DVD burning speed

[Ian Stark]

Is it correct that the slower the burning speed, the better the burn, or is that a fallacy?

I use Taiyo Yuden R16X disks and burn at 16x because the documentation that came with them says to do so. In some DVD players they play fine but in others they stutter and throw up a ton of artefacts. I'd like to know if burning at slower speeds will yield better results.

(Before anyone suggests it, yes I will actually burn a DVD to try it out myself! I'm just curious to know if there's any technical basis for believing a slower burn is better).

Thanks,

Ian . . .

[Mike Kujbida]

Ian, my rule of thumb is to burn at 1/2 the recommended speed, even the TY Watershields I'm currently using.
The other (and, IMO, more important) issue is to keep the bitrate under 8,000,000.
These 2 rules have served me well for a number of years with zero returns.

[Anthony McErlean]

Ian, I would always burn at 4 speed. I was told at a lower speed it burns deeper into the disc, I wouldn't know about that, but 4 speed and sometimes two speed if its going into a duplicator to make copies off.

[Ian Stark]

Well, I have now burned several disks at different speeds - 16x, 8x, 4x and I am currently burning one at 2x, although that has sat on the 'Burning lead-in' stage for 11 minutes now so I am guessing it's fallen over.

These are Taiyo Yuden R16X Watershields containing 4.4Gb of data over two menus with 10 videos ranging between 1 minute and 53 minutes and two alternative audio tracks, at a bit rate of around 4,200,000. I am using DVDA 5.

So far, I confirm that the slower the speed, the less artefacting, skipping and dropouts, although I am still experiencing some issues on the cheap and nasty DVD players.

The 'slower the speed/better the burn' concept seems to hold water but I am still curious to know why. Is it really because it burns deeper?

As a side note, this is my first 'proper' DVDA project in many years of being a Vegas user. Once you get beyond the included themes and default values, this is a pretty neat bit of kit.

Thanks for the input, gents.

[Ian Stark]

I meant to add that this project IS going to a duplicator, but I am guessing that if it works OK in three or four DVD players there is nothing inherently wrong with the data or the disk itself, rather that the players are u/s. If that is the case then it should transfer OK to the multi-burner, right?

[Nicholas de Kock]

I don't know if this is true, I haven't seen any technical data to back this up, I have in the past burned at lower speeds because for some strange reason it makes sense to do so however most of my disc's (Taiyo Yuden, VB) have been burned at 16x or 20x, errors free for fours years now.

[Vito DeFilippo]

I definately notice more problem when I burn at max speed. I usually burn at 4X and have good results.

Another thing I avoid doing is filling the disc completely. I also found that I would get defective burns when I filled them right up. Most of the video would play fine, then glitch city. So I author my DVDs to make sure they are not quite at max capacity. Say 95% or so.

I burn with Nero, and make sure I have it check the data when done. And I check every master in a stand alone DVD player before making duplications. This has saved my butt several times.

[Ian Stark]

This is all very interesting. I have, until now, ALWAYS burned these TY disks at 16x, simply because the disk documentation said to do so. However, I have always found that the disks have played without problems in better quality players and in PC's. It seems to be when I play them in cheap players that the problems manifest themselves.

I am, at the moment, watching the DVD I burned at 4x on one of the 'middle of the road' players. So far, fingers crossed, all is fine, although the same disk showed a few glitches in my cheapest player.

Still interested in any scientific evidence that says why this happens.

Cheers,

Ian . . .

[Anthony McErlean]

Ian, I had a lot of problems with a few Taiyo Yuden DVDs-r, when I say a few, it was about 150 ish. They didn't play back without sticking but when I took the same disc out and played it in my Panasonic DVD recorder it play 100%
It turned out I got a few Taiyo Yuden duds but now a new batch play just fine,

It could be that its the Taiyo Yuden DVDs thats the problem.

Never had any problems with Verbatim BTW.

[Edward Troxel]

Anthony, that's really interesting. Typically TY's have been considered the best. I also typically use Verbatim and have had very good results with them as well.

[Anthony McErlean]

Well, thats the bother I had with some of my Taiyo Yuden DVDs-r. With the DVDs being so dear, faulty TY was the last thing I thought off but soon found out different.

[Ron Evans]

I also use TY Watershield burn at 8 times never put more than 4G on the disc. A note on DVDA5 it still has a problem with "top menu" not working. IF this is set correctly and the menu button is pressed on playback it will return to the last sub menu, not the top menu used by the user. To clarify if a disc has 4 sub-menus and the user selects a track from menu 2 then while playing presses "top menu on the remote" DVDA authored disc will display menu 4 not Main menu. In a project with just one submenu it isn't a problem but if there are lots it is. I use DVDLab Pro for the SD authoring, DVDA for Bluray for this reason.

Ron Evans

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Is it correct that the slower the burning speed, the better the burn, or is that a fallacy?

I use Taiyo Yuden R16X disks and burn at 16x because the documentation that came with them says to do so. In some DVD players they play fine but in others they stutter and throw up a ton of artefacts. I'd like to know if burning at slower speeds will yield better results.

(Before anyone suggests it, yes I will actually burn a DVD to try it out myself! I'm just curious to know if there's any technical basis for believing a slower burn is better).

Thanks,

Ian . . .

I think the problem is more with 16x media in general. A more reliable media would be Taiyo Yuden 8X media (Media ID - TYG02) or Verbatim DataLifePlus 8x media #94854 (Media ID - MCC 02RG20). I most often use the latter and burn at 2x or 4x and have no compatibility issues from my customers.

John

[Justin Deming]

Yes, slower burn speeds make better discs. This is true no matter what burner you use, and what media you burn to. Better media and drives will yeild better results of course, but the slower it writes, the better the image will be. The reason for this is that the laser that is "burning" the code into the disc is able to spend more time on each bit.

This creates an image that will be more easily read in a less than perfect reader. As discs and recording drives have gotten faster, it has been at the cost of spending less time on each bit. The newer drives do this by using stronger lazers but still, more time = better disc.

In theory a company who is going to mass produce discs for you should be using the best reader they can, therefore reading an accurate copy of what your recorder wrote. This way, even a disc that may show artifacts on a not so good player will still give them an accurate DVD to duplicate.

When creating Discs myself to deliver to clients I use the best media I can get, and burn at the slowest speeds I have time for. I am fairly new to creating DVD's for Video, but I worked in the IT industry for 10+ years & made LOTS of DVD's in that time. When I DO make something for mass duplication I hope to create the image on a hard drive, ship it to the duplicator & have them create DVD's from that.

I hope that helps.

[Jack Bellford]

Originally Posted by Justin Deming

Yes, slower burn speeds make better discs. This is true no matter what burner you use, and what media you burn to.

This isn't ALWAYS true. As with anything else of this nature, there is a minimum and a maximum. Functioning as close to the minimum as possible can be as stressful and unreliable as functioning at the maximum point. A car for example going too slow on the highway can be just as dangerous (and sometimes even more so) than a car going too fast. A pressure gauge that functions between 0psi and 100psi will in fact be most accurate at around the 50psi mark (the 1/2 way point). It's pretty much the same for dvd's and drives. They will be most accurate at their 1/2 way point. If the speed is too high then the burning head struggles to write data reliably and if the speed is too low then the drive itself struggles to maintain an even rpm.