maxell 8x issue

[davefx]

i've been buying the yellow maxell 4x dvd-r for a while now. i have burned about 100 or so without a problem. they play great in everything i put them in, ps2, old dvd players, even sony dvd players will play them.

i went to go buy some more in december and they were on sale 1/3 off, so i bought all they had.

two days ago i ran out of discs and needed more so off i went to go buy them. at the checkout counter i noticed that although the exterior packaging was identical, the discs themselves were not yellow 4x maxell dvd-r. instead they were 8x gold maxell dvd-r. i havent heard anything bad about these, so i bought 30 discs and went home.

i immediatley burned 15 of them, all different homemade dvd's authored in tmpg dvd author (the last 100 or so discs i have burned have been done this way)

i burned them in the burning program included in tmpg which i realize is not the best but has worked fine for the last 100 discs.

after i burned these 15, i played a couple to see how they turned out. they are about 3hours/5minutes each or so, 1/2d1 res.

the one disc i played in entirety had a few oddities i have not seen before. a few pauses that lasted about 1/2 second in about 3 spots on the disc; not necessarily at the end but randomly throughout. there was no pixelation or stuttering during these pauses. i have seen bad issues with princo's, memorex etcetera but these were usually freezes or pixelations.

i could not get the disc to reproduce these errors in the same spots twice. after a pause, i reversed the playback to before the pause and it would play fine the second time. i checked the disc for dirt and found nothing.

i havent had time to play the other discs or play the same disc again (3 hours is a long time for this busy guy).

i checked in the media section of this site and 15 people said these discs are great.

anyone else have an issue like this? i hope i dont have an incompatibility.

i use a pioneer 105 for burning via firewire.

i will burn the next 15 discs on a mac with the same burner to see if any difference is found. both mac and pc have burned the dvd's fine in the past, i havent noticed any difference really except toast is a better app than the included burning app with tmpg dvd author.

i suppose it could be an issue with my pioneer player (cant remember model#, plays anything) or the tmpg app - i dunno. i havent seen this playback error on anything before, regardless of media.

[maldb]

It might be that the lens on your player is dirty - considering the fact that you can't get the same error reproduced at the same point on the disc. Give it a try, it certainly won't hurt.

[davefx]

it could be. i have had it over two years and its never been cleaned. non smoking environment.