Q46: How fast should I burn

[mrbass]

Q46: How fast should I burn the .bin/.cue files?
A: Burning at 4X MAX is the recomended method. Any higher and you MAY have problems. If you have burned faster and have any problems please try again at a slower speed. If you are new to DVD2SVCD always burn SVCD's at 4X(not data or audio, different animal) until you are certain that you have no problems with the SVCD's. After which time trying a higher speed MIGHT work for you, but you have been warned that burning at any higher then 4X can and does cause problems for many people.


ok this is fine and dandy I'm just curious what the culprit is here. Is it the standalone DVD player, CD media, or CD-burner? I know dvd2svcd himself recommends burning at 4X or slower but I'm just trying to find a common denomiator for those forced to burn at molasses speed, not trying to start a war here at all.

I've burnt with 8X yamaha scsi burner, 24X on 3 different lite-on burners, 16X yamaha ide burner all at their maximum speeds respectively. I have use the following CD-R media: Imation, Memorex, TDK, Fuji all 80min. I've never encountered a problem at any of those speeds and copies from SVCDs to another blank cd at 24X have no problems either. Tried them in Pioneer DVD players mostly (343, 341, 434). So I'm going out on a limb here and guessing it's how finicking (picky) the standalone DVD player is perhaps. For me though it's 24X burning all the time which takes about 4mins 30secs per 800MB SVCD.

[pacohaas]

I've had no problems burning with CDRDAO at my writer's max(8x for CDR, and 4x for RW's) using both generic, almost see through, media and nice TDK's and sony certifieds. all seem to work fine. I'm pretty sure as long as you're not exceeding your media speed, you'll be ok.

[chainsaw135]

I've used 3 different burners.....and have burned at all different speeds ..from 8x all the way up to 24x ...i've used a ricoh 7120a, lite-on 24x10x40 and a burner that came with someones compaq computer..

All have worked on the apex players i've tested them on.. thats the only Name brand of standalone dvd players that i've had access 2 ..so i'm wondering if its a a stand alone issue or the burner used..

Media that has worked at all speeds in my tests has been Imagition, Memorex, TDK, K Hypermedia...

Apex players i've tested ....the 5131, 1500 cant recall the other apex but it is not the same as the other 2 i've put down...

Also have played these svcd's on serveral different computers with out fail ....

[markrb]

I can confirm only what I know. I have had two CDR burners a HP 9300i and a TDK 24X. I could never burn a SVCD faster then 4X with the HP without problems almost all the time. I have made several SVCD's at 8X with no issues with the TDK. All SVCD's have been played on the same Pioneer 343 DVD player. All I can assume from this is that in my case the burner was the limiting factor. I suspect it has to do with how accurate it makes the burn.

There have also been many reports of problems over the months when burning too fast. DVD2SVCD himself has had these issues.

Mark

[Bob01605]

In an earlier post people jumped all over me when I mentioned burning at 24X - It is not recommended for all - It depends on your burner, media and computer. I burn at 24X ALL THE TIME with no skips, macroblocks etc. My disks have also been played on other computers and standalones and play just fine.
Everyone should make a test with their burner and try a burn at its highest speed. If it doesn't work well then burn your CD-R's at progressively slower speeds until you get a perfect copy.

Bob

[markrb]

All that question 46 is trying to do is show that many people can have issues when burning faster and before blaming anything else try a burn at 4X and see if the problem goes away.

If you notice certain words are capped to stress them (MAY, MIGHT).


Lowest common denominator theory.

Mark

[DDogg]

Actually I suggested that Markrb should put this up. As he said it is a lowest common denominator.

Perhaps we could add something like, "Once you have verified that your burner does create error free disks you should try higher speeds incrementally to find your highest reliable speed". Also I guess we should mention the role that "burnproof" plays in protecting from buffer underruns which are the main culprit in a bad burn (IMO).

As was mentioned, I used the Lite-on 24x to burn at 24x perfectly, but that was on a screaming machine with fast ram and the lite-on has burnproof. "Your milege may vary, blah, blah..)

[mrbass]

exactly DDogg. I just didn't want a total newbie use DVD2SVCD and end up burning all SVCDs at 4X without having tried 24X or 32X or whatever their max speed is. But the Q46 should definitely remain as many have found burning at a high speed to be the culprit. I'm still curious as if it's crappy HP burners(hehe markrb) or what.


Also I guess we should mention the role that "burnproof" plays in protecting from buffer underruns which are the main culprit in a bad burn (IMO).


I would probably lean towards your theory of burnproof, smartburn most likely being the culprit. People think they can do whatever heaving CPU, resource taxing app/game they wish with burnproof enabled, and indeed they may. But the consequences are it lowers the burn speed so one shouldn't do anything but simple light web browsing while burning to prevent from changing your burn speed on-the-fly. I know the Lite-on switches from 16X to 24X at the 6min mark (http://www.cdrinfo.com/hardware/liteon24102/index.shtml)
"For example at 24X(Z-CLV) writing speed, the drive starts burning inner from 16X(CLV), switch to 20X(CLV) at 6min and switches to 24X(CLV) at 16min, this is so called Zone-CLV, 3 zone total"

only time I've ever seen macroblocks is when the cd was dirty and a simple rinse under the sink cures that. Unless it's a permanent scratch then I'm SOL.


"Once you have verified that your burner does create error free disks you should try higher speeds incrementally to find your highest reliable speed".

how about twisting that statement (just a suggestion)
"If your SVCD does not play correctly (macroblocks, skips, other oddities, etc.) you should lower your burning speed to 4X to see if that won't correct the problems."

[Mozart]

Hi,

now I have a LG 24x10x40 and... It can burn SVCD at 24x with no problem:cool:

because of this and of others posters reports, I did a small research on the net to verify another more technical opinion and, as a result, the Q46 was edited as follows:


Q46: How fast should I burn the .bin/.cue files?
A:"A recorder capable of a maximum speed of 24x is optimized for recording at this speed. Recording at lower speeds means that the recording process lasts longer, thus generating more heat, which lowers the quality of the final cd and stresses the drive.
On the other hand, a drive of lower quality may not perform well at its maximum speed due to a number of reasons. Bad design resulting in mechanical instability when the blank cd rotates at 24x may be one.
To summarize, a quality drive will not have any problem operating at its highest speed, using a media which allows such speed. On the contrary, its maximum speed is also the optimal one. However, a drive of lower quality may show an erratic behaviour, obliging its user to select a lower speed, especially for audio cds, VCDs and SVCDs."(quoted from this (http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/axatis/FAQs/CDR/index.htm#Intro) place. Have a look at there for more informations).
Thus, if you have burned faster and have any problems please try again at a slower speed. If you are new to DVD2SVCD always make your first SVCD's burnning at 4X. Next time, try 8X, and then 12X, and then... until you are certain that you have reached the highest speed allowed by your drive/media/computer with no problems with the SVCD's.
Be sure that you have been warned that burning at any higher than 4X can and does cause playback problems for some people.

The linked homepage is not hardly technical, however it is pretty accurate. If someone have some suggestion to add, do it.

[smiller667]

The statements coming from the site quoted by Mozart sound rather anecdotal to me ... according to my experience, less heat is actually generated when burning at lower than maximum speeds.
"A recorder capable of a maximum speed of 24x is optimized for recording at this speed. Recording at lower speeds [...] lowers the quality of the final cd ". This sounds dubious. While the most recent test results I know of regard 8x burners (unfortunately no tests seem to have been done recently), the results should be essentially applicable to today's burners. The result was that essentially all burners (with the exception of Teac in that particular comparison) produced lower quality discs at their maximum writing speeds - not the other way round.
Now, I am not suggesting a low speed burn will always result in a higher quality burn (technical progress does miracles :)), current cd-rs might be so good it really doesn't matter anymore. Claiming the opposite does not appear to be supported by any hard evidence, however.
Regarding mrbass' post, I definitely agree that Z-CLV burners are more likely to produce reading problems at the point(s) of speed switching. Depending on whether Burnproof, Burnproof II, Justlink, Smartburn or whatever "resuming technique" is used by the burner, the gap resulting from the speed switch will be longer or shorter, resulting in a lower or higher likelyhood of reading problems at that point.
To sum up, it probably all depends on the combination of CD-burner and reader, and to some extent on the media used as well ...

[mrbass]

@smiller667

exactly...probably best to turn off burnproof, etc. so if you do interfere with the burning process then it'll blow up the cd. Which is good. It'll teach you to not touch your computer whilst it is burning.

I have burnt well over 2,000 SVCDs @24X and it's been 100% good no problems.

[mava70]

I own a Lite-on 24X I burn at 20X over any decent CDR that support
at least 16X writing. I play it on a Philips 711 standalone
without any problem at all

M

[Mozart]

@ smiller667

as I said before, that site is not hardly technical, however its informations are pretty acurate (like, for example, the method used to record the CDR and the CDRW).
About the heat generated by the process and the speed optimization, two things:
a) we need to remember that heat is not the same thing of temperature:rolleyes: ...
b) There is no mechanical advantage in to buy a Ferrari and drive it using the 1st gear - and I'm not kidding.
Could you please post a link of another place where your statements have support (this (www.cdrinfo.com) homepage is much more technical, and its tests results show that C1 and mainly C2 errors vanish using certified media. Thus, they doesn't contradict those simplyfied informations from the site quoted by me...)? Like Beethoven said, "I'm all ears".

@ mrbass

you are right. It could be better to buy a SCSI recorder instead of using a IDE with burn proof. Another option is to wait 215 seconds - less than 4 minutes ;) - before to touch the computer again.

[smiller667]

Mozart,

I didn't (and didn't intend to) criticize you personally ... as for the optimum recording speed, I believe everything has been said before: if you can play back (S)VCD discs burned at maximum speed without problems, fine. If not, go down with speed (or optimise your combination of writing device, media and reading device) ... that's what it boils down to, right?
If you feel fluent enough in Dutch (?) or German (or even want to put up with a crappy translation of mine), I can try and dig up the test in c't magazine regarding writing quality at different speeds ... no online resources, sorry, but I just can't find any recent tests regarding the number of errors at different writing speeds. CDRInfo doesn't have them either, I am afraid.
Can you provide further references supporting the claims on the Mariposa site? Comparing a sports car to a CD-R drive is not likely to give us more insight to the problem, I am afraid (esp. because there are no switchable gears in CD-R drives :)).
As for the relationship between heat and temperature - of course it is not the same thing, but as today's drives are not particularly well cooled (most lack fans and are pretty much unventilated), the amount of heat generated in a drive appears quite closely related to the temperature after a CD burn ... it is not without a reason that some manufacturers recommend to let your high-speed burner cool down after successive burns.
Now, regarding the merits of Z-CLV vs P-CAV-drives and SCSI vs. IDE-drives: if a drive is Z-CLV, it automatically relies on some sort of underrun protection mechanism - as also outlined by CDRinfo (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=PCAV%20vs.%20ZCLV%20Recording%20Technlogies&Series=0) - unfortunately, the article is truncated at page one for the time being. The CDRInfo site even contained images which clearly show that you can see the different recording zones on a CD-R burned by Z-CLV drives. Fully disabling the burn-proof mechanism on such drives (SCSI or IDE) is not possible because it is a part of their zone writing strategy.
Once more, Burn Proof et al. are being improved all the time and the gaps introduced by them get smaller and smaller ... which leads us back to paragraph one of my posting - if it works, great, if it doesn't, go down with speed :).

[markrb]

In all of this I just keep coming back to the fact that the author asked us in several threads to always suggest burning at 4X and to try faster speeds only after you know there is no error in the video.

I am afraid that if we keep telling people that we can burn faster then they will not even consider trying a slower burn to see if that resolves the issue. Somewhere in the statement it should be strongly suggested that if you are having any problems at all do a test at 4X.

I also think that as great of info as this new answer in the Q + A is, it is too long and technical. I think it should be shortened and technical reasons be left out. If you feel the need then maybe links to the data could be left in.

The Q + A should be as much to the point as possible.

Mark

[Mozart]

@ smiller

no probs:D The comparison between a sport car and a burner was just to remember that, in both cases, since the owner is using certified oil/CDr-Media, most of performance problems are correlated with the mechanical design;)

regarding writing quality at different speeds ... no online resources, sorry, but I just can't find any recent tests regarding the number of errors at different writing speeds. CDRInfo doesn't have them either, I am afraid

have a look at here (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=32x+CD%2DRW+Roundup+Vol3&index=9) and here (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Samsung+SW%2D224B+CD%2DRW&Series=0&index=5). As you can see there, using a certified media the average number of C1 (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Glossary/Details.asp?RelatedID=134) decreases when burning at higher speed. This happens even for some not certified media.

@ markrb

I do agree, and I think that I let your statement in Q46.

Oh, I had forgot to say: the LG 24x10x40x doesn't allow CDR burning speed slower than 8x. It seems that it is the same for some others 24x burners. 4x is allowed for CDRW only. Thus, this mean that for these burners the "4x rule" cannot be respected.

[xguyx]

I noticed that if i burn a movie faster than 1x, I cannot fast forward the movie. I tried to fast forward with one of my movie, and all it did was stop the movie(no chapters selection). So i had to watch the whole movie again just to get to the part to where I was. But when i burnt the image at 1x, i had no problems.. I could rewind and fast forward with or without the chapters..:)

[markrb]

@ Mozart. I don't understand your statement?

I do agree, and I think that I let your statement in Q46.

I understand the agree part, but I don't understand the "I let your statement in Q46" part. I had nothing to do with Q46. Q45 is the one about burning speed.

Just confused.

Mark

[Mozart]

LOL. I'm sorry markrb. I said that 2 weeks ago. However, almost 1 week ago I deleted the old Q42 because the new Q47 - posted by dvd2svcd - was about the same issue, with more informations. Then all questions after the old Q42 were renumbered. Thus, the new Q45 is equal to the old Q46. My fault.