Should I turn off verification with Record Now?

[mkelley]

First of all, I assume that I *can* turn off the verify mode (I'm at work and away from my burner right now). If so, is there any reason short of anal retentiveness to leave this on?

Right now it's taking about 30 minutes to burn a 2x DVD using Record Now... at which point it takes another 30 minutes to verify the thing. None of my DVD authoring programs have a verify mode -- they just burn it and it either works or doesn't. I assume that since I have to use the "data" mode on Record Now that *it* assumes I want my data verified, but quite frankly I haven't seen data verification in place since the good old (bad old) days of tape backup.

At some point I'll put the DVD in a player and see if it plays, which is probably all the verification I need. But if I'm missing something please inform me. What is everyone here doing?

[Bob W]

I turned it off and you're right if it's a bad burn you will know when you go to play it. Besides I have never had a bad burn in some 300 discs.

[mkelley]

Thanks, Bob, that's kind of what I thought (but if anyone has a dissenting opinion, feel free to jump in here). It's nice to hear some reassurance that I'm not doing something stupid (and I feel *real* stupid when it comes to this DVD stuff -- I've learned a lot but it's only been a week or so and I'm still learning).

[jsnkc]

If it is just for personal use then there is no reason to Verify it, but if you are doing this professionally and sending your DVD's out to clients then you should verify them, it has saved my a$$ a number of times.

[VidGuy]

Someone once sagely wrote - "only verify data that you care about".

The real question is - how big of a deal would it be if it was wrong.
Backing up DVDs - no big deal. You can always grab the original and do it again.

Personal video captures that I've converted to DVD - you can bet your a$$ I verify the data - once I reuse the DV tape - I can never get those videos again.......

[mkelley]

VidGuy,

Well, I certainly hear you, but nothing beats multiple backups on data that's really critical. Let's face it -- which would you rather have, one verified back up, or two that aren't verified?

I have broken more than one CD in my lifetime (thankfully no DVDs... yet) and if it had been verified it will still be no more readable. If I have critical footage I'm going to erase I back it up more than once (and normally, even on multiple media types, as you never know).

Still, this is a good discussion, as it's made me think about a lot of things. I suspect when I send a DVD to someone (someone not in my city, for example) I'll verify it, but otherwise I'll just tell them to let me know if they have problems. Heck, even a verified DVD may not play on some settop players.

For my own critical disks -- I'll probably verify *and* backup twice or more (then again, I rarely erase original footage. That for me is the ultimate backup).

[VidGuy]

I do both - I have 2 backups and I verify them both - doesn't take that long to verify. If it's data, I do bit for bit - if it's video, then I just use a CD/DVD verification program that verifies everythings readable.

You'd be surprised, for instance, how often DVD-RAM screws up and the bits you wrote aren't the bits you read (especially with Creative DVD-RAM drives).

[mkelley]

Well then, maybe it's my drive, but it takes just as long to verify (bit by bit) as it does to make the backup -- so by your philosophy I could do 4 backups in the time it would take to do two with verify (and obviously 4 would be better than 2 :>)

But I'm just talking DVDs, so I won't verify them as a general rule other than putting them in a player and see if they play -- I jump through all the chapter stops and get a good idea if the movie is okay all the way through.

This discussion has been very interesting, though.

[VidGuy]

actually, that's also exactly how I verify a video DVD as well - stick it in a player and jump through the chapter stops - I've been bitten by the "it gets pixely towards the edge of the DVD" thing.....

Although I have to say with the Samsung and Ritek disks, so far I haven't had that problem....

[dcsos]

I turned off my VERIFY by NECESSITY NOT CHOICE
the stupid thing doesn't work
When you burn multiple DVD's that is

BECAUSE I bought four dvd burners that STOMP writes to in TANDEM
but the MANUFATURER told me that STOMP will not verify four multiple burns..
Until I turned it off, every run was ending in a crash when the software tried to VERIFY four burns !!
What A joke...