Burning SVCD at lower speed creates better discs ?

[logopro]

Can anyone let me know if burning a SVCD on a blank cdr at lower speeds results in a better disc ?

I am having problems with a few movies I burnt out at 24x eventhough the discs are rated at 24x burn specs.

I would appreciate any help on this.

I experience loss of sound, and major jaggies in movies from time to time and if it gets bad enough, the DVD player -an Electrohome will actually just go black, and I need to power it off, and turn it back on to get the video portion back again.

any help is appreciated, and.... has anyone else ever experienced a black out of the video when the movie screws up ?

thanks in advance.

post in one forum only - edited by kitty

[davet]

I burn all my vcds at 8x. That's only because I have an extremely slow computer. I'd suggest burning one at that speed or maybe half of what you normally do to see if there is a difference.

[davet]

I burn all my vcds at 8x. That's only because I have an extremely slow computer. I'd suggest burning one at that speed or maybe half of what you normally do to see if there is a difference.

[mats.hogberg]

It seems to be the the general consensus, that SVCD and VCD should be written at low speeds, like 4-8X. I've kept to 4, but have upped this to 8 recently, and haven't found any negative side effects (yet). I use 24X media and my writer is 16X.
Since this is a digital business, for the life of me I can't see why this should be. One explanation could be that the hole the laser digs get less well defined at higher writing speeds, and the reader in the DVD isn't really made for reading CD-R in the first place and...

Well, I've never heard of a DVD crashing because of a bad MPEG, but as it's digital business, it doesn't sound that unlikely... A bug in the mpeg decoding code? Is MS behind Electrohome?

/Mats

[davet]

Good theory but some standalones are designed to read vcd/svcd. I think when burned at lower speeds the process is done more thoroughly. That alone may contribute to better video and sound but the quality of the original MPEG will always dictate the final outcome on a VCD/SVCD.

[mats.hogberg]

Those are not my theories - merely a collection of suggestions from previous threads on this subject. Even if some standalones are designed to read vcd/svcd, it isn't their primary use, (I'd say not 1 in 1000 DVD players in the western world ever sees anything besides bought/rented DVDs) so maybe it's a bit neglected.
Of course the MPEG quality matters most, but what when you've authored your (S)VCD and burn the image twice - once at let's say 4X, and once at max writer/media specs. Most seem to agree that the chances for good results increase dramatically for the 4X burn...

/Mats

[Heavensent]

im burning at x 24 without a problem.
the only reson you whould burn at a lower speed - is
if you know that your dvd will not accept higher speed.
just try and see if your having problems.

[mats.hogberg]

But that's the point! - If a DVD has problems with a CD written at high speed, but not at low speed, then there's a difference between them. What at least I'm not getting is what this diff is? There's no way a CD reader can "know" at what speed the CD was burnt - that's like determining how fast an author can type by reading his book!

"Hey, Stephen King types so fast, I can't read his books!"

/Mats

[logopro]

Hi Guys,

Well, I'm using the Electrohome EH8181A, ( on sale at Zellers ) for $119, last week, and this week the Brick has them supposedly with a $20 mail in rebate for only $88 Canadian, - that's about $45 American.

Anyway, I had trouble playing 2 movies..... both burnt at 24x.....
so that was a total of 4 discs...

I did a disc copy of all 4 discs, and burnt them at 8x, as my writer didn't want to do it at 4x,( option was not available ) and guess what ! - the movies played !

I will continue to burn them at 8x now, max speed..... seems that higher burning is NOT always better, in the case of video.... and I have to agree that slower burning does a better job.....

Just my theory, have no actual basis on my statements however, but....
if it works, there must be a reason...

[tay666]

I'll second the slower is better theory.
I burn at 4x when doing a copy on the fly and 8x when copying from an image. At faster speeds, with my system, I have more of a chance at making coasters.
I also carried this habbit from doing CD audio. I found that higher burn speeds occasionally led to audio problems. Occasional clicks and pops in the sound.
So I will take a little longer to make sure I get a better burn on anything I do.

[Tikkanen]

I burn at 4x for max compatibility across standalone DVD players. My APEX accepts 8x, but my friend's KLH won't (It shows "no disc" in his.).

[joe444455555]

Well, let's say I'm an author; and I have a cheap leakey pen, and really low grade paper (ment for laser printer or something, soaks up ink like a sponge and leaks it). By looking at my work, you cannot tell how fast I wrote it, but if I do write it faster the quality of the write will degrade: Either you can still read it, or you cannot (or it's borderline, and you get laggy jerkey playback).
Anyway, if you use good media and a good drive then you should be able to burn faster (assumeing you have a good dvd player for decoding CD stuff <not just fast, but good>), if you have bad media or a drive that performs less well, then slower s the speed for you. The main thing is probabbly the DVD player, as media is usually not to sub par (hell, it's certianly cheap enough for quality now), and drives are usually pretty standard/equal.

[vitualis]

This has truly been discussed many many times...

Slower is not necessarily better. You can be assured that if your CD writer and media are working properly, you can burn at the maximum burn speed with no issues.

The problem is usually a problem with the reading drive, specifically, DVD drives. Not all DVD drives are designed to read CD-R/W discs and those that aren't tend to have trouble doing so. In these drives, a slower burn speed seems to improve the "readability" of that disc. However, the "quality" of that disc is identical to one written at the maximum speed.

For these drives subtle differences like burn speed and media type can affect how well the disc is read. If you search through older posts, you will find occurrences where the really SLOW burn speeds (e.g., 1x and 2x) ALSO lead to unreadable discs on a DVD player.

To summarise: this is a READER issue, not a burning issue. Discs burned at the MAX. burn speed have the same data written on them as discs burned at lower burn speeds (assuming your discs and burner are working properly) and hence have the same "quality".

Regards.

[WienieMan]

Yes I agree how can the video be worse quality if written faster. The video is digital so no matter how fast it's burnt the same exact data will be on the disc. I burn my xsvcds at 40X and have no problems and even compared them to 4X - no difference.

[Vejita-sama]

I really think it depends on the burner. I've got the Lite-on 24x CDRW drive and burn everything at 24x and never have any problems. I buy TKD media (100packs at costco). Maybe it's the media.

[sjm817]

It makes a big difference for me. If I burn @ a higher speed, my SVCDs will skip and stutter like mad on my home JVC DVD player. If I burn @ 4X, they play fine.

[logopro]

thanks for the reply. Glad my original thinking was correct, and I feel better when more people add to this topic, it just gives everybody a better feeling about burning at slower speeds.

thanks !

[EddyH]

Higher speeds generally have higher jitter, less sharp definition of the pits/lands etc. At the most basic level because the disc is spinning quicker and so the laser turning on/off will have a softer edge regardless. Also vibration may be a problem if your drive doesn't have smart speed adjustment.

Seen articles before where it's been discussed that because of this sort of thing, there are still very few drives that can produce a "mastering quality" CDR much above 8x, and practically none at 20x or above. High speed is good for churning out a lot of stuff quickly, or making a fast backup, but personally... well... I have a 32x drive but burn all my stuff at 16x, or 8x if I'm not going to have to sit through it. The two or so minutes that it would save (literally - 16x only takes 5m30s) aren't really worth it for the risk of coasters. I just sit there happy in the security offered by burning at half of my machine's rated max, laughing at the IRC complaints being made by some fool who burnt a load of critical data onto cheap 24x unbranded media at 32x and can't figure out why he's now getting so many unrecoverable errors.

Blurry pits aren't exactly a big problem - with pristine media. As soon as you get scratches and other refractive problems though, that disc is going to become unreadable more quickly than a better burnt one. High speed is ok if you've got a good strong reader on the other end, but fact is the transports in your average DVD, VCD, console are lowest-bidder type stuff. Not for no reason does your average standalone have only a single speed DVD and maybe four speed CD read capability... it's got that not because of strange OEM naziism, but because it's the cheapest component out of the whole system.

This too is the reason Yamaha's newer drives with 'audio master' mode may go up to 40x standard writing, but can't break over 4x in master mode... it's there to give ultimate, sharp-edged-pit quality. Anyone else remember having to burn games at 2x on 6x CDRs so that they'd actually play on worn-out PSXs?

As for whoever said that these days burning too slowly can be a problem too - there may be an element of truth to that. After all CDRWs, like cars, are optimised for a certain range of write speeds (though read speeds are much more flexible). Your family hatch isn't going to be too happy above 90mph, but a tuned sportscar will complain heavily if you take it shopping. For that reason I've kept my old 6x4x24x Ricoh in the PC for cases of needing 4x recording at some point, particularly with CDRWs. It doesn't like 10x CDRW media (or very much modern CDR at all really), but the new LG doesn't seem 100% pleased at having to crank all the way down to 4x either for the bulk of CDRWs. The Ricoh can do single speed to six, i have a 12x LiteOn in another machine that can't go below 2x; my brother's 20x writer won't go lower than 4x for love nor money, and this 32x device has a minimum non-RW speed of eight. It appears to work roughly with powers of six for the speed spread, all told. The middle path is probably the wisest, being neither the lower nor upper border, hopefully it should be the most optimised.
And, if I choose lower-middle, then that happily gives 16x for this drive (it also means that it doesn't guarantee a smartburn gap as the p-cav switches up a gear). That would have meant 2x in yesteryear though, so instead I plumped for 4x and singletasking through the burn period. You have to draw a line somewhere, and I drew it at taking 40 minutes per disc instead of 20

[pookyhead34]

Well, I find that as long as I use a green felt-tip marker to coat the inner and outer plastic edges of my CDR's before burning them, I have no problems with speeds up to 24x. The green ink helps with the laser's reflectivity, helping the DVD player to read better -- hence, less error correction and fewer glitches.