Why burn faster than 2X

[carthoris]

I have read as much as I could about Burning DVD`s and other than saving time why would you burn at a speed greater than 2X.

All tests show a higher error rate at higher speeds even with certified media.


With this in mind does anyone know why I should burn faster than 2X


thanks in advance

Carthoris

[ronnylov]

Why burn at 2X if you can burn at 1X speed?

[Imperial Zeppelin]

Hey, I do all my final burns at 1X. What's another 30 minutes after you've spent 4 hours editing a video project, especially if it will help ensure a disc that has maximum compatibility? I'll use 2X burning for a "test" DVD-RW if I'm so inclined, as well as faster speeds for data discs, but 1X has always worked wonders and I'm not likely to change.

My $0.02...

Zep

[ronnylov]

I agree, I do the same. But with higher than 2x speed you can make your test disc even faster. Sometimes if I'm not that concerned with the quality I burn as fast as possible, which is 2X on dvd-r because my Pioneer A04 burner is not faster than that. I think the problem is the bad quality of the DVD media today.

The only reason to burn faster is to save time. Hopefully the disc quality and burners will improve. Once upon a time I burned CD-R discs at 1X speed and sometimes as fast as 4X which was the fastest my first CD-burner could do. But nowadays I never burn CD slower than 8X speed since it's the lowest speed my liteon CD-burner can use and it still works much better than my early CD's burnt at 1X speed...

I don't mind if the technology improves so that I some day can burn a DVD with good quality at high speed. If the quality is good enough there is no reason to burn at a slower speed.

Some CD burners today can burn with better results at high speed on high speed CD media compared to if they burn the same media at low speed. When the burners and the media will be optimized for high speed then they may be best burned at high speed. I think the same will happen to DVD burning eventually.

[Doom9]

well actually.. using good media there's no significant difference in error rate if you burn a 2x rated media at 2x or a 4x rated media at 4x. You just need good media, that's all. Of course you can always burn at 1x and get the lowest possible error rate.. but if the difference is not significant why waste 45 minutes? You don't burn your CD-Rs at 1x either, do you?

[alexnoe]

Of course you can always burn at 1x and get the lowest possible error rate.. You really think that?

> 1x: http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/CDF/KProbe_Scans/DVD_Brennquali/Maxell/Maxell_1x.gif
> 2x: http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/CDF/KProbe_Scans/DVD_Brennquali/Maxell/Maxell_2x.gif

Both are maxell 2x discs

However, as long as people consider anything which has a '4x' logo on it 'certified', there will of course be problems...

[Doom9]

hmm... looks like your burner has an optimal burning strategy for the maxell discs at 2x but uses a generic strategy for 1x.. or the 2x strategy is more optimized than the 1x one.

[windtrader]

I wonder if burning at 1x causes the laser and other drive components to get more use and thus may wear out faster. If buring at 4x does not drive the laser harder then it might do more burns before starting to wear out. Just a thought.

[carthoris]

WE really need more info on this topic.

It would be nice if we knew what media is certified by our burner and set in the firmware. New firmware could add new media and drop older media. A DVD+/- drive may not be able to store as much media info since it has to cover both formats.

I Will now burn Quality media at the speed the burner accepts and see what happens. I did one burn at 8X. It took less than 7 mi for a full disk and played perfectly. I did not check it for errors but I did transfer the dvd to another hard drive without a problem. I just wanted to see if it would work.


Thanks

Carthoris

[ronnylov]

I use K-Probe as some kind of burning quality test (just as alexnoe did) but this software only work with LiteOn drives so I bougth a LiteOn LTD-166S drive mainly for this purpose. But when testing two discs of the same brand bought at the same time and burned in the same way the results can be a little bit different. So maybe the 2X burnt maxell disc was of better quality than the 1x disc? You need to test more than one disc, I test at least 3 discs before making any conclusion.

Anyway, if you test several discs that give good (or better) results at high speed burning then there is no reason to burn them slower.

The firmware of the burner makes some decisions on how to burn the disc by reading the disc info. So if you set the burning speed to max it should burn the disc at the maximum speed it think is OK to use for that disc. But sometimes the info on the disc is faked so they can sell it as high speed discs even if it is crap discs... So the only way is to buy quality media and test it yourself.

[alexnoe]

So maybe the 2X burnt maxell disc was of better quality than the 1x disc? They were both 2x discs, taken from the same 5-pack of juwel cased Maxells. They are definitely not faked, unless someone faked the juwel case inlay with the discs :)
I burned one at 1x to see what the result is

[ronnylov]

Originally posted by alexnoe
They were both 2x discs, taken from the same 5-pack of juwel cased Maxells. They are definitely not faked, unless someone faked the juwel case inlay with the discs :)
I burned one at 1x to see what the result is

I used wrong wordings. I meant maybe the quality of the 2X disc that you burned at 1X speed was lower than the other 2X disc of same type that you burned at 2X speed. Perhaps if you had burned it at 2X speed instead of 1X speed it had been even worse? I mean how can we know how one particular disc had worked if it was burned in any other way, because when it is burned you can not re-burn it (unless it was a rewritable)? Thats why I think we need to test a series of discs to get some kind of average of that disc type burned at a particular speed before we can make a conclusion of how to burn this type of discs.

Why I say this is because I tested one Traxdata DVD-R disc (RitekG04) with Parity inner at max 200 and another one identical Traxdata disc burnt in the same way and got Parity Inner max at 120. Then I have tested a Ridata disc with RitekG04 dye and got a Parity inner maximum at 40. But I have heard that the RitekG04 dye has varying quality so this may not apply to other disc brands of better quality.