Is that for the absolute best quality?

Thanks,
Ace

When you get some spare time, do a search on this forum on this topic--there have been similar discussions before.

In my case, based on reviews of the burned disks with products such as Nero's "DVD/CD speed" I burn only Taio Yuden 8x DVD-R blanks at 8x. You could burn a couple of full test disks at several speeds and then check the results for yourself with the Nero utility.

What speed is the Taio Yuden DVD-R's that you use? I use Verbatim 16x and some say to burn them at 12x. Can you tell the difference just by watching the dvd's ?

Ace

No you cannot tell the difference by watching them.
The player is reading back data that has error correction and things have to go wrong beyond a certain level before they're visible or audible. That's why you need to use utilites that can measure and display error rates.
The quality of the burn will also affect how long the disk will last and perhaps how many different players will be able to play it.

Bob.

Video Quality is not the issue. Compatibility is.

If the media ID code for it is MKM......001 the best results seem to be at up to 4X, but not more than that. There are enough problems with DL media for me to steer clear of it altogether, but if you must burn DL, that media ID seems to be the most reliable.

John

>There are enough problems with DL media for me to steer clear of it altogether...<

I burn Verbatim DVD+R DL in a Plextor drive using CopyToDVD (on Windows x64). For maximum compatibility, the disc book type is set to DVD-ROM by PlexTools.

Using the above, I've yet to receive one complaint about playback compatibility and I've made literally hundreds of discs.

I burn Verbatim 8x inkjet printable to hub and Verbatim 16x. I have burned 200 of them this last week and one disc had a visable booboo in it. There just aren't any problems at all. The only problem I have had is with DVD-A3c not burning TS files created by other softwares properly. The discs get spit out by set top players so I have to burn other software created TS files with Nero. I also do not have any problems with Verbatim dual-layer discs. I use the Plextor 716A.
JJK

I think you'll get less chance of recording errors at a lower speed.
I don't think this is quite true any longer, but I suppose it could be for some systems.
A recent discussion with Master Engineer/EvaTone (Ron Dabbs), he says that a majority of errors that they see any more are from people burning too slow, as drives are now optimized for high speeds as is media.
We had some TY discs sent in that were burned at 4x and 16x, the 4x had more errors than the 16x, which is what prompted the discussion. I've heard this on a few occasions before, but hearing it from a guy of Ron's level of experience meant something more, FWIW. He authors/masters for Disney, Janet Jackson, Nickelback, and many other high profile DVD projects.
[edit] missed the D/L component to this question; we burn D/L here at 4X

Your question does not have a single answer, because it depends on your burner, and your media.

However, you can easily find -- exactly -- the answer for your particular setup. Download CD/DVD Speed. Use the same media and burn at the maximum speed your burner and media will allow. Then, burn the exact same project at the next slower speed. Repeat until you've burned at all the speeds you're interested in. (It won't cost you anything if you do this on a project where you need to make multiple copies).

Then, run CD/DVD Speed and run the Disc Quality test. Always run this test at the same speed (I always run it at 4x). Look at the results, and see which burn speed gives the lowest error rate. If the error rates are close, then you can burn at the highest speed with confidence.

I have used some cheap DVDs and even though Nero verifies them 100% I see the mpeg blockiness breakup (errors) when I play the DVD on a normal player for the TV. The errors happen erratically as it plays, for a short time or if really bad, it can hang.
So you can visually see the errors but you do have to watch it at 1x. As a check I play the outmost tracks as that is where most errors occur.
As an Engineer I know it is true newer drives are optimized for higher speeds.

Technobaba:

If Nero shows the disk as readable, then it is having no problem reading the disk with the mechanism you have in your PC. Your set-top DVD player is an entirely different mechanism, of course, and for some reason it's having a hard time reading the disk on the outer radius. I guess the only solution is to use a different DVD player. I do know that several years ago I tried out my new burned DVD-R disks on a number of DVD players at a local Fry's Electronics. The only players that refused to have anything to do with the disks were the ultra-expensive ones, which was a complete reversal of what I had expected.

It could also be that your bitrate is too high for that DVD player, and it can't keep up. Some people on this board have had problems with average bitrates higher than about 8Mb/sec.