Burn speed, better at slower speed or higher??

[dydy]

Hi,
I just wanna know whether it's better to burn at lower speed or higher speed? cause i read from somewhere that burning at lowers speed provide a better writing of the data on the CD-R or the DVD-R. Is it true??

[garryheather]

If the media is certified for a certain speed, you should be able to burn at that speed and it will work.

However, things like write strategy comes into it here, and that's down to the recorder.

If you use hacked firmware, especially on DVD recorders, the write strategy has been altered (or removed entirely) to allow you to write to media that isn't in it's lookup table or recommended to be written to at a slower speed, thus writing faster than the manufacturer of the recorder believes the disc SHOULD be written at. I like to think these people know what they're talking about, and although a lot of people swear by hacked firmware, I personally advise against it because the results can be variable and it doesn't bother me if a burn takes a while.

This is not an issue with CD's really, since most burns only take a couple of minutes these days, and chances are the disc isn't full anyway.

Saying that, some media - in my experience CD's made by CMC, need to be burnt at a slower speed to ensure that they can be played back properly on CD-ROM drives. That could be down to my writers, but to date I have yet to see a CMC manufactured CD that will burn reliably at a speed greater than 16x.

DVD players have a tighter tolerance, and blanks for those generally work or they don't. I term a "don't" as read errors resulting in blocking and skips, not just failure to recognise. If a media isn't that compatible, burning at a slower speed doesn't make a lot of difference, although if a disc is borderline with your equipment, it IS worth trying a slower speed if you can.

I should just say that recorders that write at a high speed should be able to achieve this easily and / or fall back to a slower speed if they experience problems.

Saying that, a slower speed means more time for the drive to follow the pre-groove on CD's and DVD-R's (or the timing markers on +R) and is less suscebtible to vibrations than if you recorded at a higher speed, so there CAN be benefits from recording a little slower.

As they say, your mileage my vary. Try it and see is the best bet, but I personally don't think you will have too much of an issue writing at a speed agreed with by the media and your recorder if you DO NOT alter the firmware away from the genuine releases made by the drive's manufacturer and half decent media.

[jamesbond1960]

This is very true, Burning DVD's at a slower speed allows the burning process to be done correctly and puts less stress on CPU. I have burned over 150 dvds at 2X and not one coaster But I have also burned dvd at 4x about 20 of then and 9 have been coasters. And its not my media or my dvd writer. As for VCD here too slower is safer I usually burn at 24X and I have never had a coaster yet at 32x I have had 3 in 30 and at 48x 2 in 20 so same percentage. Its like sex better slower than faster.....LOL

[iooi]

As a guide so long as the file i'm burning is less than 3 gig then i will go for 4X but if its over then i step down to 2X. Have had issues with films stopping and skipping when burning at 4X when over the 4 gig mark. Also difffrent media reacts in diffrent ways even though branded @ 4X some work better at 2X. Never had a problem with Ritek's at 4X but Pinco's give me some grief....

[Hardcoreruss]

I have never had problems at 4x but you see many people who say for best results burn at the lowest possible speed.

[lordsmurf]

Burn speed is a myth.

It's the balancing of the media and reliability of the hardware that causes the problems. The "burn lower" myth is just a workaround to get stubborn hardware and bad media to cooperate.

Good hardware and good media can be burned at max speeds just as good, if not better, than the minimum speed. Most media is designed to work BEST at the maximum speed.

[slash72]

I read somewhere for cdr's that burning slower is actually worse. Maybe that website is still out there. It was something to do with the pits in the burn. Burning slower cause less defined pits or grooves. Whether this is the same with dvd-r I don't know. I know that my burns are more dependant on media rather than speed, much like the earlier days of cdr. Sorry I don't remember the site but it was farly common a couple years ago. It had a section called burners corner, maybe someone recalls.

[Tony_Greece]

It depends on the media certified speed. I believe that the compatibility of the writer is amatter too as well as the update of the firmware.

[vega1970]

Some old standalone DVD players cannot read correctly disks burnt a
4x.

I made a few tests when I got my Pioneer DVR-106 DVD writer.
I bought 4x certified Verbatim datalifeplus DVD+R disks (at the time
4x certified DVD-R disks couldn't be find easily).

I made a copy of my region 1 "Tomorrow never dies" DVD on one of the
DVD+R. I burnt it at 4x. Then I tried various DVD player

- My Playstation 2 (v7): no problem
- My PC DVD-ROM drive: no problem
- My old standalone Panasonic A350 DVD player (bought in 1998): it
had trouble reading the end of the disk. No problem till 80% of the
movie ... and then pixelizations, pops in the sound ... until it totally
freezes.

Then, I extracted the iso image of the DVD+R disk with DVD decrypter,
I took the next 4x certified DVD+R from the box, and burnt the iso
image back to it ... but this time I forced the speed to 2.4x in DVD
decrypter's iso write mode.

Then I tried the new disk: it worked flawlessly till the end in all the
players (even the Panasonic).

Till then I decided to avoid burning at a speed faster then 2.4x
(at least when making DVD-videos)