Opinions Wanted For New DVD Burner Utils

[Franko]

:idea:
Hi everyone I'm new to this sight (in fact new to the internet !!!) and I was looking to see if anybody out there thinks it would be a good idea for me to release for free (on Aminet or somewhere) some DVD burning software I have written.

After never being able to find any decent or easy to use DVD burning software for the Amiga, I finally decided to write my own. It was much easier than I thought (had put it off for years, cos I thought it would be too difficult).

Anyway these progs that I have written are all in 68k and cli/shell only at the moment. I was in the process of writing a GUI for them but one of my burners packed up (should be taking delivery of a new one this week).

There are 6 utils I have written (sorry the names aren't a bit more imaginative !)

DVDburnISO 6.5k
DVDripISO 6.4K
DVDduplicate 6.2k (requires 2 burners)
DVDerase 5k
DVDcheck 6.2K
DVDinfo 2.4k

Their all quite simply to use
eg: DVDburnISO scsi.device 2 test.iso
would burn the file test.iso to the burner on scsi.device unit 2

The burning and duplicate utils can burn to +/- DVDs both R & RW and can burn to + dual layer disks. I use SmartFileSystem for storing the ISO images as you need a filesystem that can cope with ISO files bigger than 4Gb.

The progs have been fully tested on my various A1200,s from 020 to 060 and all work fine under 0S3.0 to OS3.9. (Tested it on OS4.0, works but I never use 4.0, too slow on my miggy)

Anyone out their think there might be a need for them please give me your views/opinions.

Cheers

Franko

[Franko]

Cheers mate, The reason Im asking for opinions, is that most folk seem to be running amiga emulators on PC's and Macs (I don't think these utils would be any use to them!). I only use 'real Amiga's' and don't know if there are still many people out there doing the same that would find them useful.

[Franko]

Hi motrucker

I too find it a bit strange that there doesn't seem to be many folk on this site looking for this type of software.

Unless they all know of a really good DVD burning prog for the Amiga and already have it. If anyone out there does know of such a prog could you point me in the right direction, as I have been searching for years and never found one (apart from AmiDVD but that runs on OS4 and I find using OS4 on my Blizzard PPC board just too slow).

Franko

[Franko]

Hi everyone

Thank you all for your kind word's and support.

I'll will be releasing the utils in the very near future, any further comments/suggestion would still be appreciated so I can try and make any changes to them before release.

Here a bit more info about the progs.

I have tested them on my following setups

A1200 4Meg Fast ram / 4xEide buffered Interface
A1200 GVP030/40Mhz / 4Meg Fast Ram / 4xEide buffered Interface
A1200 Viper030/28Mz / 64Meg Fast Ram / 4xEide buffered Interface
A1200 Blizzard060/MMU+FPU 60Mhz / 128Meg Fast Ram / FASTATA MKIII Interface
A1200 Blizzard060/PPC603e 60Mhz/240Mhz / 256Meg Fast Ram /FASTATA MKII Interface

Filesystems tested
SmartFileSystem V1.277
FastFileSystem V45.9
ATA3.Driver Vers 8 to 8.8
4xEIDE.Driver V3.5
AllegroCDFS V3.5

Roms 3.0 / 3.1
OS:- 3.0 / 3.5 / 3.9 / 4.0

Drives tested
LightOn DVD all formats Model LH-20a

I am taking delivery on a new Panasonic burner this week, so I shall be able to test that one out as well.

The progs should really work on any 'Real Amiga' system as they are written in standard M68000 Assembly. They should work on any machine that you have set up with a DVD Burner and an appropriate ATAPI/IDE or SCSI interface.

If you have any more questions or suggestions please post them here and I'll be back to try and answer them.

Once again thanks for the support and encouragement...

Be Back Soon

Franko :drink:

[Franko]

Hi everyone

Looking for a little bit of help here...

Does anyone know of software already written for creating ISO files.

I have tried FryingPan but it seems to be limited to 4Gig size files.
Also tried MkiSofs but can't get this to make proper ISO images (it removes any filenotes from your amiga files and doesn't set the protection flags properly)

The only one I have found that creates perfect ISO files is AmiDVD, no 4Gig limit so you can burn a full DVD using my Utils roughly 4.3 to 4.4 Gig. Only trouble is you have to boot up in OS4.0 to use this. So it's not much use to most "Classic Users".

If anyone has any ideas of where I can find some ISO image creating utils, could you point me in the right direction. As this is the only part of these utils that I am still working on and if there's a good one already out there then I could stop writing mine and people who want to use my utills could use that instead.

Cheers Folks :drink:
Franko

[Franko]

Hi everyone

Thanks once again for the feedback...

Just posting a bit more info regarding the latest reply's...

Could you tell me what rom version your A500 is running on, I can go back as far as KS 2.4 on my Blizzard board. Let me know and I'll boot it up in 2.4 and test the utils on that.

There is no direct 'hitting the hardware code involved'. The progs all use standard SCSI commands. So if your drive is SCSI / ATAPI or EIDE then it's your board/interface and its driver that does the hard work. My progs just send the correct SCSI commands to the DVD burner using the exec routines that all amiga roms have ie: DoIO, SendIO etc.. (it's not quite that simple but I don't want to bore you with a lecture on reading and writing to devices attached to your Amiga)

They do not need specific Brand/Manufacturer codes as basically to burn or read a DVD from a drive they all use standard SCSI commands. The main problem is with the interface boards and their drivers. For example the 4xEIDE & the FASTATA MKIII boards and drivers can only handle up to SCSI-2 commands and a lot of new Drives I have tested recently, all have SCSI-3 commands which when used on the above type of board work but they lock up your HD as the drivers go into a loop trying to decode these SCSI-3 commands thinking that they are SCSI-2 commands. This is all getting a bit technical but when I release the first version in the very near future you can all try them out and we can take it from there.

Im pretty sure I have somewhere a program for mounting ISO images as a disk image on the Amiga, I'll have a look through my various systems but I am pretty sure I have something there.

I think the progs will be released as cli /shell utils for now as at least that way people will be able to at least check them out and give me feedback/bug reports while I get on with creating the GUI for them.

I'll keep everyone up to date with what's going on just keep an eye open here for updates and keep the queries and suggestions coming, I have found them most helpful.

Cheers Everyone and Thank you...
Franko :drink:

[Franko]

Hi everyone

I have just been trying to upload some of the progs on Aminet, but the upload page is down for service just now. I'll try again later.

Hopefully Aminets upload site will be back up and running sometime today.

Im just going to release some of them 'as they stand' for now. To give folks a chance to try them out and let me know if they work on their systems or send bug reports. Although they work perfectly on my set up they may not work properly on yours, if at all. Don't be too dissapointed as this is still a work in progress project and all feedback & bug reports will be most helpful.

Once they are available for download, please make sure you read very carefully all of the doc's before you even consider trying to use them. Especially the DVDripISO util as if you don't have the correct file system set up you could end up corrupting you HD's partiton or worse !!!

So be warned read all the docs carefully before even attempting to try them.

Well i'm off for now, still a lot of work to do before I can release a proper package of these utils, but if you do have any success with them please let me know.

Cheers :drink:

Franko

[Franko]

Hi Everyone

I have been trying to upload some of the utils onto Aminet for the past couple of days now. But all I get is the message
Web upload form is currently under maintainance. Please use FTP for now.

Click this link to see what I mean.

http://aminet.net/upload

Does anyone know another way of uploading stuff to Aminet or have any idea how long it takes them normally to get the upload page back up and running.

Cheers  :drink:

Franko

[Franko]

I thought that the file size limit on AmigaOS 3.x is 2GB independently of the file system and device driver you use, because the limit is also imposed by the dos.library. Isn't this true?

Using FFS the maximum size for any single file is limited to just under 2GB.
 Using the FAT file system 'FAT32' the limit is just under 4GB for any single file.
However using SmartFileSystem 'SFS' you have two choices.
 'SFS0' is very much like FAT, a limit of just under 4GB. or
 'SFS2' where the limit for any single file can be several TB.

I have been using FastFileSystem V1.277 for several years now without any problems (touch wood...) and have literally hundreds of gigabytes of files that are 4Gig and over.

The largest individual file sizes I use are 8.6GB files of DVD ISO images for Dual Layer DVD disks.

If you have the need for large file sizes or indeed large partition sizes then I highly recommend using SmartFileSystem.

Cheers  :drink:

Franko

[Franko]

Hello Franko,

are you sure about that SFS revision number? 1.227?

It sounds like an oldish SFS/0 version that doesn't supports files larger than 4 GB

Sorry typo... your correct I made a wee bit of an error (i've just woke up)

Its should have said V1.277

(Need another coffee)

Franko

[Franko]

Hi everyone

Just thought i'd give a quick mention here, that I have placed some of the utils on Aminet for folks to try out.

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/ADVDutils

Cheers  :drink:

Franko