Opinions about Princo 4x -R media

[MrSnake]

It's the only 4x media I can find here, but I have no idea if it's reliable.

I burned 2 discs (movie-only from hard disk), seem to play just fine.
I burn a DVD5 on-the-fly at 4x without a problem (15mins), disc recognition, startup bumpers are all good, but the movie contains a lot of blocking and cannot be watched due to distortions.


I don't feel like testing/ruining plenty of discs to seek what the problem is, so maybe someone can help me with some questions?

Is this media related?
Could this be on-the-fly related?
Could this be an issue between 4x writing and my standalone player?

MrSnake

[rvl123]

You should never burn "on the fly."

I only use on the fly when copying data CD-Rs.

For all video (even VCDs) you should rip it to your HD and then burn it to DVD afterward. This causes much less error in the burn process.

Try the above mentioned and tell us how it goes!

[txpharoah]

It's probably just a bad burn. Try another one. Princo is decent media (a very low-cost option), though it does have known errors, although I've yet to see one myself on the new 4x media (and I've burned at least 200 of them this past month).

I always burn on-the-fly from unencrypted source DVDs. But I usually just copy at 2x. And 4x for on-the-fly IS a bit much. Only from the HD do I go 4x. Just be sure your buffer never underruns. The underrun support is useless on DVD burning. If you can maintain good speed with no underrun, then the data source makes no difference.

Maybe the source disc being read is bad? I've had that happen many times, usually when the source DVD-R is crappy media. NOTE: It can play fine, but it refuses to be read at faster speeds, and would in fact also lock up if you tried to Play-FF at a speed greater than 2x in a player. If your source DVD-R is Princo, I'd believe it to be the problem this time.

[MrSnake]

The source disk is my original silver-pressed DVD disc and it's mint condition.
It's a Technicolor pressing, which is decent, but not the best either.

About the buffering, the burnprocess took 15' 30" and the buffer never got below 98%. I don't think I got an underrun or smth.
Perhaps my DVDROM reads errors at high speed, I dunno?

I'll try burning it from HD at 4x now and see how that goes.

[Bob W]

You should never burn "on the fly."

I only use on the fly when copying data CD-Rs.

For all video (even VCDs) you should rip it to your HD and then burn it to DVD afterward. This causes much less error in the burn process.

Try the above mentioned and tell us how it goes!

I do discs to discs burns all the time and never had a problem yet.

[MrSnake]

I burned it from HD at 4x and it works fine -> no blocking during movie.

[Bob W]

I ordered 100 printable 4x Princo's so I will know soon enough if they work. $145 for 100 not a bad price.
http://www.yesbuy.net/prinwhitinpr.html

[Vejita-sama]

Some of the early Princo discs (1x) had problems. I've personaly have used princo 1x, 2x and now 4x discs without any problems.

Aside - for most DVD5 backups I use DVD Decrupter:

1) Choose "mode | iso - read" and rip the image file to HD
2) Choose "mode | iso - write" and burn the ripped image

1:1 exact copy. On the fly coping 'can' cause problems (doesn't have to). But given the speed of ripping a CD there's no logical reason not to make an image first. For DVD's my liteone can rip a DVD5 disc in ~6-7min and most DVD9 discs in 9~15.

[MrSnake]

I ordered 100 printable 4x Princo's so I will know soon enough if they work. $145 for 100 not a bad price.
http://www.yesbuy.net/prinwhitinpr.html

I bought a spindel with 10 discs and they do not have a completely blank surfice, "Princo 1x-4x DVD-R"
Could you use Nero infotool or smth and tell me which is the manufacturer? My 4x are Princo, but my 1x or 2x were not.

Please note that a successful burn is not necessarily a good DVD-Video disc. I've had successful burns with the Princo 2x media, but for DVD-Video they gave playback problems during the film.
For data it didn't seem to give problems at all (probably coz ROM drives have better error-correction?)
At the moment, the 4x seem to be very good up to 4.22GB.

I'll try and burn one full, 4.383GB and see how it handles the outer side of the disc.