The first-cut alpha version of Grid BURN is now available upon request.
WARNING: Alpha means that Grid BURN will be buggy and unpolished!We surely need help to further evaluate if this is a worthy cause; if you are in a position to give Grid BURN a test and can give us your feedback - we encourage you to give it a try.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server
Alex I would like to take the time and help Alpha test Grid BURN. (I have plenty of DVD-R and CD-R ready) :)
Lead Moderator & WHS Guru
Thank you Kurt, I have sent you a PM with the details.
Got it thanks Alex.
Install when ok (did the install via the RDC so I saw a bit of background installing processing (still working when the Console finshed installing the addin to restart) that being said by the time users would install it via the console and log back into it, the backup processors will be complete and the WHS would be ready to restart.
I will uninstall it and reinstall it and install it via the console and report my findings.
I do not have a blueray burner yet but I would like to test and will provide you feedback with my DVD burner.Looking forward to playing with it. thanks
Installed it via the console and here is my findings.
The background processors do come to the front but users should wait atleast 30 seconds to 1 minute before clicking the OK as when they try to console back in, it will be blank and some users may not know that they need to reboot the WHS and start thinking the worst (if you know what I mean).
But after the required reboot the console and everything works.
Also I swaped the drive and Burn was able to pick up on that and show the correct Drive name.
I burned a CD of about 600MB overall it took about 4 mins but it feeled longer as when it was adding the files and folders it did not show any time scale, but burning took about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Alex,
First off, Great work and another brill add-in!!
Installed with ease on Sunday. No errors to report, did not prompt for a reboot, but did per-instructions. After a swift reboot, tried a quick test on burning some data to DVD+R disk.
It detected the DVD+R correctly and next I thought, what will test this to it's limits. So I selected the ROOT Photo share and clicked 'ADD FOLDER'(I really do like that feature). There is 12Gb of photos in there, so no way it would fit on the DVD, but at that point, after about 60 seconds the console white screened and then crashed. Upon reconnecting it was fine. This time selecting at random video's folders and then burn't the DVD. All went very smoothly and as expected from NERO/Burnaware/etc...
As for the time taken to start burning to disc, it did seem to take a while to prep the 4Gb's of data (4-5Mins) before starting the burn. Does it prep the data in the background to temp space? Just looked like it had hung.
This really is what I've been after for a while. As it is an Alpha, could suggest some addition features..
- Ability to modify/rename the folder name once added to the disc.
- Ability to see how much data you have added if there is no disc (Burn media) in the drive, as to save wasting a DVD for CD size data.
- I like the idea of saving to an ISO image, of even just saving the layout of the selected files/folders. Ideal for weekly/monthly archives to DVD.
- Music - MP3 to a complation CD/DVD. Should work fine, just by adding folders of albums, I'll try this later.
Just a few idea, but I love the simplicity of it on the whole. Adding features may take away the whole point of the WhS 'ease of use'.
Just need to test on the Wife to see if she can burn her data to disc, should be piece of cake now.
Hello Alexander,
i think i can make different tests with GridBurn. I have now 3 WHS test systems running. So i wish to involve me for the alpha tests.
You can contact me via mail. I'am from the Netherlands.
BR, Mike van den Ham
At first I did not reboot my WHS. When the console session ended at the end of the installation I thought it would do an auto reboot. I waited a couple of minutes and I reconnected but it did not find my DVD RW device.Iwas about to post that it does not work and I read the above posts and I figured let me try and manually reboot my WHS. That did it!! It is working now and I already burned 3 discs. This can be very useful. Is there any specific feedback you are looking for?
Hi zzzShare,
The the kind of feedback we are looking for is mainly pointing out bugs or crashes due to specific events. Also, like other members have posted here far, suggested features that we can implement that could improve the add-in.
Thank you everyone for your feedback and feature suggestions.Yes, depending on media type a temporary media file system has to be created which can take a couple of minutes and yes the timer only kicks in when the actual disc IO starts...all these things can be adjusted/tuned... given hardware limitations and the fact that some stock OEM WHS ship with 512MB system memory it would be a bad idea to attempt to burn a 4GB DVD on the fly (although possible) so Gird BURN may not be the world's fastest.
Granted at this point there are a lot of bugs, I have seen plenty ;-)In terms of the feedback, a critical notion whether or not this being a useful WHS add-in or not and just your general reactions and feature suggestions at a high-level.
Personally I have a lot of ISO files on my WHS; being able to burn ISO files and create ISO rips would be beneficial to me too.
The installation has running without any errors. Restarting the WHS. Open the RemoteConsole. Use add-in goto Desktop. Minimize. Open the tab GridBurn. My first emotion was WOW... no more words.
I have made a complete screenshot series from start to the end after burning a DVD with films from my prof. video camera.
Add and delete files and/or folders is working. Detect media is working. The DVD drive is shown. Supported media information is ok.
One other point is, when you have selected more files and/or folders that can be written on a media, you see the color is chaning from blue to red. So far so good. But i have no information, how many files i have to delete that the color goes back to blue for the Disk capacity. It is possible to give the information about how many files i must delete? I think you can give that info ot under the disk capacity. With max. on DVD and selected files. So anyone can have an idea how many data he must delete to have the right capacity selected.
The next point is to have a button to check a log file for errors or NO errors on burning.
The last point is, after burn the DVD there was no directory and no files on the media. Ups, have i forgotten something???
One important point when alpha and beta phase is over:
i think you have written THE killerapplication of the year 2009. It will be good to inform Microsoft aubout that. MS is searching the whole year for the best application. So when you do that, you can see your name on a MS webpage. Is this an idea :-) :-).
GridBurn does everthing for CD/DVD burning where i'am searching for. Technica data about processor, ram, disk drives and DVD drives i will give you later this day and/or week.
.
Hallo Alexander,
one more point, or beeter or not an error popup appears after burning:
Do you need a log file from the application?
Hello Mike,
Thank you very much for your feedback, some good input
At this point, in this first alpha test of Gird BURN, you should be able to burn at least something... When you say no directory and no files on the media? Did you test it in another drive? in the same drive?
Given the amount of data one is likely to burn when on a WHS, I have opted to make UDF the default instead of ISO 9660 (CD FS) or ISO + JOILET. For example ISO 9660 does not support a single file larger than 2 GB in size, besides I figured it is best to have less legacy and focus on newer technologies but as a consequence one must use an operating system and CD/DVD reader that is capable of understanding/reading UDF format.
Ultimately we should give the user the option in Gird BURN to burn any UDF, ISO, or ISO + JOILET media but I do feel that UDF should be the default. Could this explain why your disc is empty? or did you try and burn a DVD movie? - at this point Grid BURN will not author a DVD file system.
Any specific options or feature implementations will not be solidified any time soon. I thank you for pointing out any errors but I am not in a position to look further into it with this alpha build.
This week we will get Remote Alert v 1.2 out of the door and attend to a couple of site bugs and improvements; this weekend or early next week -if things go well will start on a Grid BURN alpha v2 which will include a lot of logging and it would be great if you could try the Alpha v2 and further test and give your feedback and suggestions.
i have tested the rare medium in another drive, but the same...no directory no files. I think the the medium was not written. Clean blue without any darkblue ranges. And no there was no files bigger then 2GB. All files had the same size, nearly 700MB.
Yes, i'am allways ipen for the next alpha test. I have made any screenshots for, let say for the people they will now something about this killer-app :-).
http://home.kpn.nl/faba00px/whs/gridburn/index.html with full size shots for a better view. When you need help, i think teher many proggers outside who van help you out.
About remote-alert. It's also a very add-in. You have so many ideas. Take the time to drink one or two bears :-). I do it so, sometimes in the summer. Ok, ok we have no summer yet, but lets think it is.