[Bruck]

On my AL15, i burn "best" with a ritek 4x disc and i think it's burning at 1x. I can force it to burn at 2x and it burns fine, should i be choosing this option?

If you burn dvd-r movies with your powerbook which speed 1x or 2x do you burn at?

I am remembering issues of the past with cd-rs where if you burned an audio cd at 16x or 8x and put it in an older stereo it wouldnt work well, so for compatibility issues i would burn at 2x or 4x i think. Do these issues exist today?


Thanks!

[Paul_N]

I shot a family documentary and burned it to DVDs and after much research, I ended up burning the VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS folders at 1x using Toast5.

All data pointed to the fact that you'll have a higher compatability rate with dvd set top players when you burn at 1x. Additionally, when you compress your video & audio, you want to make sure that you don't go above 6mb/s (or maybe it was 6.5, it's been awhile). Older players have problems reading discs compressed with a high bitrate.

.. while the discs will most likely work with newer dvd players, you have to be concerned with the older "cheap" dvd players that people bought a few years back. No one likes to hear that the recommended solution is to buy a new DVD player, even if it doesn't comply with the DVD spec. People see DVD players as an appliance, not a computer which could be upgraded..

There is some decent DVD data in the Forums over at 2-pop.com, a FCP/DVDSP (amongst other video related topics) website.

Good luck!

[madmacgames]

I've stopped using the "best" or "maximum" options in OS X.

IMO, the OS handles it very badly and drops the speed unnecessarily low if you attempt to do anything else at the same time. So for CDs I just manually set to 16x and DVDs to 2x.

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by Paul_N:
All data pointed to the fact that you'll have a higher compatability rate with dvd set top players when you burn at 1x.

This statement is nearly as ridiculous as when a bit faster CD burners 1st came out and people started making wild claims that you would get better sound if you burned at 1x compared to 8x, etc.

[RayX]

Use better media.

[muchachotron]

why is Paul_N's statement ridiculous? i have also read (but not tested) that burning at higher speeds creates more superficial pits in the optical media, since everything is moving much quicker (disc spinnin', laser shootin', etc).

i regularly make data backups on dvd at 2x-4x, and mp3 cd's at as high as my burner will go (8x-24x depending on computer i am using). i also make audio cds at high speed with no troubles, but i'm usually making them for friends or my parents, so i'm not too concerned about maximum quality. if i were creating an imortant master disc of time-based content (an album, a dvd), i'd probably burn it at 1x, but perhaps thats just superstition. since it should be a digital transfer, though, the information will either be there or not. its not like a vhs or audio cassette, where you can get SOME of the sound, even if its a bit warped. if some of the data doesn't get written, your burning software should report that there was an error, or the disc may not work at all. i'd imagine that having a disc burned at higher speed would also be more susceptible to damage from seemingly insignificant drops and scrapes, as well as just general deterioration from moisture and aging, than one that was more "carefully" recorded.

anyone actually have factual data one way or the other? i am not an expert, just offering my comments.

[Paul_N]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
This statement is nearly as ridiculous as when a bit faster CD burners 1st came out and people started making wild claims that you would get better sound if you burned at 1x compared to 8x, etc.

Well, my own personal tests showed that discs burned at 4x didn't play on 6 of the 30 DVD players that I sent my DVD out to. 1x burned discs played flawlessly. The DVD players that had problems were from RCA, Panasonic, and Apex. Some were sub-$100, but one or two of them were $150+. It's been awhile, I can't remember the exact model numbers / costs..

Two years ago there was a push to introduce DVD players to the masses. This resulted in sub-$100 players that technically would play DVDs, but were barely spec compliant. I have seen numerous DVD players that can't play discs with high bitrates, or succumb to audio dropouts when changing chapters. It is annoying, but, like I said in the previous message, people do not want to upgrade their DVD players. They set it up and forget it, just like every other appliance in their house.

Anyhow, please rebut with some factual data that shows that 4x discs will play in every DVD player out there. I have friends in the video industry who make a living selling videos (wedding videos, etc.) They'd love to know that a 4x disc is guaranteed to play in grandma's DVD player. Better yet, I'm sure they'd love to have their customers contact you when they are having issues playing a 4x disc...

[madmacgames]

I meant the quality... And there have been many tests on CDRs (and probably DVDs too) burnt at high speed, and they show that the burnt copy is bit for bit identical to the original file that was burnt (WAV in the case of CDs). data is data is data.. as long as all your 1's and 0's are in place, there is no difference in quality. This has been proven over and over since they started saying burning 1x or 2x gave better "audio quality", which is ridiculous.

You were mentioning bitrates & compression, etc, so I thought you were talking about the quality of the DVD video & audio, which would be the same as the CD, in that there would be no difference in the quality of a 1x burn compared to a 4x burn of the same file.

I see, you may have meant that discs burned faster have a lower chance of working, which may be true of older players not built to read DVD-Rs and that as you mentioned, cheaper players are probably not 100% compliant, and I wouldn't be surprised if burning software is not 100% compliant either (Toast, etc).

The same is true of CDs. Some players, especially older ones, have a hard time reading CDs burnt at higher speeds for various reasons. However, the audio quality of a 1x CD is exactly the same as that of a high speed CD. If both are burnt correctly and the software is not interfering (I have read some software and slower machines cannot perform the calculations fast enough to properly burn at higher speeds), both will be bit for bit identical. I believe the same is true with a DVD and the video/audio quality. That was my point. Sorry if I misinterpreted your posting.