DVD-R DL anyone?

[midnightsun]

For those who were interested, it looks like somebody (in Europe) finally has these on stock:

http://www.guenstig-brennen.de

Price is high though, 8.90€ a piece, but 4x certified speed lol.

[Edmund Blackadder]

1. Don't ever use Nero for DL burning. Please trust me on that one.

Excuse me Edmund (and I am a huge fan of your show by the way), but I just wanted to defend Nero. I know you had trouble with DL burning with Nero early on. I was not burning DL yet at that time, but I was reading your posts here. By the time I started (last September), Nero had apparently worked out the bugs.

I just wanted to set the record straight that whatever problems Nero may have had early on with DL, it has worked perfectly since September. At least for me.

Mawdryn, I respect your opinion about Nero. The key is that it works for you and that's the most important thing. I, however, do medium to fairly large distributions of original material on recordable DVD's and I absolutely cannot afford having non-100% DVD-Video compliant burns. Media recognition is a completely different issue, but software-wise I need a 100% compatibility with specifications.

I don't know about single layer, but for double layer recording Nero is not capable of producing a 100% compliant DVD9. I've read here some recent Japanese tests that used the latest Nero and it still does not insert "Layer Br." (non-seamless play) flag at the point of layer switch. Even Prassi ONES which is among my favorites for single layer burning is quite useless for DL burning because of the same issue.

So, even if Nero worked out other bugs with DL burning, it still has not fixed the most important one - the compliant layer switching. RecordNow and one other authoring/burning software that was tested does that, but unfortunately none others. There are at least 30% of players (such as many Pioneers, some Sony's, some Panasonics, etc.) that require this "Layer Br." flag in order to jump to the second layer without a permanent freeze. That is a high enough percentage for me not to use Nero, DVD Decrypter or ONES for DL burning, especially if it goes out to the masses.

So, once again, I'm happy that it works great for your private use in all of your equipment, but Nero DL burns only worked on about a half of my DVD players without problems, while the other half got confused by Nero's layer switch, or the second layer in general. Not a single problem on any of my equipment with RN burned DL's, nor on many other players I've tested this method over the last year. This is the kind of result I'm ready to settle for, and have the peace of mind that I did everything in my capabilities to maximize the compatibility at least on the software end. People pay me money for this, and when it's time to move on to DL I will sure as heck use DVD Maestro/PgcEdit/RecordNow 7.x combination to produce as compatible DVD DL's as I possibly can.

P.S.: If you often notice a half-a-second pause in the middle of the movie on pressed DVD title, but never on your DL burns, I would blow the trumpets with a complete certainty that your DL burn is not 100% compliant and will not work well on many other players. I've written about this quite a bit in the past, so if you want explanation as to why that happens - you'll find it in those posts.

[Scobo]

Anyone know of any other DL discs that will burn faster than 2.4x on the Pioneer 109/A09 apart from Verbatim ?

[thor300]

Not yet Scobo, but probably as soon as hacked firmware is available. That is when asuming you ment 109/a09 and not 106/a06 .
Firmware 1.50 is now available for 109, that COULD let you write faster on the 2.4x DL disks from Ricoh, Hopefully Edmund will test that very soon .
i tested fw1.50 yesterday with single layers, noticed slight speedtest improvements on 8x +R Verbatim burned at 12x. They were already very good with fw1.40, just not as perfect as the 16x +R verbatims. The bad news is that the 8x verbatim still burns SAO! That alone is reason enough to spend extra for the 16x disks...

[Scobo]

Do you have a link to this firmware ?
Is it official firmware ?
Don't see it on Pioneers' site.

[thor300]

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_file.php?site=firmx&file=DVR109_FW150B.EXE
I have no reason to believe this is a hacked firmware, thats the page where i gotten all my previous firmwares as well.
For list of all 109 firmwares: http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_result.php?kaj=1&isces=PIONEER+DVR-109

[leebo]

Meritline has 25 Pack Ritek RiData Dual Layer DVD+R (DL DVD+R, Double Layer DVD+R) Blank Media 2.4X 8.5GB in Cake Box (DRD+85-RDUSA-CB25)
Only $99.99 After Rebate, As Low As $4.00 Each
$25 Mail-In Rebate.

Not as good as Verbatum, but I've had decent luck with them. If they were $3/disc, I'd grab some, but maybe it's a sign that prices are falling.

[Mawdryn]

1. Don't ever use Nero for DL burning. Please trust me on that one.

Excuse me Edmund (and I am a huge fan of your show by the way), but I just wanted to defend Nero. I know you had trouble with DL burning with Nero early on. I was not burning DL yet at that time, but I was reading your posts here. By the time I started (last September), Nero had apparently worked out the bugs.

I just wanted to set the record straight that whatever problems Nero may have had early on with DL, it has worked perfectly since September. At least for me.

Mawdryn, I respect your opinion about Nero. The key is that it works for you and that's the most important thing. I, however, do medium to fairly large distributions of original material on recordable DVD's and I absolutely cannot afford having non-100% DVD-Video compliant burns. Media recognition is a completely different issue, but software-wise I need a 100% compatibility with specifications.

Thank you, Edmund. I'm not an expert on the technical stuff. You are much more informed than I am there. I guess I was assuming that since Nero works for me, they must have fixed all the problems. What you say about compatibility makes a lot of sense.

If I were producing disks for mass distribution, I too would be mainly concerned about creating 100% compliant disks. As I am not, all I really care about is if they work on my equipment. My disks get played on fewer than 10 different players. It's a narrow view I know, but if things are working for me in my little world, I'm happy.

That said, I would rather be burning fully compliant disks. (I thought I was.) I am surprised to hear that Nero DL disks still aren't fully compliant, but I take your word for it. You know a lot more about this than I do.

Just on a side note, and forgive me if this seems a stupid question, but how can a 1:1 copy on-the-fly of a fully compliant disk turn out non-compliant? Does Nero actually remove the layer switching trigger? Wouldn't that be copied over exactly as it was on the original? I'm just wondering. I'm not trying to argue the point. And if you aren't sure, that's fine. It's just that if Nero is actually changing something on a direct 1:1 copy, I'd kind of like to know. I always though a direct copy was exactly the same as the original.

I concede to the fact that Nero DL burns are not 100% compliant. It works for me and I'll probably keep using it. But I take back my criticism of your advice to others not to use it. Please forgive me. I didn't know any better.

P.S. 2-3-4-1: The order in which I rank the seasons of your great show (which I have backed-up onto DL disks using Nero).

[thor300]

Since theres been some talk about DVD-Rom booktype in this thread i thought i mention that the DVR109 can set a single layer DVD+R to DVD-ROM booktype. I tried it out today and it worked perfectly. The method is similar to that of the 108, use OEM firmware, more specific the buffalo 8.40 fw. Im gonna flash it back to 1.50 anyway, as DVD+R booktype is no problem in my dvd players.
Note: The 8.40 is not made for 109, so you might not want to do this and if you do dont blame me if something goes wrong . If you decide to do it, use a 109 flasher and load the 8.40 firmware there. The 8.40 flasher will say something like "no drive found" if your drive is not an oem.
Edit: Big thanx to janusz who posted this in the DVD writer list.

[Edmund Blackadder]

That said, I would rather be burning fully compliant disks. (I thought I was.)

Just on a side note, and forgive me if this seems a stupid question, but how can a 1:1 copy on-the-fly of a fully compliant disk turn out non-compliant? Does Nero actually remove the layer switching trigger? Wouldn't that be copied over exactly as it was on the original? I'm just wondering.

I concede to the fact that Nero DL burns are not 100% compliant. It works for me and I'll probably keep using it. But I take back my criticism of your advice to others not to use it. Please forgive me. I didn't know any better.

Mawdryn, you don't have to be asking for forgiveness . The first time I used Nero for DL a year ago, as there was no other choice, I too thought it would do just fine. And it did, but not for every DVD player. Then I started questioning the Verbatim DL media quality for a brief period of time. Later, however, after successfully trying out the new version of RecordNow I came to an easy conclusion that it indeed was Nero.

In DVD-Video mode, Nero was completely ruining the layer break position by starting the second layer writing exactly in the middle of data, instead of finding a more appropriate spot and matching/creating the non-seamless play flag in IFO file to go together with the layer break spot. That was problem number one.

Then, in 1:1 Disc Copy mode, everything went quite alright, played in my players OK with a good layer switch, etc.. Then in Best Buy I noticed on a couple of players that this Nero burned 1:1 copy disc would start stuttering in the beginning of the second layer. One of them was Pioneer. I thought: "How unfortunate that this Pioneer cannot play DL discs very well". I thought Nero was OK though in 1:1 copy. Then later I bought a new multi-system/region Pioneer DV-366 from B&H (after I have already switched to RecordNow for DL burning). This player plays DL's without a hitch, even most of the Ritek DL's, if they burned without major bumps of course (that's another story). Well, I decided to give that 1:1 copy made with Nero DL disc a try on DV-366 and guess what? ... You guessed it, the second layer was pixelating! And it was not a media or burn problem, because the scans and transfer speed tests on that DL were very normal.

So having gone through a few of that sort of adventures, and also seeing how compatible RecordNow is, I really don't want to try anything else at this point. However, I must say that for RecordNow to work well with DL, you have to either record in Data Mode or if you do the image or 1:1 copy, make sure to select GI (Global Image) as a file type, because in ISO, all the layer break position information will be ignored. That makes me wander if DVD Decrypted does similar mishaps in ISO mode. Perhaps ISO is not suitable for saving the layer break information? I'm tempted to waste one of my DL discs just to find out if that could be true . Right now though I cannot vote one way or another about ISO's capabilities in DL sector.

P.S. 2-3-4-1: The order in which I rank the seasons of your great show (which I have backed-up onto DL disks using Nero).

My ranking is a little different: 2-1-3-4-5. Number 5 is the one they did for Y2K. I find season 1 to be very amusing, while some other people think it's annoying. You don't seem to like it either .

Firmware 1.50 is now available for 109, that COULD let you write faster on the 2.4x DL disks from Ricoh, Hopefully Edmund will test that very soon .

Sorry thor300, I upgraded to firmware 1.50 and Ricoh DL still shows 2.4x as the maximum writing speed. I'm still wandering why did Pioneer Taiwan remove this firmware from their site rather quickly... Perhaps they've found some bugs in it. Though single layer Ritek G05 and Verbatim DVD-R's still seem to burn quite well. Haven't burned any other DVD's with this firmware yet.

[midnightsun]

Verbatim 4x -R DL's preliminary test at cdfreaks.com.

Unsurprising results as far as I'm concerned.

[thor300]

Nice test, but why did they test it in noname dvd players? The only branded player could read it, no surprise the Mustek failed, some of their players can barely read DVD-ROM.

Thanx for checking ricoh with 1.50 edmund. I get tired just thinking of 2.4x burns, so i better buy verbatim then . Still havent burned any DL btw, i like to be sure what format i should use first. About fw1.50, if its gone from Pioneers official sites im gonna keep the 8.40 for now. Thanx for notifying about it.