Annoying DVD-R Problems

[mowgly10]

I'm having very strange problems with my DVD burning. About 1 out of 5 burns,I get like a small scorch mark on the DVD burned side and everyone of those disks freeze right on that spot. I use a pioneer A04 and have tried princo, lead data, maxxell, verbatim and ritek media, all with the same anoying results. Has anyone ever experienced anything like that? Is my burner defective? I've used nero 5.5, veritas record now DX and the new nero 6 and still have the same problems. I would appreciate any help or advice with this problem.

[lordsmurf]

Are you bumping the desk while it burns?

I did that before, same error you describe.

[poopyhead]

weird....unless it's something drastically nasty...error correction should prevent any problems...

-----

were there any dust, scratches, dirt on the media before you burned it, btw??

[mowgly10]

No I dont bump anything nor is there any dirt on the media. Just opened a brand new spindle of ritek today and first disk out is a coaster. I'm really getting sick of this.

[garryheather]

If you're using higher speed media, make sure you've got one of the more recent GENUINE PIONEER firmware updates.

The earlier version had a flaw which could damage the optical block if you tried to write on high speed media. Having never seen one do this, I'm wondering if yours is going to burn itself out if it's doing that much damage to the disc.

[mowgly10]

No this latest batch are ritek G03 and I have the most recent official pioneer firmware. This drive must be defective. I dont know what else it could be anymore

[bartman]

I've had that exact problem with my Pioneer 104. It happens whenever there is the tiniest bit of fluff on the disc but only seems to happen with really cheap media (princo's mainly).

The scorch mark tends to be about 10 times bigger than the speck too. I've done a couple of burns with supposedly clean media straight from the spindle and it has still happened....after the burn I give the disc a bit of a wipe and all these little scorch marks appear. To be honest I think it is the reverse though, the speck, invisible as it is, dissipates the laser enough so that the dye at that point remains 'unburnt' (hence the stutters when the playing laser reaches that spot)

This doesn't seem to happen with better quality media though (e.g. Apple).

[poopyhead]

i use princos and i've noticed that as well...

however, for the most part, error correction will fix those...and there shouldn't be any stuttery playback...unless you just have a ton of those marks, which can overwhelm the error correction

[mowgly10]

Has anyone noticed this problem on non pioneer drives? I've been thinking of getting the new Nec dual format burner and would like some opinions from owners f that drive.

[freestyler]

my nec dual format burner rocks - period. burns on any media i throw at it - verbatim, princos, pioneer, maxell - just a great drive. You gotta get the hacked Herries firmware patch to take full advantage of burning cheaper media though (4x princos, it does 2x to the 1x princos with no modification). They have since dropped in price since I bought mine, so you're in for a deal if you can find it relatively cheap. I can't say enough good things about mine. Doesn't seem to like Nero though, so use different burning software. I use Discjuggler for burning dvd video/audio_ts data and use DVD Decrypter for burning disc images and have had absolutely no problems with this solid drive

[Gurm]

Freestyler,

It's good to hear that they're sorting the issues with media and that burner, even if it is "unofficially". The dual-format burners have been plagued by media incompatibility issues.

Sony is FINALLY resolving theirs, hopefully NEC officially does the same.

- Gurm

[jeremypps]

hi mowgly, I think I have a problem similar to yours.
Almost every disk I burn has some little problems while I playback on my standalone, sometimes some sort of pixelaion, sometimes some sort of frame skipping, sometimes my standalone even hangs.
do you experience problems like these?
I have a thread up on this:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=170569
my burner is a sony dru500ax.
media used: princo, magnex, verbatim, problems with all of them, still have to find out if it's media or burner fault.

[poopyhead]

@jeremypps,

try burning them at 1X???

perhaps, it's your standalone dvd player's problem...more info here: https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

[jeremypps]

poopyhead, tried at 1x and tried on several players.

[SupaCoopa]

Same thing happens to me from time to time, solely with spindle DVD-Rs. Some times you can barely see the "hole" and there are no problems at playback, some times it's quite large and I get severe pixelation and no sound at that certain point.

My verdict is dirt or scratches on the blank disc before burning. Most of the times spindle blanks get scratched because they touch on the disc below and they're not kept in the safe case where nothing touches them.
I inspect blanks for scratches before burning, clean them with the rotating disc cleaner thing (Fellowes has a nice one) to get rid of any dust and keep my fingers crossed!

In any case I wouldn't blame the recorder but the media. I have a Toshiba SD-R5002 and I'm burning in 1x and 2x.

[mowgly10]

Thats a good idea to use one of those disk cleaners before burning. How has that worked out for you? I took some disks out of my spindle yesterday to place in jewel cases, and noticed that there were small dust particles on the recordable side. These dvd's are ridiculous if a speck of dust can ruin a movie. I was almost hoping that it was my drive that was defective but now I'm not so sure. I'm just tired of throwing out a 1/4 of the disks I try to burn. I would be interested if owners of th nec 1300a drives have noticed this problem? That drive supposedly has some new technology for writing to not perfect disks.

[DVDEmperor]

Are these "scorch" marks a small block of lighter color on the burned disc?
I just backed up a movie and I have 2 of them on it. However I watched the movie with no errors. I have a the Cendyne labelled Pioneer 104 and I burn at 1x. I always wipe off my blanks before putting them in the drive to be burned.

It might also be a good idea to wipe the disc off before playing it too, after it has been burned.

[mowgly10]

No actually the marks are black dots with like a thin tail. Looks a little like a micro black comet on the recorded side.

[DVDEmperor]

Very odd.. I have burned about 200 dvd-rs so far with no problems and the only thing I can see on my burns are the little white spots I have mentioned. What you are describing is indeed very weird. If they are black and have streaks then you are correct in saying they appear to be scorches.

Maybe you should purchase another burner

[poopyhead]

as i mentioned earlier...

that's what error correction is there for...in case the burner can't quite burn everything correctly...

as long as error correction isn't overwhelmed, you can still watch DVD that has those "spots" with no problems.

[ckdexterhn1]

I had a problem burning Optodisc printable discs the other week. Had the same comet effect on the burn side that was described earlier, and they wouldn't play right, if at all. Went back to Optodisc sliver tops, perfect burn. Tried Princo 4x ($100 100pk) with only one bad disc in the entire pack.