I am using DVD Decrypter to rip movies to hard drive. I have a DVD-ROM made by Lite-on (SOHD-167T). It has hacked firmware from RPC1.org to rip faster. I also have a Plextor PX-712A burner.
I've got my computer in A-1 shape, my firmwares up to date, as well as my ASPI layers. I've done tons of movies in the past with no real problems. But I haven't burned any in a few months, and went to rip a few the other day and the Lite-on drive won't go fast. It ramps up to around 3.5x and suddenly slows down. Stays around 1.5 for a few seconds and then slowly starts to speed up again. It hits the 3.somethingX speed and cuts out again. It's kind of an all at once speed reduction. I thought it might be a new copy protection, but I noticed it was doing it on discs that I think are too old for that as well. And finally, I tried it in the Plextor drive and it rips at the normal speed of around 6 - 12x for dual layered discs.
What's wrong with my LIte-on? Why does it suddenly pull the plug on anything faster than 3x?
I have that drive hooked up to a Promise Ultra 133TX2 PCI IDE card. The card is capable of Ultra DMA (133), so that shouldn't be a bottleneck. I did have a hard drive crash a couple months ago (between now and when my puter was working good), so I tried to go in and check DMA. But the IDE controller in the promise card doesn't have the channels listed in Device Manager. Stupid card. Do you know of any other way to check DMA other than thru the properties of the IDE controller?
By the way, I think we're barking up the wrong tree here. It worked fine before. I think it's possible that my hacked firmware tries to ramp up too fast. Or perhaps there is a software issue somewhere.
Ok, I went back and loaded the stock firmware and it ripped fine... a little slow. 3.5x - 7.9x on a dual layer disk. I then loaded the hacked firmware for the drive that's a little slower than the original one I loaded (now: 16X R, 16X RW, 8X DVD9: Before: 16X R, 16X RW, 10X DVD9).
This newer firmware seems to be slower, ending up with a 6.9x peak speed. Could it be that the original firmware is the fastest??
FYI, when I boot my computer up, the BIOS for the UltraTX2 card I have showed my DMA to be Ultra DMA 2, so at least that part has been eliminated as a suspect.
At this point, I can only assume that the 10X DVD9 read speed just put the drive too fast, and it couldn't keep up (or was too fast for disc condition) and the drive slowed itself down to improve read quality.
I am not one that recommends hacked firmware, because there can be problems if you don't know what you are doing, or you have a drive that cannot be flashed back. Lite-on's are pretty forgiving in that area though, they will let you flash back. I have not gotten 10x read speed out of my Lite-on for a DVD9, it may go pretty near on a DVD5. It is also dependant on the disk, some will rip faster than others. If the Lite-on firmware does not cause any problems, and you can rip and burn then stick with it.
I've gotten slightly over 16X on DVD-5 disks with my liteon, even with stock firmware. But it is lackluster in DVD-9 rips. Now my Plextor excels in just about everything it does. It didn't hit 16, but it was 15.9 or so. I saw the Liteon hit 16.6 once. Don't ask me how, Im still trying to figure out if that's possible...
