it). You can also quite easily, download the DVDx.zip file without first buying DCP. I could agree with your argument, if we required users to pay for our product before seeing the links to download these programs (as our *scam* competitors do) or if we encumbered these freeware and GPL tools in some way (i.e. encrypted files) and required the purchase of DCP to unlock, but we don't. Surely the logic of what I am saying is clear on the face of it. But, if DVDx is truly published under GPL, then we are simply redistributing according to the rules published at GNU. In fact, DVDVx is redistributed with every readme file intact, every license file intact and presumably the instructions to obtain the source as required by the GNU. How could that possibly be construed as we are selling DVDx? I have nothing but the greatest respect for you and the authors of this software and I openly declare here in this forum, my commitment and willingness to resolve this once and for all in way that make both of us feel comfortable. If you would like us to remove the software and include a link only in DCP, I will consider that, but I fear a backlash from others who will then claim we are truly forcing users to pay for our product before seeing the link to download freeware. We really have tried to do this right and chose the method of bundling the free tools in such a way that didn’t require our customer to pay us in order to use them, so that we WERE NOT perceived as hawkers of freeware or that we were trying to profit off the backs and blood of others. On the other hand, DCP will fade to the background very soon as DvdXCopy will consume all of our marketing efforts and time. In fact, one idea that we’ve been kicking around is giving DCP away for FREE, once DvdXCopy is in full swing. In any event, 321studios is committed to providing a quality product and quality customer support. I wish we could do it for FREE, but the real world demands otherwise.

Out of curiosit has anyone tried loading the drivers in safe mode to see if this helps at all? Just a thought.

rhmoore, this is the last time i am going to say this. i never said you sold DVDx. i corrected the statement you made earlier that the GPL allows selling of programs. it does not. it does allow for charging for downloading etc. so please no more saying i said you sold DVDx. reread my earlier posts if you dont believe me. just as also under the GPL you (and anyone else) can distribute DVDx so yes i can request you not to include DVDx but since you arent selling it i dont have any real right to. i simply said it would have been curtious to inform us that you were going to use it in your package. also you made the statement that you couldnt find the programmer or webpage for DVDx. again i corrected that both are in the guide that comes with DVDx. i have to take your word that it was the fault of others giving you bad information. again this has been covered enough already. you will also then see that the last few have been focused on a few simple solutions that could be done by both 321studios and we the programmers of DVDx to reduce risk of any confusion because of the similarity in names. there is no name calling, no threats or anything similar if you want to go and reread my earlier posts. i have simply corrected wrong statements made by you and given some ideas. i have even wished you luck on what sounds like an interesting program. so please reread at least the last couple of posts by me and let me know your opinion of at least putting statements about the 2 programs on both the dvdxcopy and DVDx websites. lawman, thanks.

dragongdz: On the face of it, I suppose we wouldn't have a real problem with putting some type of disclaimer on our web site. If you could provide some suggestions as to textual context, I would be most grateful.

Story so far, Uninstalled DVDXcopyc- Cleaned Windows Registery - downloaded the beta again (incase of corrupted download before) thank god for DSL. reInstalled / No Problem's / then Installed Drivers / re booted / Inserted Con Air Region 1 / DVDxcopy reported ! disk required / clicked on copy now, / time taken 0:10:54 reached 99% complete movie, up it came - Cannot read Archive.txt - Cannot do anything until you aknowledge, then Program closes down and does not save it's work....Agggh. Still fantastic piece of software , simple to use, Can only be a small Problem, will reformat hard drive if I have too, and reinstall Bug Free - LOL Windows XP, and only have a few nessacesary programs on, just incase, something else on my PC is causing the Problem.. (gunshot in background)

Aaahhh...why is my name in Pink? Just curious...

321Studios Engineers will be posting listserv instructions here for our beta testers sometime today. We are aware of the XP issues and are working to resolve them quickly.

No its not, mine is, heh,heh

SnapFu: Disgusting, isn't it?-) Don't worry, next version of the site's layout is hopefully out within next couple of months which will get rid of that :-)

Hi got connected fine and downloaded 11Mb when it suddenly stopped :( I can reconnect to the ftp site but it says that dvdxcopybeta.exe does not exist!

I would like to commend our beta testers for being so willing to help us figure out the XP and other problems. But please, don't go reformatting your drive just yet, unless you absolutely want to. We may have identified some of the XP issues and don't encourage you to do anything drastic until we announce our findings and possible solutions. Cheers!

Floyd: You are probably one of the few I had to forcefully disconnect as I uploaded a newer version of the beta and wanted to delete the older version. You should be able to get to it now though. Cheers!

I thought it might be something like that Robert, Thanks.

rhmoore: thanks I'll wait, as it was my next job.

Nope, the file doesn't seem to be there. I'm connecting to your ftp site no problem, but still states that the file doesn't exist. I'll leave it for a while & try later.

I haven't been able to download it yet! - I had tried all methods suggested but now think that I have figured it out. I use a fast Satellite downlink for Internet and all I get is a communications "timeout" so have switched to slow ISDN and it is finally downloading. Shame! - Can anyone else download it via satellite broadband?

Floyd: I just logged in and the file is there and I started to download it. No problem. Are you sure you are logging in correctly? Robert

rhmoore do you recommend uninstalling the 1st beta and installing the updated one? I am running windows xp pro with sp1 and so far have backed up Dirty Dancing and Liar_Liar with no problems. My burner is a Pioneer A04. Thanks in advance for anyfeedback!

mechanic: If it's working, leave it alone. We may need your help in determining why. All others: Please sign up for listserv if you haven't done so already. You should have received an email from me with instructions, if not, please goto http://www.dvdxcopybeta.tridentlist.com and sign up. Cheers!

BTW, the file name for the beta is no longer dvdxcopybeta.exe. It is dvdxcopy_beta_1.exe. Floyd: Maybe you were looking for the wrong file before.

Hi, I'm a developer at 321Studios, and now that we have the Beta out to some users, I'd like to address some of the issues that have been raised on this forum. DeCSS and legal issues: The dispute between whether or not DVD XCopy uses deCSS is more an issue of semantics than substance. When Robert says we don't use DeCSS he is referring to the source code for DeCSS, about which there was such a flap a year or so ago. Bottom line is, yes, the software has to descramble the contents of the DVD in order to do anything useful with it. It does so using techniques we have developed ourselves based on information that we have legally acquired. {I Am Not A Lawyer disclaimer goes here, as does the fact I'm ignoring the unconstutional portions of the DMCA.} In particular we did not violate copyright, non-disclosure, licensing, contracts, or trade secrets to get this information; and the information is not covered by patent. Although it might be possible for unscrupulous persons to perform illegal acts while using our product we have made a reasonable effort to prevent such use without getting involved in a technical war. We see no future in "you can't copy this because our encryption scheme is better than yours" battle. Users of our product will not commit illegal acts accidentally -- they would have to make an intentional effort to do so. As part of this "reasonable effort" we do not leave a clear copy of the movie on the user's hard drive (previous versions did which is why Robert suggested burning with Nero -- that technique doesn't work anymore.) Our goal is to enable users who wish to use our product to make fair-use of material protected by copyright to to do so without being unduly inconvenienced (you have to watch an 8 second warning.) .. to be continued

Comparing DVD XCopy to IFOEdit, et. al. IFOEdit is a great product -- as are several other public domain programs. There is also some crap out there, caveat downloader (wish I knew the Latin for "downloader"). On the other hand, IFOEdit does not address our target market. If I gave IFOEdit to an average computer user the brain-meltdown would probably occur within 30 seconds. We have truly targeted a one-click solution (well, at the moment it takes two clicks, but hey, who's counting?) In addition to ease-of-use, we believe our product solves some of the problems we have found in other solutions. These problems manifest themselves as "This movie won't play on that player." We still require that the DVD player be able to physically read the media (some don't like DVD-R, some don't like DVD+R, etc.) but we are working toward avoiding logical errors that some players have with brute-force copying techniques.

to all those reporting the "cannot find archive.txt"-problem: RTFM and do not change the installation path and dont start dvdxcopy with desktop-icon my Beta-report so far: download went fine, no problems installation went easy after reading README.TXT :-) i am just backing up a Cheech&Chong movie, estimated time is 45 mins - will be back when done

Where does DVD XCopy split the movie?: We have an "intellegent" algorithm for splitting the movie automatically. I won't go into details now, but I will say it splits between chapters so the odds are we won't catch you mid-explosion. In future releases we hope to provide the user with more control, if they want it. but our primary goal for this product is always going to be ease-of-use, not geek-level power (speaking as a geek)!

Why didn't the beta go out when Robert said it would? Hey, we're writing software here! The complexity level for the second disk in particular if we want it to play on all (or almost all) players, is roughly the same as authoring the DVD in the first place. In some cases it's more complex since we're trying to adapt the existing authoring information rather than having the freedom to make it up as we need it. The first release won't completely solve these problems (for example: there may be glitches on disk two when performing more complex actions, say skipping from chapter to chapter, etc.) but we think we know how to solve them in the future. Bottom line is we're optimists because realists have more sense than to get into software development, so development schedules tend to run somewhat ahead of reality.

So what can we expect in the beta? As some testers have discovered our testing on XP was limited (we do the development on Win 2K, 'cause we like it better than XP.) We're addressing the OS testing issue, and expect to have full testing done before we ship the first non-beta release. We also have not tested with very many drives. That too is being addressed even as I type. Disk two produced by the beta doesn't start the way we really want it to. Right now you end up back at the main menu and you have to click "Play movie" to continue viewing the movie. It has problems if you have TWO DVD writers in your system. I had to pull the DVD-RW drive to do the final test of the beta to the DVD+R drive. (We should all have such problems, eh?) Needless to say we're working on that one. There are numerous cosmetic problems in the beta. I was particularly embarassed by the "Burning disk 2 of 0" message, but I think I fixed that one. Does it do PAL? Not yet. We're working on that, too.

rhmoore - Getting it fine now. I was using a simple prompt command before but using WS_FTP now where it shows that you did change the name of the file! DOH! Cheers Dougie :)

321dev: Out of curiosity, what's that different in PAL and NTSC, since -- AFAIHU (as far as I have understood) -- you don't actually process the video at all, but instead cut the movies based on the IFO data in order to split them over two 4.7GB discs?

ok, more beta-reports: backup went well under xp with pioneer a03 (ext. firewire) using a princo dvd-rw it took 44 mins for the backup (4.4 gb) and about 25 mins to burn movie was cheech&chong 'up in smoke' - PAL dvd-player mustek 562S recognizes the dvd and plays up to the menu, after selecting main movie it freezes - guess it's because it's a pal-dvd burning a dvd-r now, lets see how it works

Robert I have been reading this thread all day and have had to grit my teeth at times as I am sure that you have. May I say that I think 321 studios have preformed superbly under extreme pressure from the public out there. My hat goes off to your software developers I also spoke to Mike today and is arranging all the info that I require to sucessfuly launch DVD XCOPY in the UK. Keep up the good work

hiGH-5: RTFM - does that mean retry film? after 13 hrs my brain is dead....

Everyone: Please understand, we are aware of the XP problems. I don't mind you emailing your results, but if you are using XP and it is not working, don't freak out! If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to the ListServ so that you can be notified as soon as the new beta addressing the XP problems is released. Thanks for trying and thanks for your patience. We will resolve these problems. Cheers! dvd-tech: Thanks Kieron. We appreciate your support and patience.

dRD, Is there anyway I can change my response to getting updates on this thread. I check this forum about 2-3 times a day already but I am getting 25-30 emails about updates. Also since a lot of the replies are dealing with the beta how about just a topic for people that are beta testing and people who want to read about the test. This may make things a little easier for some people just getting on board to follow without reading all these post (and many more to come I am sure). Just a suggestion..... Keep up the good work.......This site is really making things come together for DVD backups.

321 Studios releases DVDXCOPY!?! http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php3?ID=4957 You guys are starting to get write ups already. LOL.

lol, glad im not the only one who is getting a tad annoyed by this! Normally boards only email once no matter how many replys the thread gets. Then once you've visited the board again, it resets itself and then emails once more before again waiting for you to visit. Even posting again and unchecking the little notification box doesnt work :-( Still...I guess if the board is made in-house, you have to expect these short-comings. Stick InvisionBoard on! It rules! ;)

starting program from program folder solved the problem of the (Cannot read Archive.txt) error. reads ConAir in 7mins 40 seconds. then the gear windows pops up, and shows what cd / dvd drives I have. but cannot choose the Philips 228 DVD Writer, only allows me to choose my Asus CD writer. Windows XP Home Ed. Athlon 1900+XP 512meg mem. Asus48/16a / Pioneer 106 DVD Rom region free / Philips 228 DVD Writer region free.

Does it support dvd+r/+rw drives? Im guessing its looking for the dvdr bit in the cd capabilites page. The +r drives probably wont have this set and so it doesnt think its a burner. Of course I could just be speaking out of my butt...Im not sure exactly how they've implemented the burning stuff. I hope they're having as much fun as I am! Well, 321 people, if you're not checking the features and profiles, I suggest you look into it. :)

Actually, that's a bit of a bug and an improper implementation. If you choose the drop down for the burner, it may only show your CDR, but you should notice there are some smaller scroll buttons in that drop down where you can choose your DVD Burner. Small bug that is being fixed as we speak. Cheers!

For those of you experiencing trouble downloading the beta, you CANNOT access the ftp folder by simply using IE or Netscape to goto ftp.321studios.com. That will only log you into the anonymous ftp site, where you will see a couple dozen files. You need to use an ftp client OR using IE or Netscape you can use the following link AFTER replacing the username:password with the username and password I sent you by email. ftp://username:password@ftp.321studios.com It was my mistake in the first place by assuming you would use an ftp client, hence the original link that I sent by email. Cheers!

Hi guys, now this thing _SHOULD_ send a reminder message that also includes an URL that you can click in order to unsubscribe from this thread. And yes, the whole thing is built in-house -- it allows much, MUCH better integration with news articles and such :-) But obviously it doesn't have all the c00l features yet.

well it's midnight now in the UK, have been at it since 07:30 this morning, been a great learning experiance, never been involved in beta testing before. will be up again in 7 hours to continue, My two Cats are feeling a bit left out though, still a cuddle and a bit of steak will put them right. goodnight one and all. keep up the good work.

I've been beta testing for the last 10 years for MS (New Technologly & MSN et all) but I'm yet to download this one successfully!!!:(

Can you use a dvd rom drive with this software to burn.. Basically, friend wants to know can you backup your movies w/o having a burner.

phil1991: Can your stand-alone DVD player record music from FM radio? No, it can't :-) So, DVD burner is needed for DVD burning.

I think phil1991 means: can DVDXCOPY back up a movie to hard disk if one does not own a DVD recorder.

rhmoore.... using the link in your previous post.... ur saying that will put us on the list for those of us running XP?? Everyone: Please understand, we are aware of the XP problems. I don't mind you emailing your results, but if you are using XP and it is not working, don't freak out! If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to the ListServ so that you can be notified as soon as the new beta addressing the XP problems is released. Thanks for trying and thanks for your patience. We will resolve these problems. Cheers! dvd-tech: Thanks Kieron. We appreciate your support and patience.

Actually, everyone on the beta list will be notified when the new beta is available. We hope to be switching to the new listserv to do this, but want to give everyone enough time to sign up first. Cheers!

Robert, I just returned from a 2 week vacation to see that you closed the beta program,I did mail you on OCT 10th,but upon checking my email on my arrival back today I dont seem to be included?.Sorry to take up yours and the forums time,but I was so looking forward to joing the beta program, and did email you in good faith.. I do hope you can help me here.. Regards.. Keith ps to EVERYONE else Sorry to send this in the forum,I could not see how todo pm's...

Hi guys I know ,,,long time I havnt given a post but I just used the beta version of DVDXCOPY,,,and had a few things to say about the program. Most backups I tried required 2 disks,my sony DRU-120A is not compatible (yet) I've successfully copied TOMB RAIDER AND A XXX (JUST TO TRY). The first time I bombed out 2nd time was the charm. Heres what I did. I let the program run,,, when the dvd burning script came up I minimized everything and used nero and I just ignored the error problems that came up and started burning and to my surprise A FULL DVD.. TOMB RAIDER took 34 minutes to rip n burn,, the xxx took 30. I'll send my report to 321 STUDIOS BUGZ DEPT. In closing if the 2 disk problem can be reduce and the rest of the bugzz are fixed the program will be OFF THE HOOK

Also I'm using xp pro AMD 1900 XP

threepeat: can you specify what you did once in nero to begin burning the disk, because im not sure what type of dvd to make (ex. iso, udf, ect.) or the right settings to choose? Because i tried once and it didnt read my disk Thanks

USE THE WIZARD AND CHOOSE OTHER DVD FORMATS THEN CHOOSE DVD-VIDEO REMEBER AFTER YOU USE DVDXCOPY DONT CLOSE IT WHEN THE BURN SCRIPT COMES UP OR IT'LL DELETE ITSELF BY DEFAULT WHEN THE ERRORS COME UP JUST IGNORE AND BURN

rhmoore, off the top of my head i would think something like the following would be fine. DVDXCopy is a program for backing up dvds to dvd-r(w) and should not be confused for the freeware program DVDx, which is for backing up dvds as vcd,svcd and avi. The 2 programs are in no way related or written by the same people. as i said thats off the top of my head but it says all that needs to be said i would say. let me know what you think anyway.

draongdz, no offense, but it really seems as if you are just trying to leech free advertising for DVDx based off the potential success of DVDXCOPY...i notice you never raised any questions until this forum discussion got heated, well after the announcement of DVDXCOPY...very few would confuse the two products, mostly because i would wager very few lay people have even heard of DVDx while many will likely hear about DVDXCOPY as for the product, so far beta testing has been awesome...there are a few quirks, but overall i am very satisfied with the results from my first bit of testing...DVDXCOPY does not work with my DVD-R drive so i have used the Nero method described above with success the product is great and the ability to preview titles is an awesome feature so you know what you are cutting...next test will be multiple discs with some features cut out and some remaining best of luck 321 and thanks for a great product!

Oh my nerves !!!! Things are happening in here faster than I can keep up with them. Installed original beta following readme.txt to the *letter*. Only ever got to make *two* mouse clicks within program (which did pop up) before getting dreaded Win98-SE message: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down". Oh, dandy. No recourse in these cases; have seen it before. Don't know if Lawman had to reinstall his whole Win-XP OS from scratch, but *I* just wiped my entire 80 gig HDD clean and did a _complete_, _total_ _system_ install, have just now installed ISP + bla+bla+bla..... So I will now start ALL OVER AGAIN. I see new beta in there already. Will get it. BTW, we've finally beaten the Finns for longest single thread by at least 8 posts & climbing. (285 here, 277 over there). Yeah!!! -- One Very Tired Klingon --

Good morning all. A.Klingon: Hi did not have to reformat in the end, 2x80gig, 40 of which is set aside soly for ripping. I took of that horrible SP1 which sped up the ripping, and started DVDXCOPY from it's folder on C: Average time to read the disk seems to be between 10/12mins, but as yet, In the burn screen failed to reconize my Philips 228 dvd+r/rw, sent of a screen grab to the bug's department, then left it their and went off to the land of nod, as it had gone past midnight, will be trying and no doubt winning the battle to-day.....

forgot to say, all the dumps from DVDXCOPY worked fine running off the hardDrive just using PowerDVD to view..

Story so far, Have now found out why My Philips 228 was not recording, When I put WindowsXP SP1 on it re-enabled the IMAPI CD_Burning, after I had disabled it originally. So disabled it, and tried again. Copied ConAir, 1 disk required, read in approx 12 mins, chose burner, and burnt approx 30min, (next time will time from start to finish), plays in Pioneer 106 / Philips 228 / using powerDVD, with no problems at all perfect copy. Then tried in my Standalone Philips 985 DVD Recorder, flashed to make it Multi-Region....... Well done 321 for giving me, the Option to back up any of my DVD's if and when required. Have over 150 in collection, cannot see me backing them all up, but at least the choice is now mine..

I must figure out how to stop getting E-mail notifications relating to this article. I checked my Inbox and got over 200 E-mail notifications just on the '321 Studios cranks it up a notch' article!

here is another one..

Lawman: What media r u using?

seanbyrne: As said earlier, now you CAN unsubscribe, there's that little link inside each notification that comes from our forums (not from this news item yet). But yeah, the system needs tweaking. And I'm happy that the beta has performed well for people out there and hopefully we see tons of bugs fixed within next week or so. I will post a short blurp today if nothing major comes up in news otherwise. And that CDFreaks' rip-off "news" was pathetic -- posting a comment to their news suggesting confused users to check this thread and they removed my posting almost immediately :-)

Wow! Before you know it Petteri, you're going to be a celebrity, and little geeksters will be running up to you on the streets of London asking for your autograph! :) -- mgb --

Tee-Shirts, coffe mugs, mouse pads - I can see it all !!! -- tee hee --

Klingy: LOL ;-) Seriously, somehow it just is rather annoying to know exactly when your news/site's discussions/whatever are ripped off and not mentioned as a source. Obviously original news are rather impossible to produce nowadays, Internet has changed all that and now everybody is just copying from each others, but try to mention the sources at least. But anyway, did you get it working yet? I'm looking to borrow a DVD-R for couple of weeks to test this baby and produce some other guides as well until I can afford to get my g.f. angry and buy yet another "useless piece of technology" (as she puts it) in form of A05 ;-)

Yes, that was crummy of them. I visited them and there's not a single mention of a/D. If you like, Mr. Klingy can join their discussion group and set them straight; just say the word. No, dRD, it grieves me, but I just get a fatal error message, after two beta installs. Have sent very short, polite, 'please-help' message to the bugs folks at 321. Suspect I have not got enough system RAM (only 96 megs - that's all that came with system). Will upgrade if necessary, asap. It must be awful not having that burner. I feel a little 'hamstrung' too not being able to run the beta, but just see it. (Ahhrrgghhhh!!!) My drives are all recognized, and the dvd disc (retail) is correctly identified. (It's like window shopping for your dvd-burner, dRD -- seeing it in the window -- and not being able to buy it.) If I had a spare, it would be air-mailing itself over to London as we speak. (We'll get there!!!!!). Patience, my friend. ......ball-point pens, fridge magnets, key chains, Petteri-Web-Master Action Figures, after/dawn aftershave, ...... :-) -- mgb --

-LD, to be blunt, you dont know jack about what you speak. most people havent heard of DVDx ? where have you been ? most serious people in to backing up there dvds have at least heard of it. its found on most high profile dvd/video sites that have software for download (such as doom9, dvd-digest,mpegx,labdv, do i need to keep going ?) all have DVDx. try doing a search on google some time and see how many hits you get. ok a few are for a pocketpc program but you will see a hell of a lot are for the DVDx being talked about here. as for trying to leech free advertising on the POTENTIAL success , why ? to make money ? DVDx is free so i make nothing from it. obviously you never read the forum debates acusing 321studios of conning people (rightly or wrongly) by selling a guide and giving them free software (which is legal which has been said, sorry to dredge this up again rhmoore). one of the programs used was DVDx, so some may argue that 321studios infact made money from programs such as DVDx. would dvdcopyplus been available with out programs like DVDx, smartripper etc ? now i have agreed that it was legal and 321studios never sold the actual software so i have not had a go at 321studios. i will not stand by though and be insulted by someone who obviously knows bugger all about the subject. as for why i never joined the forum til later, its simply because i wasnt told rhmoore was responding on here til then. thanks dvd2svcd.

Newhaven: sorry it took awhile to answer, for ConAir I used Philips DVD+RW, I forgot to put that in... Have Just done Junkman on Verbatim, Strange one this (not the film) it needs 2 Disk, although the film is only on 1, but lot's of extra's. 1st part read in 20mins, took 18mins to burn. ---- 2nd part read in 19mins, but only took 6 mins to burn ----- Then the strange bit, put it into, Philips 985 started but could not run the extra's as they were proberly on second disk, but not really sure. Choose play movie film played but only with directores Commentry, even though chose dolby 5.1 or DTS in sound menu. (time to kick the cat). Put disk into computer, useing PowerDVD same thing, but in the on screen video consol, you can change commentry setting without stopping film, great worked fine. So decided to try Philips 985 again, and on investigateing, manage to bring up a small menue whilst the film was playing, and choose dolby 5.1 and everything was fine.... Said sorry to the Cat, gave her saucer of milk.. On Junkman their are 4 english sound tracks, No1 being dolby 5.1 and No4 being directors commentry, for some reason after copying, it defaults to option 4. A small fault, but one that could cause confusion, But if you are into ripping and the such should have the know-how to sort out, but as for Joe Public????

Is'nt it funny how after you have posted, you notice all the spelling mistake's.

Hello 321Studios team, Great work you guys! The program worked like a charm (after reading the email and program instructions) The best news is I was able to copy a movie onto DVD-RAM. So here is some unexpected functionality ;) In fact I was able to do a DVD-9 movie pretty easily onto 2 discs. Did it in a bit over 2 hrs with ripping + burn. The movie was Night of The Living Dead. A few small bugs did come up, like the 321 warning keeps playing unless i specifically point to the root menu, but then it plays like a normal DVD with same quality as original. Thx 321Studios Can't wait for full version!

dRD: have you seen the Review on the AO5 yet. at DVDwriters.co.uk. I used to own the A03 but change sold it and purchased the Philips 228, only so I could have compatibilty, with my Stand Alone philips 985, So I could record of the TV then edit on my PC using Uleads DVDWORKSHOP.

Lawman: Yes, I have. And I'm one of the many "minus" guys, disgusted with the price of "plus" discs and also I have this individual vigilantism towards IT mammoths who try to force people to pick their format (namely Dell, HP and MS).

FYI in the UK the Mirror DVD-R/RAM drive will be sold in PC WORLD and DIXONS for £199.99 in the first week of November. The Mirror drive is a rebadged Panasonic

dRD: as i said the only reason i changed was to have both machines the same, had nothing against my AO3. But will have a good look at the new Sony 500 when it appears over here in the london area. The price of Plus media is dropping now, as long as you don't buy from that well known store who like to stamp down prices,,

Two plus camp dvd + rws at the local stores (any of 'em) costs *very* nearly the same as the retail dvd movie itself. One of the new, unused, just-opened Hewlett Packard +rws I had was riddled with manufacturing errors. Not a mark on the disc itself - no scratches, no dust, no fingerprints. After re-re-re-reformatting/erasing/burning -- each new video burned showed horrible glitches, pixellations, blotches, and never failed to 'hang' my sony dvd standalone and some point. So much for Hewlett Packard. Wouldn't waste my time returning it. (They shatter quite nicely when you squeeze them though). -- mgb --

just checked the website from where I buy my DVD+R/RW disk the difference between the two formats (branded) is only penny's the 1x speed are about 40% cheaper, so far I had no problem,but bound to sometime. A.Klingon: We live in Rip off Britain, where somehow to the Retail Trade the $ = £ .

back to testing

Don't waste your time or money on the Sony 500, I just bought this piece of garbage yesterday and have yet to successfully burn a DVD-R or DVD-RW, however it doesn't seem to have a problem with DVD+R or +RW, interesting to say the least. Then to add insult to injury, Nero says they support the recorder, but they don't. Which isn't a big deal because new versions of Nero come out all the time. The Sony support site sucks. What else can I say....oh yeah, back to my trusty old A04!

cpuKiller: Thanks, it's always best to reviews from people who have tried. Funny the Sony has no problem with DVD+R/RW lol. Considering they were a major backing of that format, 'mmm' I wonder. Any one had any luck with Driven R1, got one of those famous, DVDXCOPY MFC Application has encountered a problem and needs to close, Please tell MS. AS if. same message appeared with Matrix R1. got the message when trying to click on the selected button on the copy from window..

LAWMAN: I got the same problem just skip it and try a different dvd,,, remember its just a beta. also you should let them know over @ 321studios,,, thats what beta testers do

Maybe they'll build hilariously big database of IFO cutting points at 321studios and the tool simply grabs the info from there how to cope with the movie :-)

threepeat: I did not know that, As a matter of fact, I send them a report before I put it on this thread, just in case, someone else met and somehow overcame the problem. Now thats what I thought beta testers do, silly me.....

I would love to test this software. But it looks as if I'm too late to request beta. Anyone in the group used the beta with success? Be nice to know before forking out $.... Cheers, Sleepy

Shows 2 disk required, reads d1, 11.26 but only takes mines to burn. d2, 9:15 to read, mines to burn. Stand alone DVD player reports disk error. on both disk. On closer investigation, dvdxcopy only burnt Japanese trailers of various films, and a pop video in English. same on both disk... threepeat : report already sent

Lawman: my bad.....SOWWY

lAWMAN: I didnt mean for it to come out the way it did

lAWMAN: I didnt mean for it to come out the way it did

threepeat: do not worry just winding U up... The Lovers Guide - Region 2 Pal, copied and burned ok, don't know if burning converted it to NTSC or not. will try to find out, fitted on 1 disk, no problems at all.. media used Verbatim dvd + rw Right runchy DVD....

Porky's and all extras no problem...to a Vivastar RS-111 DVD-R...the software can't write using my drive (i think the problem is it sees it as DVD-RAM) so i have to use Nero but it worked and tested successfully on my standalone Sony DVD player

I did not receive a beta copy of this program, but pre-ordered the final version which I was told will be available for download October 28th. Sounds like there are still a few bugs to work out...hopefully it will be ready by then. A few concerns that maybe the beta testers can help me out with...Most dvd9's are well over 4.7gb for the movie portion alone. Does this mean that a 6gb movie (stripped of extras) will not fit on a single dvd5 disc, or is there some type of bitrate conversion involved? I assume there is, especially if menus and extras are included. This would be somewhat unfortunate to need multiple discs for a typical movie, as it is cheaper to purchase (another)copy of a dvd than it is to purchase two blank dvd/r discs. Thanks in advance for clarifying this issue!

Beta testers, Sorry to join the fracus late I've been away on business. Came home to 300+ emails! IS ANYONE ELSE HAVING THIS PROBLEM: When I click on either link from 321Studios (the 1st or 2nd) I end up at the same ftp root with about 25 files and directories. I can't get to the proper ftp site.

*message and user deleted*

fmsax: Well I'll tell you, I noticed that the only things dvdxcopy can do is strip out extras like trailers, coming attractions,and special features. but the diferent languages stay along with subs and audio setup....so I guess yes 2 disks is a must for dvdxcopy, we'll just have to wait for the final to see........But theres always IFOEDIT

That is the link I am clicking on and it keeps taking me to the ftp root. I'm getting pissed off.

menmaddi Try to use a ftp client ,,copy the ftp address then paste and connect to ftp thats what I did...with no problems

I don't think you should post the link to the beta out in the open like that...You could ruin it for the rest of us beta testers when everyone decides to clog the server up and the true beta testers can't get the file. Just a thought.

Now you've done it. I'm going to have to kill the beta ftp site and start a new one. dRD: Where are you when I need you? :)

Password reset on FTP site. Beta testers: Please do not post username, password info on this forum. A new beta fixing a lot of the problems we've seen in XP (and elsewhere) will be posted this afternoon. I'll email the beta list and give them the new password information when it becomes available. Also, if you are having trouble accessing the FTP site, then please download a FTP client like CuteFTP. Cheers!

messed up again this will be my last post

threepeat: Don't worry about it, no harm done. Just don't do it again, ok? :) Thanks, Robert

how can so many "beta-testers" not know anything about how FTP works? http://smartftp.com to make it easy

Lawman: What software are you using to format your DVD +rw's. I have a Phillips +RW and a Pioneer A04 -RW, have tried using _RW and getting some form of error. Tried Xmen to -R and that burn't to 2 diskd no prob or so I thought. Tried disk 1 and all seemed well, disclaimer and then main menu, then the film played ok. Test 2 for disk 2, disclaimer showed as did main menu, but nothing you selected from the main menu seemed to want to play. Anyone else had problems playing from 2nd disk? Maybe splitting is not quite right yet. Will have to do a bit more work and see what has actually been burn't to the 2nd disk.

Sorry threepeat, don't want to get us banned. Thanks for trying. I'm getting an error message using cuteftp. I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong.

dRD : just received your email posted at 00:58 on the 22oct. did you send it by Royal Mail..lol

newhaven, Using DirectCD 5 quick format if its a new DVD+RW or The erase button on DirectCD 5 if I have already Used thr DVD before.

Ok, the ***khead who posted the link to beta site is deactivated and banned from our site and the message deleted. Some respect towards these guys, PLEASE. I _can_ shut down the whole thread if this happens again. Sorry rhmoore about this -- if you - or anyone else - find something like this again, send us feedback immediately.

menmaddi, robert just posted that they had to change the username and password because it was publically posted...of course FTP won't work until 321 has updated it and sent the new info to beta testers

-LD, I realize that. Before the deal went down, I was having a problem. I am using an ftp client. I also tried clicking on the link directly. I wondered if anyone else was having a similar problem. I was looking for some insight, not an ...insult.

it wasn't an insult, it was a comment...your post said you were currently having a problem and i explained why

Sorry, Just a little testy. (being left out of the fun)

dRD: No need to ban the user. It was probably an innocent mistake. Anyway, users still need the license id and password to activate beta, but I just can't let our ftp server become overrun with everyone trying to download the beta. The FTP server will NOT work right now as I have changed the password. We will be posting the newest beta there very soon and I will alert everyone on the beta list just as soon as it is available. In the meantime, get an FTP client if you were having trouble accessing the FTP beforehand. Cheers!

rhmoore: Ah, ok. I'll give him his account back at some point. Just let him figure out couple more hours what went wrong ;-)

Quik Question for Rhmoore Will next beta work for u.k users i.e the burning issues e.t.c

Wag the Dog r1 / verbatim dvd+rw copied burnt successful all features.....1 disk required...........works on stand alone DVD Tomb Raider r1 / verbatim dvd+rw copied ok failed to burn, starts burn then ejects disk after 10sec burn...... states 2 disk required.......... CHL: I'm a UK User athlon 1900+xp windowsxp 512 ddr gforce4 4600i pioneer 106 multi region dvd rom Philips 228 dvd+r/rw Philips 985 stand alone

First post here and really don't have much to post yet regarding DVDXCOPY since it doesn't work at all on my system. Emails sent to the bug report email address. Hopefully these are just the XP issues that are being talked about. But I did want to address the comments made regarding the Sony DRU-500A. I just got it yesterday and have only tried +RW discs so far. But Nero most definetely works with it, at least the copy I downloaded yesterday. I have some -R discs set to arrive on Friday so I'll be interested to see if they give me the same problems.

I have had the Sony DRU-500A for a week now and it performs flawlessly on all types of media. I have +R's, -R's, +RW's and -RW's and have written successfully to all of them. I have made data disc as well as transferred home movies from Sony DV Camcorder. I am using the new 4x -R's and 2X -RW's. Maybe that is why CPU Killer can't get them to work. Is it possible that the older 1 and 2X media does not work good with this recorder? I have yet to record a DVD successfully with DVD XCOPY but I think that has more to do with using Windows XP.

Lawman :Thanks for that info there Lawman, i have only tried WE WHERE SOLDIERS. requires 2 discs and when it starts to burn i get the same probs you had with T/RAIDER. I will try a dvd5. Think my prob is all my discs are region 2 .

Please by all means let me know if you experience any problems with the drive with DVD-Rs as I will exchange mine if yours does indeed work right. As far as Nero goes, I was able to get it to work with +RW, but not -RW, or -R.

Found my prob!! i knew i read it somewhere earlier this is NTSC ONLY :( ( silly me ) Gotta get my hands on some region 1s

Well good news I hope. Just received the email about the latest update. First attempt it would always crash about a minute and a half into reading the disc. I'm now about 10 minutes into reading the first disc. So at least that part of my XP problem appears to be fixed. It's still a long way from now until I have a working disc to comment on, but wanted to give some immediate feedback and hope for those using XP.

man i hate making dumb mistakes - i thought that an error was ocurring when i put in disk 1 of Black Hawk Down, but infact, it only needed me to type in the parental password. I made like 4 rw's of it, lots of wasted time - i know its a little late being that the updated beta is here - but i successfully made the first disk with xp with the old beta (felt like telling people would make it a little more worth while:)

Original Beta would not burn disc for me in Windows XP. Installed new beta and works like a charm.

rhmoore, your opinion on the disclaimer i suggested earlier ?

actually i had to use Nero to burn the files with the old one - and i am still having the same problem with the new one - it failed at the burning stage again - it burned like half the disk then stopped, saying it had completed? I guess this is a little better then the first one, cause that one didnt even start burning - hopefully this trend continues, cause at this rate it should working by the next update:)

ok guys i still get a an error when trying to burn w/ my philips dvdrw228 drive..so i did what people suggested and used nero...the burn says successful, but when played in powerdvd the disclaimer keeps recycling over and over and no movie...ne ideas?

Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) R1,failed to burn. Just a observation! I have had 5 films fail to burn, out of that 5, / 4 of those were on the gold coloured disk, dosn't mean any thing by its self, could hardware is not to happy with that type of media.. just passing on Useless Info..

Burn't Xmen R1 to 2 disks, first plays fine in TV DVD player disk 2 plays menu and nothing else. However if I play disk 1 in PowerDVD it plays the disclaimer and then nothing else happens. Anyone else experienced this?

XP users Many xp users may have tried this however just thought i mention it RIGHT CLICK ON .EXE FILE AND CHANGE THE COMPATIBILTY MODE . (Cant promise anything its only a suggestion )

Since I was using XP, I refrained from posting any comments until now. I have installed dvdxcopy on a 2000 Pro system now. I am running Athlon XP 2200+ CPUs 1GB DDR Ram on all machines and have 3 DVD-R/RW burners.. 1 Pioneer 104 and 2 Toshiba SD-R5002's. DVDXCOPY "works" with both drives. Single disk burns are/have not been a problem. Other than rip time...Burn time about 45 minutes. Double disk burns have all failed for the most part. DVDXCOPY has failed to find a suitable breakpoint on 2 or 3 double disks I have tried. The first image being too big to burn on a single 4.7Gb (4482 MB) disk. The 2 disks were: America - A tribute to Heros, and Big Fat Liar. Upon allowing the 2nd disk to be burned for America - A Tribute to Heros, I found the chapters to be all messed up. Pointers were all wrong. The rip times are very long on either type drive. In all cases EACH disk took over an hour to rip, as compared to about 30 minutes for the ENTIRE disk in DVD Decrypter. This needs work. I am still awaiting an e-mail from rhmoore for details on the updated beta

Took time out, went to see Son who has a Encore 450 DVD multi region. Took ConAir to see if it runs on his machine, No Joy. it say No Disk found - Bearing in mind it is what you would call a older Player (3 years), so possibility a media problem rather then a DVDXCOPY faulty Disk, as stated furher up the thread plays, perfectly well on my Stand alone.

Deep Rising Success, Region 1 - 1 Disk required - Run's with all features intact. on Stand Alone DVD Player Philips 985. Single Disk seems to be no Problem at all..

But then again, DVD-5 can be backed up with no-brainer method by using DVD Decrypter as well, the issue in here is definately with the DVD-9 movies, where so far IFOEdit has been the only real method for doing it.

Plus DVD Decrypter tends to be a lot quicker if backing up a DVD-5.

US Marshals - r1 failed at read, windows error..... The Office - R2 copied and Burnt OK

Not so lucky for me. I tried many combinations of source drive, DVD, and temp folder, but kept getting a page fault error. I have a read-only drive, and a HP200i, Athlon, 256M, 4 disk channels (DVD writer on secondary master, reader on secondary slave, 5 HD on other channels)

hey Lawman....how did u fix ur burning issues w/ the PhilipsDVDRW 228? I am having same problems..

hula73: I did, scroll up the thread, and U can see what I did..

I don't see any little link to unsubscribe, and the emails are annoying. Maybe a new post with the checkbox unchecked will stop this.

Ah, I forgot to add it to the ones that are sent through the news article itself (as you can also post messages through our forums). Well, now you should see the little link in all reminders.

dragongdz: We are taking your suggestion under advisement and will let you know soon. Everyone else: The DVD9 is proving to be more of a problem because of the disclaimer and watermarking that we are doing. We are working fast and furious on this fix and should be able to provide more updates tonight. Apparently this is causing some unexpected results when reauthoring the IFO on the second disk. Also, we continue to work on the burning issues and hope to have more fixes tonight in that regard as well. Cheers!

Also, we've made some enhancements to performance and expect to see some significant speed improvement with the next release.

Windows XP user. Region 1. Failed to burn Phantom Menace, either disc. No error on 1st disc, just froze. 2nd disc received error message. Main movie only. Already backed up (the other way) just wanted to see what it would do with the angles.

anyone tried a disc that has PC Friendly on it? i just tried the Matrix, R1, and it craps out DVDXCOPY whenever i attempt to select a title

No new Beta, yet then...this forum has gone quite over the last couple of days...... see now.. all hunched over their keyboards, sweating when the counter reads, 99%, power fail's, !%*+!ng hell... 1% 2%

I would like to receive the beta release so i can try it. and post here my result thanks.

I just found out the new beta didn't go out last night as planned. Although I don't know for sure, I imagine they had a *good* reason. ;) I will check with the engineers and post back here today or send the beta list an email indicating the status. I apologize that you were not updated last night as I expected. Cheers!

I just ordered my dvdxcopy online, hopefully most of the bugs will be out by the 28th or so. Just wanted to know if anyone has tried copying a disk with multi episodes, like the X-Files or The Simpsons. Also, I have an HP 100i and an HP 200i, anyone had any experience with them?

Whats up with this DVDX v DVDXCOPY. RHMOOR V DRAGONDDZ. JUST SORT IT ALL OUT BETWWEN YOU...Lets get back too backing up dvd meadia. Lets be honest here no one gives a shit about hows software is whos, most of us come from the AMIGA Days and ps1 sceen. weve done Audio and now DVD`s. Most of you say OH, i just want to back up my dvd set. come off it i know a lot of these login Names and some have been around for years.90% of us just do it for the fun of it. Untill the next new media comes out.Here today gone tomorrow sort of thing... dvdxcopy will be hacked cracked and everyone will have acopy or clone by Xmas.A 250,000 hits a week. Welldone AfterDawn..UNtill we move on to something New too do on our PC . ANYWAY lets keep the posts about using the software and not about whos making the money from it........................

Hello rhmoore, I have paid for a copy of this DVD X Copy on 10/18/02. I see my American Express is already charged. I was just wanting to know if this is going to be ready for download on 10/28/02. I see that you are having some problems. I wish you and your team well on getting this out on time. Also are you posting to any other forum somewhere else. I like to read about how things are going. Thanks for taking the time to post here. Lt Dan

Lawman I note that you are like me in the UK. can you tell me if the PAL DVD's you are using play ok in the "preview" window? mine are B&W and offset to the left by a third. I have put this down to PAL (beta not ready yet) the other stuff I'm experiencing, down to XP.

LtDan: It will either be available on the 28th or you'll be given the option of a full refund. I would expect that it is NOT going to be ready on the 28th, but rather a week later now. However, we will continue the pre-order price of 79.99 until the full version is released, but we have no intention of keeping any ones money, if they simply want it back and to forget it. We will be contacting everyone by email on the 28th one way or the other though. Cheers!

Out of curiosity, when are we going to see the next Beta?

{sigh......} This *has* been aggravating. 3 betas sitting on my hdd, and in each case Win98 gives me a fatal "cannot run" type of error. The beta(s) is/are not at fault. Later today I will finally put in the 256 meg SyncDRAM memory. Can't do squat with the 96 megs I had. (Rob did warn me). Hope to give this thing a try very soon. There's been quite a slowdown in posts here, the longest-running thread in a/D history. Is everyone relatively satisfied with their 2-disc backups? -- mgb --

A_Klingon: I put the quiteness down too, everybody slugging it out over teir PC, (how come U got 3 beta') againgst my two, (jelousy) I have just been fireing, my reports straight to bugs@, as I felt their was no one on the forums to read them. Have had trouble in the last couple of day's doing some disk 2 backups, even reformatted my H/D in the end to get rid of all the Junk, had a right slow down on my computer, but I put that down to MS SP1 for WinXP. so took it off did a RF. and back to my old speed now, The only thing is I am running out of Region 1 films to try, as out of my collection of 150 DVD's, 120 are region 2 PAl. Floyd: never tried the pal copies in the viewier, but they played in colour on my Stand alone DVD. also still getting a few XP problems, well I hope its XP problems.. As well stated, if the copy only requires 1 disk, then can't fault DVDXCOPY at all, few prob' when doing the second, disk.. Still early day's

Hi Lawman. Well, there was the original beta, then an update the very next day I believe, and then just an .exe update (downloaded as a .zip) to replace the .exe in your c:\Progra~1\321Studios folder. So, of the approx. 30 ntsc's that you have Lawman, how many of those are dvd-9s? (I see little point in using dvdxcopy for dvd-5s; because DVD-Decrypter (free) already makes perfect replicas of those). And of the dvd-9s, how many of your backups would you say you are satisfied with? (I mean, enough to justify paying the price of two blank discs?). Hollywood has gone absolutely out of its way to manufacture dual-layer discs, even when they are clearly not necessary, by dumping in worthless extras, specifically designed to bloat the disc past dvd-5 status, and in the process, make it a difficult and expensive process for us to consider. For example, *many* dvds previously released on single-layer discs are now only being made as dual-layer replacements. ("New! Remastered! WoW! Collector's Edition!") Dirty Harry, Groundhog Day, & Monty Python's Holy Grail are but three examples. Dvdxcopy will at least, put back a bit of consumer fairness in the balance. -- Mike --

Any Beta testers out there using a Ricoh dvd+rw MP125 ? If so what burning probs are you having as everytime i goto burn i get the following error message " UNABLE TO GET SCSI DRIVER , SEVERITY : 3 , ERROR CODE : 100 , SCSI CODE : 0 " I have been instructed by programers to reinstall drivers which i have done, however i still get same errors .I have also tried to uninstall / reinstall . Windows XP service pack 1 Amd 1600+ 512 ddr Any thoughts on this ? -- CHL --

CHL: I am also getting this error and I am using a Pioneer A04. This error only started happening with the updated .exe that supplied. Program seems to still rip ok to hard drive, so had to burn using Nero as a workaround till a fix found. Logged with bugs@ a few days ago.

CHL .. I know this sounds stupid, but is your drive SCSI? I just bought a dvd burner - sony DRU-120A - and had no IDE bus for it. Used a promise 100 PCI IDE card and all seemed well. However the same error message came up on the screen when trying to burn. The drive is IDE not SCSI. Checked the system (XP PRO) which showed the drive as an SCSI!!? Moved the burner to a Motherboard IDE and the system correctly identified it as IDE. However, now I can't get the software to even read the movie. I still can't get DVDXCOPY to burn & await the XP fix from Robert & his crew before trying to identify if this is an XP issue or a bug.

I received that SCSI error also and my drive is IDE. I do have a SCSI card attached to an external tape drive. I've had lots of troubles, but didn't bother to send a bug report this time since by the time I got the errors there was already talk of another beta release. But one thing I want to mention that makes this a very hard beta to test. It takes more than seeing the dvd get burned and popping it in the player and seeing it start to play. I've been doing all my testing on one concert DVD. The chapters, as you'd expect are broken down by songs. The burned DVD played fine for the first 6 songs but froze on the 7th song. Skipping from the main menu directly to any chapter after that shows the same thing. It plays for a few seconds (between 5 and 30) but then freezes solid. This makes it very hard to test this software. It's difficult enough to invest the time to do the rip and burn, but to then invest 2 hours to watch the movie completely looking for glitches makes for a long test cycle. I would advise those that THINK they are getting good results to watch the whole movie to be sure.

CHL: I have 3 systems running this beta - All Identical at this point . Win 2000 Pro (originally XP PRO but reinstalled Win 2000 Pro for these tests ) All Athlon XP 2200+ CPU /w 1GB DDR - 1 /w Pioneer 104 DVD-R/RW and 2 with Toshiba SD-R5002 DVD-R/RW all set as masters on secondary IDE channel. First I rip with DVD Decrypter then mount the "drive" with Virtual Daemon manager 3.23 ( It rips five times faster than DVDXCOPY )then I can mount the "DVD" with DVDXCOPY ... Then I hit COPY and DVDXCOPY goes to work re-ripping the "DVD"..when it's done I hit the BURN button and I get DVD Write failure followed by the same SCSI errors you are getting....so I burn /w Nero.....DVDXCOPY works Great!..except for DVD-9 where it messes em all up and usually can't find a suitable break point (can't do the math)..hmmm Hey wait a minute...What's wrong with this picture ?? On the XP system I did get a DVD-5 burn from start to finish ONE TIME, ... and never again,.. using DVDXCOPY "as directed". I have used both betas with the same results. One week before a target release date is a helluva time to start a beta program. I am crossing my fingers that it will be totally functional Before December hits though, because I can really see this product boosting my DVD Burner sales for Christmas.

Hello A_Klingon: I have had success with a few dvd-9s, ie: Junkman / Gone In 60 *1974* at second time of trying with just a few small problems which I am sure 321 will overcome. But I am supprised, that a lot of my early NTSC films were on dvd-5s, but were flipper disk, widescreen 1 side - Normal on the other *what ever normal means* and some of the NTSC dvd-9s films a few of them have that PC friendly sh**e on them, which causes problems with the reading or burning.. Do I think it will be worth the money,? I have to say, YES to that, the reason being , in time Blank dvd disk will be cheaper, not so long ago, a single blank cdr would cost nearly £5, and I have had to pay £17 for a Blank cdrw * HP * cos that was all you could get then. I will back anything that gives the consumer the right to make backup's of their legally owned dvd's / Music CD's / Software / what have you.. If i am right you reside in Canada? by the looks of it your a Monty Python fan. and there I ask!! Are you also a Trekie..... Best regards Lawman

Thanks for the feedback there folks ! thought i waz the only 1 having this problem. Newhaven :thanks for that but, no mine is IDE and it is reporting it correctly ( i checked after your post just to make sure ) MACH3 : Im glad your managing to make your backups ok :) However i feel we must concentrate on the BETA itself, as apposed to using other tools with dvdxcopy .Im sure everyone, yourself included would rather use 1 tool. Roll on the next BETA Take it easy -- CHL --

rhmoore: Hi, any more news on the new Beta..

Lawman: Yes, that's it exactly! When dvds first came out, dual-layer discs were tricky to manufacture and I imagine the reject rate was very high. To simplify this, a LOT of releases were flippers - one side full-frame, and the other, widescreen. You can clone these dual-dvd5s with your eyes closed. But Hollywood has embraced dual-layer now, because they inhibit programs like dvdxcopy severely, and any other like-minded program that may follow. They *don't* want you backing up your discs and make it damed hard to do so, via dual-layer. The presses that print out dvds are exactly like the presses that stamp out bank notes. It's a virtual fu----g gold-mine. A government-sanctioned Mint. Fort Knox. Did you notice? If you want the animated 'Shrek' movie, (only 90 lousy minutes), you have to buy the *two* dual-layer disc-set in order to get it! (How do *you* spell "R-I-P O-F-F" ? ) I'm certain Hollywood's mindset is: "Why sell a (sucker) a 90 minute movie on a single dvd5, when he can be forced to cough-up double the price for a two-disc set?" The second disc has more "extra", frivolous, useless trash in it than I can stomach. Unless you're a direct decendent of Albert Einstein and can figure out all the vagarities of IFOEdit, we are going to need either dvdxcopy or else something like it, to fight back. Yep, I'm a core, diehard Trekie and Python fan. I just installed 256 Megs of SyncDRAM memory. No luck. I still get the fatal error message: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. (Details:) DVDXCOPY caused an invalid page fault in module DVDXCOPY.EXE at 015f:00418e49 ......", bla-bla-bla-bla.... (I haven't got much patience for this kind of sh--). I sent a bug report and a screenshot to the good folks at 321bugs. Frig it. Maybe I'll drag that Sony vhs machine out of the closet any day now.... -- Klingy --

The new beta has just been released internally to our testers. Should be releasing it tonight or tomorrow if everything goes well. You can stop testing the old beta as we have fixed most of those problems in the new one. We have also delayed the release by at least a week. We weren't as ready as we thought we were :( Robert

A_Klingon: Maybe we should call you Trigger, *you Know a friend, of Del Boy & Roddney, lol RHMoore: Thanks for the Update, Can't wait, but know I'll have to.

Earlier this afternoon, I converted my hard Drives to NTFS, from FAT32, because it is supposed to be more stable, Just put a dvd in to try copying, 1 which I had done prievously, and it was suggesting a time of 1hr 3mins, to read, somthing I have never seen before, Anyone else running under NTFS, if so, hows your speed, or was mine just a blip....

Note: Your Order will be available for download on Monday, November 4th. $99.99 Pre-Order Discount Note: Pre-Orders Only. This discount is not valid after November 4th. Order Today and Save! -$20.00 Full Money Back Guarantee Note: If for any reason you are not COMPLETELY satisfied with DVD X COPY, you will receive a full refund for the purchase price. then why did they take money out before product was done is that right

We take pre-orders just like any other software company does. Just like gaming software or any other type of very much in demand software. We didn't start off taking pre-orders, in fact at this point, I wish we hadn't. But there has been such a large consumer demand for the product and just had too many people demanding to order the product before it was released, that we decided to do so. 321Studios could refund every single cent without a problem. Our core business with Dvd Copy Plus has allowed us to remain profitable from day one. So I can assure everyone, that even if every single customer desired their money back, we would do so and do it without hesitation and it would cause no financial hardship to our company. Don't start attacking us just because our delivery is delayed by a week or so. This kind of stuff happens in the software world. We will get this out and deliver a quality product. And after reviewing the release, the customer still wants their money back, then we will still refund, happily.

Lawman : yes i am running NTFS and have been since i got my burner ( i read somewhere that FAT32 cannot handle files over 4 gig correctly and reccomended switching to NTFS for the purpose of backing up dvds ) I found since switching that XP isnt as stable under NTFS as they make it out to be or as fast .. ill bear with it just now .

rhmore For those of us who paid for the program, and missed the "window" for the beta, why not offer us use of the beta version in the meantime? Seems fair to me anyway. Thanks, Sleepy

rhmore im not attacking you guys im just saying on your web site you said orders will be out on the 28th of october thats why i order i still want your product i just dont want to get rip off and let me try the beta please

CHL: Now that is interesting, Since my last post, I tried a couple of more times, same result, So coverted back to FAT32 * thank god for Partition Magic* tried again, and their we are, Suggested time 23mins faster,

Noone is going to get ripped off. You will either receive a product that you like and want or you will get your money back, simple, end of statement. Ok, here's what I will do. If you have Pre-Ordered the product, and you read this post and send me an email to robert@321studios.com, I will add you to the next beta release and you can start testing it out. But remember, IT'S A BETA! Cheers!

Thanks rhmoore. I'll send a email right now. LtDan

To any of you doubters, out there, 321 has lived up to their promise, and given me a full refund, it appeared within my bank account, within two days of asking, well done 321,

Mr. Moore Stop being pushed around by these whiny little kids. Anyone who cannot wait for the beta or for the first release date, then don't pre order. Wait until next month and order it then. Stop badgering Mr. Moore because his company does not want to release a product that is not 100% ready yet. Grow the hell up allready!

The new beta exe has fixed my scsi error w/ my Philips DVDRW228 drive but....after i get done burning the first disk -which takes about 45 minutes..i attempt to play the disc in DVD player and all i get is the 321 Studios copyright screen that plays for 10 secs and then repeats...am i doing someting wrong?

All BETA TESTERS : Have any of you guys tried the backups you have made using the dvd player on the Xbox ?? Reason im asking is I have got to use the Xbox to read DVDRWs as my Standalone doesnt like dvd rewritables ( funny that it plays cd rewritables ). Anyways i get the following error message when using my XBOX " THE DVD REGION OF YOUR DVD PLAYBACK KIT RECEIVER IS INVALID . REMOVE DISC TO CONTINUE " It is a U.K / Region2 player and has no modchip. All the discs i have tried to backup are region2 and play fine with Power dvd since the new beta was released this morning. What do you think guys should i throw caution to the wind and try on a DVD recordable ??? and see if it will play on my Sony DVP-325 . P.S All backups i have done before using other software play perfect on my XBOX.

CHL: Are your pal back ups of dvd-9s or dvd-5s, Been out all day, so have not done any testing yet, with the new beta, so it's a hard days slog to-morrow, so thats at least two of us who has a xbox? I wonder who the other uk owner is.....

Lawman : dvd9 i feel theres no point with dvd5 at the moment anyway. ( seems to be well covered )

chl are you using 2 disks or 1 for your dvd-9s

CHL: well that has to be good news then, I'll keep you posted on what i achieve after I have informed bugs@ first of course...

Speaking of -R discs, I have a question. The instructions we received were to format or erase any blank discs we used before trying to burn them. And I did try to use a +RW right out of the box and it failed. I have Nero on my system and it's got an option to erase rewriteable discs. But how would I use a -R disc? I assume Nero will grey out that option. And I don't see a format option anywhere in the menus. As far as the latest beta, I've been having trouble with the 2nd disc. Twice now when I've got to the stage of burning disc 2 it's virtually locked up my machine. The burn never stops and my machine is so slow that the only recourse is to reboot. I'm trying one more time, this time not burning disc 1 to see if it works. I did burn one disc 2 last night so it's not a repeatable thing I'm afraid.

Darksaint : for dvd9s you Will require 2 discs.

Lawman : do you have "Black Hawk Down" region2 and if so would you mind giving it a try. I just had some interesting and rather expensive results from this . play the files using powerdvd .

chl: ok will do, but will try just a little bit later, as at moment I am doing some else, a couple of Photo's for my Son, as they have just had their first born. Grandad...

Lawman : congratulations!! granpappy :)

chl: No luck with Black Hawk Down, it came up with Burn Error, So do not no what the difference is- Possibly Media, Using Verbatim DVD+RW - Will have to break open out my Philps DVD+RW to see if they are better.. As to your last comment, don't you mean Babysitter........

Hi all. Copy of msg sent to bugs, any ideas? BTW, congratulations grandad Lawman!!, I'll raise a glass in his/her honour ;o) UK USER Athlon 1700+ Sony DVD+RW DRU-120A Hitachi DVD-ROM DG-5000 1Gb SDRAM WIN XPpro, 5.1, build 2600 (no sp1, but regular updates) over 17GB free space Pioneer DV-350 home player _____________________ Hi Perfect Storm - PAL - Region 2 - widescreen New exe has fixed previous errors and now allows me to copy but not burn. I have checked the +RW disc (Sony - came with the drive) and ensured it was erased. However I continue to get the DVD burn failure message. I can successfuly burn the ts files using NeoDVD to the disk and it will play in the home player. other points - The preview window in DVDXCOPY plays in B/W and split offset to the left. Is this a PAL thing until the software is written for PAL? On playing in the home player, the 321 message is in B/W and of poor quality until the movie is played. Is this a region thing? On winDVD4 it plays flawlessly. Finally, the Tutorial has "next" at the end of step 3 where there is no next! ;o) I'll keep at this with other films & if anything different will obviously let you know. Cheers,

Thanks Floyd: I am stuffing the Cigars down The phone line as we speak, (Her)

Floyd: The 321 message is with 99% certainty a video format question -- it is encoded as NTSC (so, it's NOT a region coding issue, but one of those "why in the heck they cant figure out one standard.." things) and since NTSC color coding is different from PAL, DVD players that can't change the color system to show NTSC clips on PAL color coding, play the NTSC pieces in B/W.

Lawman : thanks for trying . Dont suppose you tried viewing it in power dvd before you closed down dvdxcopy ? I did and found that even if the burn was successful it will play the computer generated helicopter scene over and over and over........ again ,then when you eventually get the menu after around 10 mins you cant do nothing with it.

Just done A Civil Action (NTSC R1) dvdxcopy states 2 disk required, Took 48mins to preprare disk 1 Of 2, Took over 1hr to Burn, Normal message please reinsert film. 4mins to read remainder, then failed to burn, noticed that the second DVD disk had a mark, on it proberly why it failed. Put the first disk in my Stand alone, a perfect copy of the film, went to menue. the clicked on theatrical Trailer up came the message please insert disk two, So was that a success or not???

chl: Sorry, did not think of that.. I take it your expensive, mistake was to burn the disk to DVD+R........ OOOOOOps.

To those of you trying this in PAL, please understand this is for NTSC testing only. PAL will be rolled into version 1.1 which will be the first enhancement to the final release. Hi Bill: Congrats and Cheers!

You guys are killing me! I just ran out today and bought a DVDRW228. I had been putting off buying a DVD-R until I could do What I catually wanted to do...backup my dvd collection. Robert, I hope you come thru for us! So far it seems like a promising application. I would love to be on the beta testing team, but I won't nag you about that. I know you have enough to worry about! ;) Anyways, good luck and I will keep my eyes open for the final product. John

Hello everybody I've been on the beta testing and reading this thread from day 1, but I decided to add my input. Since I am from New York, all my DVDs are region1. System: winxppro, NTFS, Sony drx120 firewire. I finally managed to copy and BURN dvd5 with nary problem. DVD9 is another story. Please try Eyes Wide Shut and let know if you can even select it to be copied. I burned Mulholland drive with DVDXcopy: disk2 was ok, but disk1 cannot be fast forwarded or rwinded, the picture freezes. The movie blow freezes at chapter 8, and disk2 cannot load, but i get a message of a serious system error and whether i would like to send the info to Microsoft. I would like to add that i have total confidence in RHMoore and his crew, and all those bugs will be ironed out in the end. Even though he offered us, the beta testers free activation codes, i have placed a preorder as a contribution to the uphill battle he is up against, and for having the guts to do it. So there! AM

When is the next BETA due out?

Thanks: Robert. (hic)

YES ! I *DO* like that 321 ad banner ! :-) So *so* sorry I wasn't able (and am still unable) to get past whatever hairy problem I seem to be having (fatal error message) that prevents me from running *any* of the betas. A new, full Win98 install & a new 256 meg memory card didn't solve the hangup. I would very much have liked to contribute to the testing process. Sent screenshot to bugs@....., but no reply. (sigh)..... Carry on, men! Grandpappy Lawman: Hope you're good with diapers. :) -- Mike --

That's illogicial (spock)

There is already a program which does this. It's called Steinberg DVD Movie Copy. Laterz

Warped: have you been on Steinberg web site, and on to their forums, quite a few complaint's that it cannot do DVD-9s

I have Steinberg and can attest to the fact that it will not do DVD-9s. Also, it Veritas RecordNow on my ThinkPad. John

Tried to copy Black Hawk Down and Spy Game with following results: If I copy entire disks, including extras, only ifo/ts/bup files are burned but no vobs! If I copy movie only and click the burn button, the program freezes!! By the way, anyone opened his dvdxcopy program directory recently and noticed the amount of trash collected about disks already deleted? this is turning the folder into a giant recycle bin. I've been deleting these files manually, but hope the 321studio team can figure out a way to have them deleted automatically once the burn process is over.

Thanks to everyone for their support in the face of some trying times during this beta release. I promise we will deliver a quality product in the end. One of the resources we used for this product is an absolute expert in Dvd Authoring, splitting and IFO editing on the fly. Apparently after reviewing our code, he suggested we were implementing several key components incorrectly. He is flying to St Louis today and promised to stay until XCopy is totally complete and working across the board. He also doesn't expect to stay more than a few days, so I believe we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All pre-order betas will receive this version! I just feel too uncomfortable with the current version to release that to pre-orders just yet. Cheers!

rhmoore: You hired Derrow?-) Anyway, good to hear that you are getting the stuff together, I think that everybody in here are anxiously waiting for the final -- or at least almost fully functional -- version of the program.

Well, I have followed quite a bit of betas in my time. It looks like 321 Studios is in panic mode. It takes probably a good month or 2 for any large company to work out driver, OS, hardware compatibility issues. 321 looks like they are feverishly flying out an "expert" to help with these issues. I would recommend anyone who wants to use this product wait awhile to see how it plays out in the short term. They could probably get it down. But I imagine it will take a few more months before it is actually usable by the general public. I find something incredibly hilarious: I just read the whole forum top to bottom and vaguely remember rhmoore stating something in regards to not releasing beta-ware to the public, and like Microsoft, expecting the public to troubleshoot it for them. Well, I can't say for sure, but it looks like they are going to have a REALLY hard time delivering any kind of quality software on the Nov. 4th gold date. Lastly, if I may make a suggestion: rhmoore should spend less time surfing and posting long messages on the internet, and more time on getting ready to release a quality product to the general public........

How could I possibly respond to such well thought out logic? I guess in the end, it just goes to show you, that no matter the best of intentions there will always be someone waiting to point out the flaw of optimism and good faith. [door opens, developer walks in. Asks if I'm surfing the net again...] Gotta go. Cheers!

i don't think brisance0 has ever worked on the development of a product...he clearly has little to no understanding of what happens during the development and beta process

I have beta tested a few products, but primarily I am an end user. I am an enthusiast. I buy, and have used, literally 1000's of software products. Friends have told me that there are groups for people like me. My issue is this: The downfall of most developers is that they rush the product to the streets. The survivors, the one's who prosper, will understand that 1st impressions are lasting. The best developers have the discipline to hold their product until it passes their own internal standards in regards to operability. The other 70% are out of business or serving lattes at Starbucks. I would much rather see this potetialy awesome product held back for 2,3, or 4 months to insure its stability. From what I can gather from the current beta testers, DVDXCOPY needs quite a bit more work before it should be released to an unsuspecting public. I really wish the guys at 321 studios the best. In fact, I personally believe that if their product is "relatively" bug free it will help their legal cause immeasurably. I believe there is going to be an irrefutable correlation between the quality of this software and the amount of support for the legal issue by the public. There has been much press about this product, but if it is good, Napster could be a sidenote in the history of copy protection. I honestly want a ground swelling of public support for this. These are my motives.

I have beta tested a few products, but primarily I am an end user. I am an enthusiast. I buy, and have used, literally 1000's of software products. Friends have told me that there are groups for people like me. My issue is this: The downfall of most developers is that they rush the product to the streets. The survivors, the one's who prosper, will understand that 1st impressions are lasting. The best developers have the discipline to hold their product until it passes their own internal standards in regards to operability. The other 70% are out of business or serving lattes at Starbucks. I would much rather see this potetialy awesome product held back for 2,3, or 4 months to insure its stability. From what I can gather from the current beta testers, DVDXCOPY needs quite a bit more work before it should be released to an unsuspecting public. I really wish the guys at 321 studios the best. In fact, I personally believe that if their product is "relatively" bug free it will help their legal cause immeasurably. I believe there is going to be an irrefutable correlation between the quality of this software and the amount of support for the legal issue by the public. There has been much press about this product, but if it is good, Napster could be a sidenote in the history of copy protection. I honestly want a ground swelling of public support for this. These are my motives.

oops, sorry bout' that :)