I buy only Taiyo Yuden Premium DVDs, #1 for a long time (although there are others in the same league).

If you're making regular video DVDs that can be watched in a DVD player or most computers, you need to render to MPEG-2 and follow DVD specs (just search in this forum for details).

You could also make data DVDs that contain video files in any format you have a player for.

H.264 is compact and works across any reasonably recent computer platform.

WMV is fine if you just want to play on your own machines (or just PCs in general).

I use Taiyo-Yuden watershield blanks and never burn at more than an average of 8,000,000.

Mike

TY's and Verbatim for me.

I use Taiyo-Yuden watershield blanks and never burn at more than an average of 8,000,000.

Me too - I have very seldom people that cannot play them back. Burn at 4x or 6x mostly

/Ulf

After this long it's hard to believe people are still talking about "brands" instead of Media ID Codes. Like a lot of products companies outsource their manufacturing to several manufacturers often to the lowest bidders. And it can change at a moments notice. There can be as many as seven manufacturers for a single "brand".

The best two I have found are made by Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and Taiyo Yuden under the media ID codes of MCC 02RG20 and TYG02 respectively. They are both 8X media. Personally I buy Verbatim 94854. The Media ID code is MCC 02RG20 consistently. Don't be afraid to send back the discs if they don't give you what you want. I sent back a case of 200 discs to Meritline for not giving me what I wanted.

I never get complaints about the Verbatim 94854 (MCC 02RG20) discs. They also print fairly well.

Note that some burners burn some discs better than others. And some programs burn better than others. That will require a lot of experimentation.

My own success is with an older version of Record Now Max 4.5 with an updated PX Engine so it recognizes newer burners. I follow the settings described here after creating the Video and Audio TS folders with DVDA. I burn at the Min speed despite a lot of arguments about how it makes no difference. I stick with what works for me flawlessly.

John

"After this long it's hard to believe people are still talking about "brands" instead of Media ID Codes."

The two go together. Just because a disk uses a certain dye, doesn't mean that batch of disks has passed QC.

Given a choice between Datawrite branded TYG02 and Verbatim branded TYG02, I'd go with Verbatim every time.

I don't think anyone mentioned DVD compatability. This is not as big a problem as the older players die off, but I did have a customer in January of this year whose player would not play a DVD-R. A bitset DVD+R solved the problem.

DVD single layer compatability in order of highest player compatability is as follows:

1. DVD+R with ROM bitsetting
2. DVD-R with bitsetting (too complicated to be usefull)
3. DVD-R
4. DVD+R

I don't have time to explain dual layer, which is more complicated.

I only use the TY02 DVD-R Watershied discs. Good media and good print surface quality.

I've had great results with the Verbatim 16X (MCC 03RG20) disks, and they are very reasonably-priced -- currently $29.95/100 -- at Sam's Club.