Correct usage of DVD-RW's?

[midimidi]

I have a spindle of Ritek 2x DVD-RW's, and have had nothing but problems.

What is the correct way to:

1) burn an rw for the first time - does it need to be formatted or anything? Can I just do DAO as usual?
2) re-write...do you need to quick erase or thorough erase?

I've read numerous things, but mostly nothing at all. I mostly burn images rather than raw data (i.e. testing DVD writes, etc),

[bugster]

You mean for DVD-Video rather than DVD-ROM?

If that is the case, you should not need to format and quick erase should be fine, thats all I have ever done anyway!

It could well be dodgy/low quality media thats the problem.