Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Burning DTS disks

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Posted by Kyle Watkins (Member # 986) on 05-05-2003, 01:21 AM:

Will the DTS player (DTS-6D) read CD-RW disks? When we start our free summer kiddie shows. I like to be able to play in DTS in our DTS houses. It be cheapter to buy CD-RW instead of CD-R.
Thanks Kyle

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-05-2003, 01:44 AM:

Just copy them like any audio cd. With CDRs being about a nickel these days, just burn a 2nd copy for your interlocks and then toss it. I've never tried CDRWs, but there is no reason why it wouldn't work.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 05-05-2003, 02:07 AM:

CDRW's can take too long to initially format. Other than that, you'll just have to try it. Like Brad said, there should be no reason for them not to work.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-05-2003, 05:49 AM:

quote:
CDRW's can take too long to initially format.

Surely you only need to format them if writing in UDF format. If you're just burning a normal ISO9660 image onto a CD-RW, I can't see any reason why you can't just shove it in and burn away.

As far as I can see, the only issue would be whether the CD-ROM drive(s) in the DTS player can physically read the data off a CD-RW (multiread compatible or not). Even if it/they can't, you could probably replace them with one(s) that can for very little expense. I'd be reluctant to do that, though, because CD-RWs are far more susceptible to dirt and scratching and the last thing you want is for the DTS to fail during a show. As Brad points out, CD-Rs are virtually given away nowadays. Given that you don't need the recording to last for any signficant length of time (i.e. just for the week or two you're playing the film), I'd just buy the really cheap CD-Rs and bin them when you're done.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 05-05-2003, 06:31 AM:

The TEAC 32x CD-ROM drives which are in most dts-6D will probably not read CD-RW. I remember one or two occasions when they rejected CD-RWs. However, there are different types of CD-RW. Maybe the drives have less problems with some of them.
I don`t have a dts-6D within reach at this time, so it would be interesting if somebody could try it and let us know if it worked!

Posted by Kyle Watkins (Member # 986) on 05-05-2003, 09:56 AM:

I sould of mention before. I be burning 6 extra copies. We are doing 2 days this year, hopefully it be the same movie. If not that be even more burning. But any how those 6 extra copys can add up in money, and im not sure if home office will spend the money. Since no one had tried to use CD-RW, and if no body beats me to it, i give it a try, and see whats happens.
Kyle

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 05-05-2003, 10:20 AM:

If you have some of the older CD drives like the 2x toshibas they may have problems reading a disk burned at a hirer speed

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 05-05-2003, 11:20 AM:

We recently had to "upgrade" our drives on one of our DTS units when it would drop out during the show. The drives were replaced with actual CD-RW drives.

In the past, I found if it's not an actual CD-RW drive, you would need an extra piece of software (like DirectCD) to read/write to it. Haven't experienced this lately since almost all drives these days are CD-RW and there are very few plain old CD-R drives out there.

=TMP=

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-05-2003, 12:46 PM:

How much are CD-R blanks there, anyway? In a day and age where the blanks can be found (in my area, anyway) for $0-$.20 apiece, I don't really see the point of the rewriteable media, especially with its increased tendency to not play in many drives.

I like Taiyo Yuden CD-R media; Mitsumi is a good choice, too. Avoid the cheapo brands in general (though they might work OK for your purposes).

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 05-05-2003, 02:47 PM:

CD-RW?!? Noooooo!

I once had a CD-RW DTS test disc... it never really worked well (if at all).

Even if you were to burn 6 copies of each disc or 12 a week, it wouldn't cost you much more than $4.00 a week anyway. If the company won't cover that cost then just make sure your SR sound is well tuned.

Why do you need 6 copies of each disc anyway?

How many weeks are you going to be running these movies for... is the cost of the 12 CD-RW's (per movie for 6 copies each) really cheaper than the weekly cost of CD-R's?

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-05-2003, 03:47 PM:

Don't forget, you have to keep CD-RWs scrupulously clean. When you try to erase/reburn them, the TINIEST little scratches or specks of dirt can cause a bad burn and the disk won't read... even IF the drive is supposed to read CD-RWs. You will have to burn each set of disks and take them straight to the players, keeping them in their cases the whole time. No fingerprints! No setting them down on top of the rack unless they are inside their case!

If your booth is anything like the ones I worked in, prints move around all the time and disks get switched on an almost daily basis. CD-RWs that get suffled around that much are bound to get scratched and dirty in a short period of time. If people who work in your area are anything like the ones I used to work with, they won't respect the fact that those disks have to be kept "Hospital Clean". They will trash them in no time flat, necessitating their replacement in a short time.

If you get plain old CD-Rs, you burn the disk, use it and toss it when you're done. If the disk gets dirty, scratched or just plain stops working you simply toss it out and burn another.

I like to burn music CDs to play in my car on long trips. When the trip's over I TOSS the disks! CD-Rs literally cost 25 cents apiece. You can afford to toss them. CD-RWs are a lot more expensive.

Last time I bought disks I got a whole "cake box" of 100 disks for less than $25.00. If you use an average of 10 disks a week, your weekly cost will be $2.50 and you will only have to replenish your stock every 10 weeks or so. (If you don't waste disks.)

Buy CD-RWs and pay at least $10 for a set of them, which you will have to replace every few weeks as they stop working, one by one, and you will end up spending a lot more money in the end.

How about doing a test run before deciding on which route to take?

Buy 2 sets of CD-RWs and 2 sets of CD-Rs. Burn them and use them as normal.

1) See if the CD-RWs actually work. If not, you didn't spend a whole lot of money just to find that out.

2) See if the CD-RWs get beat up and require replacement.

3) See how many copies of the disks you ACTUALLY end up burning every week. (Some weeks you might not burn ANY. Other weeks you might burn enough for ALL your players

4) Do a cost analysis based on what you found out from your experiments: Average of "D" disks per week at "C" dollars per disk = "W" average cost per week.
Run this analysis for a month or so, every week. (Or just program it into a spreadsheet and make a prediction.) After your experimental period you ought to be able tell your home office exactly how much things will cost them in the long run.

If you can supply your bosses the "math" that shows that something will be cheaper in the long run they'd be fools not to listen. Furthermore, if they DON'T listen to your advice they won't have a leg to stand on when they try to complain about too much money being spent.

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 05-05-2003, 06:48 PM:

Look at the ads that come with your Sunday paper. You will find someone selling a 50 pack of CD-R's for somewhere between $5.00 and $1.99. Forget CD-RW's, they are a pain, and too expensive.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 05-05-2003, 06:52 PM:

From what I remember reading when I bought my first CD-r/rw drive. You could not put a CD-RW disc in a drive that was not CD-RW capable and expect it to read correctly or read at all. We tried to burn a copy of a DTS disce and run it using a CD-R but the unit kept refusing to run it. Don't know why. I was not the one who burned the copy so I am not sure what they may have done in the burning process.

Posted by Kyle Watkins (Member # 986) on 05-05-2003, 08:01 PM:

Well i guess i skip out on the CD-RW. I see how much the CD-R will cost. The reason i need 6 copies is we are interlocking 13 projectors. Not sure how many weeks we are doing this year, but i do no we are doing it 2 times a week.
Kyle

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-05-2003, 08:09 PM:

Just make CD-R dupes. Your time is worth more than the very minor cost savings of trying to re-use some CD-RW discs. RW just takes too long to write and, like some have pointed out, they probably won't be read in the DTS drives. The CD-ROM drives in the DTS-6D units don't seem to have any problem reading 8X-speed written CDs. The old 2-drive units with the Toshiba drives could reject them though. If you write CDs at faster speeds be sure to test the discs before trying them out on a paying audience.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-05-2003, 08:46 PM:

I burn dts discs on 5 cent el-cheapo CDRs all the time at high speeds. 52X burns are no problem for any unit with a Teac drive upgrade.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 05-05-2003, 11:49 PM:

that's probably the problem then I was having. The DTS unit that was rejecting them still have the old drives in them. I have the upgrade kit for it I just need to get it done soon.

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 05-07-2003, 01:35 AM:

quote:
With CDRs being about a nickel these days, just burn a 2nd copy for your interlocks and then toss it.

quote:
I'd just buy the really cheap CD-Rs and bin them when you're done.

quote:
If you get plain old CD-Rs, you burn the disk, use it and toss it when you're done. If the disk gets dirty, scratched or just plain stops working you simply toss it out and burn another.

I like to burn music CDs to play in my car on long trips. When the trip's over I TOSS the disks! CD-Rs literally cost 25 cents apiece. You can afford to toss them.

*sigh* ...and all that unnecessary plastic gets wasted and pollutes the world for sheer convenience! [Roll Eyes]

Isn't it nice that we can afford to do that?

Kyle-- I noticed these were for FREE summer KID shows. While putting on the best presentation possible is applauded, I doubt the little kiddies or the grown-ups attending the free movie would notice or care whether it was in DTS or not. Is the extra time/effort/money worth it?

Like Daryl said, just make sure your SR sound is well tuned, and that should suffice. [Wink]

=TMP=

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-07-2003, 01:51 AM:

Thomas brings up a good point - CD-RWs are potentially more environmentally friendly, if they can be got to work reliably. But as Randy notes, they are not reliable at all and are also extremely sensitive and fragile into the bargain. I have a small number of them at home which I use mainly to record broadcasts from my FM or DAB tuner with a consumer CD audio recorder. If I decide I want to keep the recording (or part of it), that CD-RW goes straight in the computer in order to pull the data off to burn onto a CD-R, editing the wave file(s) first if necessary.

I find that CD-RWs are alright for this purpose because they never need to be moved more than a few feet, and are always either in a machine or their case. But a projection box is a far less forgiving environment. I once dropped a CD-RW onto a carpet from around 3 feet and it never worked again. I wouldn't want to have to rely on something that fragile in a busy work environment, especially when it could potentially have an impact on hundreds of paying customers.

Posted by Karen Hultgren (Member # 395) on 05-07-2003, 05:37 PM:

Why don't you guys save yourselves the trouble and order discs from the film distribuator? They're free!

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-07-2003, 05:54 PM:

Karen, simply because it isn't worth the hassle when a sudden interlock situation arises to try and call up the booker and have him call the distributor and have everyone panic to rush out a second set of dts discs, often on a moment's notice. The easiest solution is just to make a second copy at the theater level.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-07-2003, 07:46 PM:

Maybe the distributors are prodding Karen to suggest ordering the discs -out of concerns regarding copy protection. I know it is DTS' official policy not to encourage making CD-Rs.

Still, who in the world is really going to use DTS CD-ROMs or CD-R dubs besides a DTS equipped theater showing the corresponding film print?

If anything, the distributors really ought to give the guys burning the CD-Rs a word of thanks for improving show quality on their films and bringing more folks to the theater. Many workers would not go to the trouble. I know of a couple theaters in my area where the operators don't even bother loading the DTS CD-ROMs in player! [Mad]