Re: [Dvdrtools-users] DVD-R media speeds

[Matthew Stephenson]

On Sun, 15 Dec 2002 06:08:51 -0500
Kevin <address@hidden> wrote:

> anyone here have any input on exceeding the recording
> speed of given media?  I've had very few problems
> exceeding regular CDR speeds, even back in 96, but i
> have little experience with burning DVDs.  The burner
> does 4x but i don't see and 4x media for sale only 1x
> and 2x and the 2x is too pricey, even in bulk.  The 1x
> media seems to work fine at 2x and i'm trying it at 4x
> now (have to wait and see).  If you do encounter
> errors, do they show up as failed burns or errors on
> media read later?

>From my own experience, I would be *very* wary of exceeding DVD-R media
speeds. DVD-R media seems to vary wildly in quality, especially cheaper
discs. For extensive discussions on DVD-R media, you should take a look
at the forums at www.mediaforums.net. However, from my own experience,
even some 2x-rated discs (good, expensive ones - Verbatim) gave me
read-errors after writing at 2x. I only have a Pioneer 104, so I can't
comment on writing them at 4x, but I certainly wouldn't trust any
valuable data to a disc written faster than 1x, at least with my
hardware. 

The errors tend to show up as read errors rather than failed burns. I
had a disc which wrote perfectly, but wouldn't even read back on the
writer it was written on. It's very dependent on the brand, and even the
batch, of the media you're using. Try reading the entire disc on a
variety of different dvd drives - I use "find /mnt/dvd -type f -print0
|xargs -0 md5sum" to do a recursive md5sum of all files on the disc.
|md5sum will complain if it can't read a file.

As for 4x discs, these people sell them - pioneer branded. (UK site -
I'm in the UK, I don't know about other countries):

http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/acatalog/SVP_Communications_Recordable_DVD_Discs_16.html

Hope this helps, 

Matthew