"For greater compatibility you must pretty much resort to burning at 1x."

John, I'm not disputing your word here, but how is this the case? I certainly don't have the answer. But thinking out loud, as it were, how does the speed with which the 0s and 1s are placed on the disc effect the disc's compatibility?

Any explanation would be truly appreciated!

J--

John, I'm not disputing your word here, but how is this the case? I certainly don't have the answer. But thinking out loud, as it were, how does the speed with which the 0s and 1s are placed on the disc effect the disc's compatibility?
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Not 100% sure really. Maybe SonyEPM or someone in tech support can jump in here with an explanation.
I do know that CD and DVDs contain "pits and lands" which are short and long traces written on the media, made by a variable laser and prone to imperfections in their placement.
Their locations have to be written in a standard interval, in which these imperfections must fall, so they can be read precisely.
When writing with different media, or with a less precise writer, or with a higher speed, these little traces can be less precise, making it difficult for some readers to interpret 0s and 1s correctly. In other words it can interpret a 0 as a 1, for example.

Burn speed definitly seems to make a difference even with CDs and slower speeds when played on certain players such as Sonys. I burn CDs at no more than 4x.

The laser beam can burn a much sharper image at a slower speed than it can at a higher speed. Since the beam can't be turned on or off instantaneously, and it isn't truly a point of light but a slightly fuzzy circle, the ability to form a sharp image on the disc diminishes as the speed goes up. When a certain speed is reached the pits and lands will fuzz into each other too much and the reading laser won't be able to see the difference well enough to read accurately. What this speed is depends on the quality of the laser doing the writing, the quality of the laser doing the reading, the media itself, and probably quite a few other factors. Just because a writer is able to burn a disc at high speed and read it back doesn't mean that disc can be reliably read on older equipment. (Audio CDs burned at faster than 4x are often unreadable on audio CD players.)

What i don't agree with is that the quality of the video signal can be worse at higher speeds than at lower speeds. The disc reader can either successfully read the disc or it can't. If it can read it, then it reassembles the 1s and 0s into the original picture with no loss of quality. If it can't read it, then it can't read it. Yes, there may be a gray area inbetween when the player starts encountering more and more errors, but it will either correct them and generate a picture identical to the original, or it will fail and not generate a picture.

What i don't agree with is that the quality of the video signal can be worse at higher speeds than at lower speeds
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I shoot primarily theater video under artificial light which varies an a continuing basis. I always have to color correct and mess with the black levels. I can see a difference when burning at 1x as opposed to 2x. It isn't a huge difference and may only be noticeable with funky lighting which has been corrected.

John

Thanks John and Kelly for taking the time to explain that to those of us who are technically challenged.

Kelly, your comments seemed to ring true for sure--either it will read the data or it won't. One cannot imagine how "fuzzy" 0s or 1s would produce fuzzy images.

J--

Hey guys--

The fact that media are certified for burning at, say, 4X means that the results they deliver at that speed meet spec.

To date I have burned about 350 DVD-R Ritek 4X disks on my Cendyne/Pioneer -05 burner at the full 4X speed, and have had exactly 2 returns. One of those wouldn't play ANY burned disk, and we never investigated the other.

So all I can say is that, based strictly on my own personal experience, you gain nothing burning at a slower speed as long as the media is certified for a higher speed. I would compare it to buying PC2700 RAM and running it at PC2100 speeds on the premise that margins are a bit looser at those slower speeds. Yes, the margins are looser, but the very fact that PC2700 is certified at 2700 means it is up to the task.

Richard, your analogy appears to be valid. It certainly makes sense to me, regarding the certification. One would presume that if the media and the burner were capable of burning at 4x, there should not be any issues.

The player certainly isn't going to know the rate of burn. As Kelly said, the data is either there or it isn't.

J--

To date I have burned about 350 DVD-R Ritek 4X disks on my Cendyne/Pioneer -05 burner at the full 4X speed, and have had exactly 2 returns. One of those wouldn't play ANY burned disk, and we never investigated the other.
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I am using the EXACT same media and burner as you are and I have found that the media burned at 4x (without a label) does not play on several different types of players and the same media burned with the same drive using DVDA to burn them plays on all of them. The age of the players involved are 1-2 years old. In fact burned at 1x a FULL DVD plays flawlessly on an older Toshiba SD-1600 without a hiccup.

John

John, I understand what you're saying. I don't doubt for one minute that what you've experienced is true. Unless I'm missing something, though, it sounds like a player issue, not a burner/media/burn speed issue.

J--

I suspect this is all going to parallel the developments in CDR technology. The early burnersdid better at 1x. Then when 4x burners and media were popular, many found 2x would actually have better results with some hardware/media combinations.

Nowadays, with high speed hardware & media (labeled 40x & faster), it seems the sweet spot is usually around 12-16x. Generally you CAN'T burn at 1x anymore, but when you can, a newer burner & media combo does better at 12 or 16x than at 1, 2, or 4x. Any burner or media is specd to work over a certain range, but will be optimized for a certain speed (or a range, but "optimal range" is much smaller than "acceptable range").

So. I suspect when EVERYONE has an 8x DVD burner (and thus 90% of the media is made to work at that speed), we'll find our best results in the 4x range. Until then, the media landscape changes so fast that I take any "rules" with a grain of salt. Not because I doubt another's experience, but that by the time I hear about it, it may no longer be applicable. Plus, there are SO many burner/media/player combinations, and the player is usually the most likely problem spot.

Unless I'm missing something, though, it sounds like a player issue, not a burner/media/burn speed issue.
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and the player is usually the most likely problem spot.
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I don't disagree with that. However, I am drawing my results from testing on at least 20 different players. I send out freebees for people to test on their players. I am looking for 100% compatibility. This site (which I am sure you are familiar with) lists issues with media and players on a regular basis:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers
Sanyo DVW-6000 has problems for example with burned DVDs. One of my testers has one. The problems listed (skipping ahead, etc) were exhibited when I handed her a Fuji (Taiyo Yuden) burned at 2x and a Ritek G04 burned at 4x and 2x. Both the Taiyo Yuden and thr Ritelk G04 played on that player when burned at 1x with both media. And that's only one example. The GoVideo DVP855 which is a piece of junk will not play through any DVD-R burned at anything over 1x.
I will say the the burn speed problem is much more pronounced when you are playing a disk which is nearly at capacity. That is where the media and player incompatibilities are most pronounced. In the beginning I was limiting the DVDs to 1 hour max and I had excellent compatibility using Japanese only media burned at 2x. Once I started going to the limit on the disks I could see an improvement in terms of widespread compatibility dropping the burn speed to 1x.
Here is a quote from the "knowledge base" under "Support" above:

"According to the CD manufacturer, Verbatim, no audio CD should be written at a speed higher than 2x. Data CDs can be written much faster, but an audio CD should be finalized at 2x to make sure it is compatible with most CD players. "

Here is a quote from SonyEPM who answered this question:
"There are many posts about issues with 4x DVD burners. It seems there are various problems with DVDA using this media."

Answer:
"For best results, with maximum player compatibility, we advise burning at 1x. Same thing with CD masters- 1x is preferred. "
SonyEPM

Source:
http://www.mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=22&MessageID=195624

John

Of course then there are the other variables which have been debated back and forth such as labels vs no labels, Direct CD printing vs marker, etc.

Thanks much, John, for the clarification!

J--

I'm pretty certain the underlying issue to much of this is related to the error correction mechansim on CD and DVD players,
For example a CD containg data has a different error correction mechanism to that on a audio CD. When the CDA spec was written fast silicon was expensive so the error correction mechanism is fairly basic but gets around errors by trying to make them inaudible. I'd imagine much the same happens with DVDs. Burning at a higher speed could results in a higher error rate, better quality players can cope with this better.

What is desperately needed by people at our level in the industry is a tool to tell us what the underlying error rate is on a burnt CD / DVD.

The "1x is best" mantra, even on audio discs, is not universal. In fact, it's now in the minority for audio CDR, judging by a 15 minute web search.

Various other geniuses upon whose coat-tails I'll ride have stated their best results from 2x-8x. Nobody prefers going above or below those figures, though they chose different ones of the 3. These were primarily people from the Audiomasters forum and the Yahoo CDR forum (where I frequent and remembered this from).

The point being, this is not set in stone. And as it has shifted for CDR, IMO so it shall for DVDR.

I guess there's more to this stuff than what one would first assume. We all have our own experience base that we use to form our own conclusions, and I respect those different points of view.

There's another possibility that could explain the differences here--all my stuff is edited with Vegas, authored with Maestro, and then burned with Nero Express (v5.5.10.20). I know that Nero is pretty much bulletproof, but I have no experience with DVD-A. Is it possible that somehow the burning software could explain this?

I do know that a previous version of Nero (I forget the number; it was about a year ago) burned DVDs that my Toshiba player hated, and last January I downloaded the 5.5.10.20 Nero update that casually mentioned in the revision notes that the newest version offered "increased compatibility" with DVD players (!).

I know that Nero is pretty much bulletproof
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Your version is one of the few which is reliable. The ones before and after were/are not.

John

I haven't had issues with the latest Nero 6.whatever, although I know lots of people had trouble with earlier 6.0 revisions. I'd have preferred to stay with 5.5, but a project I'm doing makes the ability to burn 4 CDs at once (now included in Nero) very helpful.

maybe so, but you'll not see the big houses EVER burning audio at anything but 1x. RocketLab, Bernie Grundman, Steve Steele, Bob Clearmountain, David Haley, none of these guys/houses burn at anything but 1X. Why prank with it when it's a master? For quick one offs, I'll burn audio and DVD at 2x, sometimes audio at 4x, but there is a clear difference in audio at higher rates. While this may change with media, burners, buffers, RAM, and apps in the future, remember that a master is the final step. Isn't the extra time to assure perfection worth the headache?

If I was doing a 1-off then the speed issue would be the least of my concerns. Somewhere there has to be a web site that goes into bit error rates on CDs and DVDs and compares different burn rates. Common sense would imply that, all things equal, there will be more burn errors at high speed than at low speed. But technology keeps moving forward. No one, for instance, would intentionally slow down their IDE disk read rate to, say, 3MB/sec if it was capable of 100MB/sec. We assume the vendor has designed the product to perform accurately at the design speed. I'd love to see some report from Pioneer about just what "certified 4X" means.

Over the past few weeks I had to burn 200 DVD-R disks. It would have taken four times longer to burn them at 1X, and the process was painful enough as it was. In any event, all those disks seem to be playing fine, so for me the issue is moot.

I would say that the problem relates to high speed burns in newer drives that then get played back in older drives. Consider that a CD or DVD-ROM drive manufactured back when the maximum burn speeds were 4x for CD and 1x for DVD couldn't have been tested for reading discs burned at 16x/4x. The manufacturers certainly knew that higher speeds would be coming, but without them existing then or for the next few years it would be difficult to produce a drive that would be compatible with future media.

This doesn't always hold true of course. I have a 10 year old Onkyo portable CD player that i purchased back before most folks had ever heard of CD-R. It plays audio CDs burned at 16x & 24x without skipping a beat (or even a sample). I've also got a relatively new RCA player that i bought after getting a 16x burner and it refuses to play anything recorded over 4x. It will recognize a 6x disc, but won't play it. It thinks 8x discs don't even exist.

For my personal experience, when we burn the service recordings after church each sunday morning, we started burning them at 16x when we upgraded to a new burner. Almost everyone who got a disc complained that it would skip or wouldn't play at all. We dropped our burning speed back to 4x and get zero complaints now. I now have access to about a dozen different faster-than-4x burners and get similar results from all of them.

I would say that the problem relates to high speed burns in newer drives that then get played back in older drives
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I am not finding that to be the case. As I stated earlier most of the people testing for me have players which are 1-2 years old. My daughter's 4 year old Toshiba plays everything.

John

SPOT,
I *agree* not to prank with a master. But I'm saying that may no longer mean burning at 1x. This is not a concession for convenience; hell, if I KNEW my master would have lower error rates burning at even 0.1x, I'd let it go overnight! I'm saying that there are people who've done BLER tests that have found lower error rates (with audio masters made on new media & burners) at 2x, 4x, and 8x than at 1x. These would include at least Graeme & SteveG from Audiomasters, Mike Richter of the CDR forum, and Paul at Arrowkey (maker of CD/DVD Diagnostic & Inspector). This is not a name dropping thing, as the names you mentioned are way "bigger". But SOMETHING is going on here, because the cats *I* mention also have BLER checking drives (which normal people like myself do not) and have gotten a different result.

Is it a case of "old knowledge" or habit that just hasn't been re-verified recently on the part of "your guys"? Is it that the specific media & burners used by different people give different results? Certainly "audio CDRs" would give best results at 1x; they're designed to be used in real time recorders. That doesn't mean that modern "52x" media behaves that way.

In the end, BLER rates tell all, and the recent posts I've seen in the 'net circles I travel support higher than 1x burning. I would love to see more data, though, so if anyone has links for recent BLER comparisons of this nature, I'd love to see them.