Hi

When you burn DVDs or when you copy DVDs does the burning speed affect quality?

Stelios

it shouldn't affect, you always can run a test also.

I guess on slower speed the chance to fail the process is smaller.

If you hold a hot steel rod in your hand for 4 seconds or 8 seconds, what hurts the most? Same with burning DVD's, the longer the pits are burned, the deeper they are and the better readable they will be. The slower the burn speed, the better the pits will be burned.

In general use good quality DVD's (Verbatim or Taio Yuden) and burn at the slowest speed possible to get the best results. So 4x is better than 8x, like the 4s is better than 8s.

If you hold a hot steel rod in your hand for 4 seconds or 8 seconds, what hurts the most? Same with burning DVD's, the longer the pits are burned, the deeper they are and the better readable they will be. The slower the burn speed, the better the pits will be burned.

In general use good quality DVD's (Verbatim or Taio Yuden) and burn at the slowest speed possible to get the best results. So 4x is better than 8x, like the 4s is better than 8s.

Is that really a valid analogy? If that is a valid analogy, how does that rate in importance when compared to not burning all the way to the edge of the disc?

From my experience, burning 16X discs at a slower speed will not improve quality. In fact, burning at slower speed may increase write errors.

I found these interesting:

http://www.dvdburning.biz/dvd-burning-tips.htm

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t289340.html

Stelios

I recently had a CD I was writing fail to work written at slow speed but it worked fine written at maximum speed. I have no idea why this would happen.

An engineer at Microboards told me that writting at a slower speed can miss burn the pit in a DVD-R, resulting in a write error.

Stelios,

Your links are a confirmation of my earlier post. On various forums I have seen many posts by people who regularly burn hundreds of disks and they all say to burn at the lowest possible speed. I have found burning at lower speeds to be more reliable and more compatible with set top boxes than higher speed burns.

Glenn,

There are engineers and engineers, some know what they are talking about, others wonder what is being talked about (grin).

Here is a pretty good explanation.


http://www.microboards.net/faqman/index.php?op=view&t=67

Glenn,

The question was not about CD's at 1x or 2x, which is a rather outdated article, possibly from the previous century, but about DVD's in the current time.

DVDs and CD have the same issues regarding burn speed. Regardless, Saying write speeds are better is not universally true.

We burn about 8 thousand discs a month. When I run into error problems I adjust the write speed. Sometimes up sometimes down, to solve the errors.

All my burners are Microboards. I have found their technical support to be excellent. Micoboards technicians and engineers have been very informative. They make an excellent product.

Do what works for you, but I would suggest avoiding blanket statements that may not apply to all circumstances.

we ran a commercial short run duplication business for several years and in all honesty I never found a need to drop below (or go above) 4x speed. 1x and 2x burn patterns simply didn't yeild any greater disc compatibility.

The only players that proved an exception to the rule were 1999/2000 era machines ...but there the issue was the reformulation of DVD-R media that took place to support 4x burning.

Wheras in the past those older players were happy enough to read 2x burned discs from oldschool 1x 2x media, once the media changed formulations to support 4x they just plain refused to play ball regardless of speed the later style discs were burned at

Those old players werent exacly in common useage even by 2002/2003 (most were big bulky and had limited connectivity options) Considering its now half way thru 2007 most will have shuffled off to landfill sites or been consigned to dark corners of the garage.

Our annual burn quotas were in the order of 50 to 60k of discs and if our 4x burning had proved to be a compatibility issue then believe me our clients wouldnt have been long in letting us know!

We didnt have a need for 8x burning (time saved wasnt relevant) and got out of that business before 16x media came along so I cant comment on this from personal experience, but it strikes me that modern dvd-r discs that have been reformulated to cope with demands of 16x burning are not going to get an optimal burn when zapped at 1x speed.

Lets face it a 16x drive is not going to produce a laser output 16 times stronger than that of a 1x burner to compensate for the 16th as long time it spends burning a pit. Instead to get an equivalent burn at 16 speed the media is going to have been reformulated to react much more readily to the laser output.

The optimum power calibration routines used on burners will allow the burner to modify its power output to a certain extent while burning, but I doubt very much it'll have that wide a range of adjustment, so chances are burning 16x formulated media at 1x speed could well run the risk of an 'overcooked' disc as Glenn suggests.