Just did a drag and drop of files that I had burned on a disc with DVDA. No problems. Also did a test (no burn) with those files using DVDA, reported successful burn. Disc was Ritek G03 (1X), burner was Pioneer DVR-105.

This disc had two VOBs at the 1G mark.

Jsknc,
This is exactly what myself and several others have been trying to do. Drag the files from the DVD into a folder on the HD and then use DVDA to burn more copies. This process does not work for us, we cannot copy the files to the HD, Windows says the files or directories are unreadble. For this reason a number of DVD duplication programs will also not copy the DVDs. This only fails with VOBs of 1 GB.

SonyEPM,
the Sony recommended duplication process is rejecting the DVDs authored in DVDA. I say again: I and others cannot drag the 1GB VOBs back into a folder on the HD. I can only assume this is because the DVD is in some small way not UDF compliant. It would seem this isn't a base problem in DVDA, some of us are able to get this process to worl.
So I would conclude this is either a problem with the burner or a case of an overwitten dll. To determine which will take some more work. Either way this is an insidious problem. The DVDs play perfectly, I can copy them using RecordNow DX, someone reported that RecordNow Max will not copy the problem DVDs.

I'm about to invest in a Primera duplicator but this problem has given me cold feet on that idea.

Jsnkc: doing an analog capture from the DVD player will degrade the video quality faster over a shorter number of generations than ripping will. Ripping will maintain more quality for more generations.

But, this has nothing to do with this thread. ;)

farss:

Have you tried copying the DVD on other machines? I successfully copied three DVD-A discs successfully to the HD on three totally different desktops and a laptop. One DVD had two split VOB files on it. All three discs were burned using DVD-A rather than using another app.

Sid,
at first I thought how the heck would that amke a difference but just for a laugh I gave it a go.
Other machine ( a laptop running XP Home) CAN copy the VOB file.
This is very wierd!
My Win2K machine can copy the VOB file from a DVD authored in a different program but not the ones authored by DVDA.
My XP machine can copy the offending VOBs.

So what to conclude from that?
Is DVDA writing in a sublty different UDF format (or a more recent version) that Win2K doesn't understand but XP does?

Or is it that the XP machine has a DVD playing app installed and the Win2K machine doesn't?

I'll try installing a player on the Win2K machine and see what happens. I was trying to avoid installing anything unnecessary on the Win2K machine to avoid screwing up Vegas / DVDA.

I've done a little research on this. I've no prior experience so bear with me as I'm largely groping in the dark.
The UDF spec says that DVD-Video only needs to be UDF 1.02, disks mastered to UDF 2.0 may not be compatible in all players. Also DVD-Video disks do not have to be ISO 9660 compliant.
Could this have some bearing on the issue, DVDA is producing DVDs that are 100% compliant meaning Windows out of the box will not be able to copy the files over a certain size?
Installing a DVD player also installs a new dll into Windows that then permits it to read the file structure correclty?

This would explain a lot. If you author in DVDA and then burn as a DVD-ROM that would include a ISO file structure, Windows could then read all the files no problem, danger then is maybe some DVD players will have trouble playing it.

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Why did it copy on one and not the other system? No way for me to tell for sure, but my gut feeling is that it has something to do with the system drivers and DLLs, probably stuff we can't even begin to troubleshoot. I had one machine that would not print to tape or preview on a monitor through the FireWire for love or money. Reformatted the drive, reloaded Winbloze, ran the latest service pack, reloaded Vegas and that machine LOVES monitor previews and print to tape.

Wish I had better info for you. However, if you can copy the files one one machine, you can then transfer to the other (if necessary). Means you haven't lost anything at least, you just have extra (and unnecessary) steps in your workflow. Good luck!

This issues has again been raised by others on other forums and still there is no response from Sony even acknowledging this is an issue. People with more time and understanding of the issue have done a more indepth analsysis of the issue and reached the same conclusion. DVDA produces DVDs that do not meet the UDF spec.

Yes they play OK, yes dub houses can probably duplicate them OK, still doesn't mean the thing is right and still doesn't solve the problem of how I can make additional copies of DVDs that I've authored in DVDA for my clients without going to 3rd party applications.

Should have included a link from the post at DMN but then found I couldn't so I've copied the original post here:
====================================================
Regarding UDF specifications NOT players compatibility.
I wouldn't have thought about it if it weren't for Nero that few days ago I used it for burning a project (over 1GB size) compiled with DVDA. Prior burning Nero alerted me that the "File size is not a multiple of a logical block size (2 KB)" and the DVD may be unplayable. Hitting ok on the dialog and after the information: "DVD-Video files reallocation failed, DVD-Video files compliance ignored" the program sorted the files and burned the DVD and of course it played correctly.

After some searching I found the following information at Microsoft. According to it Nero's alert was valid and it correctly identified a "non compliant vob file".

As of June 26, 2001, the most common file types that are used by DVD manufacturers have a .vob or .dat file extension, and the DVD-Video standard only allows single extent files. An extent descriptor under the Universal Disk Format (UDF) standard can only describe 1 gigabyte (GB), and larger files need more descriptors.

UDF uses a 32-bit integer as the size of an extent, the top two bits of which are reserved, so there is a maximum extent size of 2^30 - 1. MPEG2 data is normally written a block at a time, and this means that the block size is 2^30 (or 1GB-2KB). Because of this, if the .vob file size is greater than or equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes (the block size), the .vob file is not playable. (The article refers to Windows 98, Windows 98SE and WindowsME).

Also OSTA's UDF specification is quite clear: DVD players expect media in UDF 1.02 and individual files to be less than or equal to 2^30 -Logical Block Size bytes in length.

Why Sony/Sonic Foundry decided to set the split point exactly at 1 GB? Other DVD authoring programs follow the rule and split vob files at a smaller than the above-mentioned size (Roxio I believe use the entire block size same as DVDA).

I wanted to write to Nero's technical support team and suggest correcting their program's validation scheme so that no errors are triggered with this block size but from what I get of the formula is that the file size shouldn't be exactly 1 GB. In theory a size of 1,073,741,823 bytes would be valid, in reality a file of 1,073,739,736 bytes is the largest valid size (considering the 2KB logical block size).

If anyone has more information and technical details or corrections, please let me know.

Is there any change regarding the vob size in the latest update 1.0d or is it still splitting at 1.048.576 KB (1.073,741,824 bytes)?

=====================================================

"how I can make additional copies of DVDs that I've authored in DVDA for my clients without going to 3rd party applications."

Save the authoring file, open up DVDA, open up the project file, select burn. Repeat as many times as necessary to get the desired amount of discs. It's Not a bug