Sonic Recordnow - Liteon 411s - Burns x4 disk at x8 speed

[beamguy]

For some time now I have wondered why DVD+R disks were being generated with errors. Then I bought some DVD-R disks and they seemed to record so slow I got curious. It seems that I have always been burning DVD+R and DVD+RW disks at near or equal x8 speed; but the disks themselves are only rated at x4 speed! I think the drive itself can perform at the speed after a firmware upgrade, but the 411s is only supposed to record at x4 mas. BUT - the media must also be rated at x8 if that speed is to be used! The speed setting in the software has no effect, it still wants to burn 3.6 Gbytes onto a DVD+RW disk in 11 minutes no matter what the setting. The update manager claims I am up to date, though my version is only 4.6, even though the present levels of recordnow are in the version 7's. So far no answer from tech support. Has anyone else had this problem?

[dvdnew]

I think your DVD-R burn at 2x and your DVD+R burn at 4x. People burning a full DVD+R do so in 8 min, so 3.6GB should finish around 6min.

[beamguy]

Most DVD are reported to be able to contain 120 minutes of video. So, x2 would be 60 minutes, x4 would be 30 minutes. x8 would be 15 minutes. Since I am only burning 3.6 gbytes of data instead of 4.7 gbytes the time taken at x8 is 15*(3.6/4.7) = 11.5 minutes.

[dmagic1]

For full disc burns.......

1x = 60mins
2x = 30mins
4x = 15mins
8x = 8-9mins depending on the burner.

[beamguy]

OK - I was wrong. So why do my DVD-R disks only record at x2 speed, the drive is supposed to do x4?

[wesociety]

The firmware must support the discs in question at 4X for you to be able to burn at 4X.
What firmware are you running?
Try updating to FS0J.

[beamguy]

Thanks everyone for all your input... You guys set me straight and demonstrated two mistakes. First my understanding of recording speeds, and second - well sometimes online shopping has its drawbacks.

I can't say that www.bestbuy.com did anything wrong, but I doubt I really clicked on the DVD-R link instead of DVD+R, and I'm pretty sure I ordered x4 media. Likely they are only guilty of making a web page so complicated that the customer makes frequent mistakes.

I guess I will happy with them taking an extra 15 minutes to burn until they are all used up.

Thanks...