Quality of DVD-r media?

[jklote]

Does anybody else think the quality of the DVD-r's is sketchy? It seems like they scratch/don't play fairly easily.

Has anybody found a good brand? I use the ACCU.

[peregrin]

hi,

Quality varies from brand to brand, the cheaper the disk the more likely you will have troubles at some point. But you can't go by that either, I've been using some memorex 2x 's and had no problems with the last 15 disks i used but i can 't use the 5 i just got , for some reason they screw upwhen i use them for DVD video, , i get pixelation and the bitrate of the recorded video falls off to below 1MBps in a scene that on the original disc is about 6 times higher. So find a brand that gives you consistent reasults and stay with it

[cim]

I use the cheapest "house brand" from http://allmediaoutlet.com

No problems whatsoever... Plays in everything I try, However, I take extra great care of my DVDs, even my backups...

The pixelation is most likely caused by system instabilty during the ripping process.

[garryheather]

"The pixelation is most likely caused by system instabilty during the ripping process."

How the hell did you work that out ? That is just so wrong I'm afraid.

Pixelation is caused by defects in the data stream going to the MPEG decoders. There is only so much error correction that can be done on the fly during playback, so a dirty disc or incompatible media suffers breaks in this stream that the encoder can not rectify or compensate for in real time.

Ripping is a totally different ball game. The computer can re-read faulty or corrupted sectors, and the drive can slow down to try and get a cleaner read, which the DVD player can not. If the rip is invalid the checksums will be wrong and the ripper will abort or report broken sectors.

Don't forget some pixellation will also be seen in heavily compressed scenes, especially if you're one of those people who thinks the contrast and brightness should be set at 100% because it looks so much better. These are Macroblocks, and are a different sort of pixelation entirely.

[Xtasy2002]

I've been using Ritek for a long time no with no problems.

[cim]

Sorry garryheather, I should have said transcoding instead of ripping. Let's just agree that there are lots of things that can cause pixelation. And, let's not forget the original question from jklote.