DVD-R / IMAGE FILE reliability; something to consider...

...er, no idea about the motherboard! It's a Sony RX203 package...

A quick way to check if you have a via chipset is: 

Go into Control Pannel>System>Hardware>Device Manager, and click on the + next to IDE ATA/ATAPI controlers. If you see the following: VIA Bus Master IDE Controler you definetly have a VIA based motherboard.

...it says; 82801BA Bus Master IDE Controller

Image file vs normal directory structure 

I also was having playback issues with movies and getting errors towards the end (many, many months ago), but since I started doing the extra step of creating an image with IfoEdit, no problems! I also dumped the Princo and no-name discs, and started using Ritek/Primedisc. One little secret that I learn from someone here, to improve the performance of the image building - save the image file to a different hard drive (seperate from the source files). Improved my image creation time 50%. I used to burn my DVD's by using Prassi or Nero and just dragging the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders and burning. That gave me those poor results. And I did a similar test using the image file, no problems! Even on completely filled DVDs! That was enough for me. Have been using image files for the last 400-500 DVD's, every one a winner.

I've tried the imgtool.exe you're talking about and I don't know how to burn that .img file with Nero o Recordnow MAX. Could you explain this a little?

nero: file - burn image, than select "All Files", now you can choose your img file, and than burn it recordnow: file - new job - other image, than add file, select "Image", choose your img file, burn it. dvd decrypter: mode - iso - write, select your file, click burning button.

Thanks for the reply sidar. :)

I've been reading this thread with interest as I think it may solve some compatability problems I've had......I did have 1 question : If I use the 'create image before burning' procedure, is it then safe to do a straight copy-2-copy using Prassi with the newly created disk as a master ???