Those 99-minute CDs.

[AlecWest]

Just curious. I've never used them before but wondered if anyone had anything to say about 99-minute CDs. My CD burners (I have 2) are less than a year old (NEC Optiarcs). And Nero tells me that overburn is supported. But Nero also mentions that sometimes, attempting an overburn can damage the burner. Has anyone had this happen to them on a burner with overburn supported?

Also, I've been looking at these CDs:

http://www.yesbuy.net/cd-r-cdr-blank-99-min-870-mb-media.html

Is that about the standard price for them ... or is there anything substantially cheaper?

P.S. This is actually a video-related question. While I don't burn VCDs for myself anymore, a bunch of friends do and I wanted to give them the best advice on this question that I can. They'd be burning a program that's 85 minutes long.

Regards,
J. Alec West

[aedipuss]

never had a burner damaged making them, but then again i've never had anything be able to read them but the drive that burned the disc.

[AlecWest]

never had a burner damaged making them, but then again i've never had anything be able to read them but the drive that burned the disc.

In short, a DVD player that normally recognizes VCDs doesn't recognize it as a valid CD? Is this always true or just true in some cases?

I suppose I'll give it a try myself. My DVD player is pretty good at recognizing anything with a shiny surface (grin).

Regards,
J. Alec West

[jman98]

Most burners can't burn them correctly. Whether yours can or not depends on a lot of factors. Years ago when blank DVDs cost a lot of money, there was a lot of interest in 90 and 99 minute CD-Rs, but now with DVDs being so cheap, there is very little interest in them. Nobody maintains current lists of burners that can correctly burn up to 99 minutes. Worst case you can probably burn up to 90 minutes, but you may or may not be able to burn all 99 minutes. To burn these discs, you MUST set up your burner (I use Nero for this - one of the few things that I actually recommend Nero for) to overburn to 99 minutes (or 90 minutes for the 90 minute CD-Rs) and burn as slow as possible. If you burn any faster than 4x, you may have failed burns. Sometimes the burns will "fail" but actually be totally playable with no problems. The closer you get to the end of the disc, the more problems you will have. For example, on the 90 minute CD-Rs, if I burn 87 minutes or less, I have have problems. If I burn more than 88 minutes, I sometimes have "failed" burns. I once tried to burn 90 minutes and 20 seconds to a 90 minute CD-R and it failed. The last track of my CD (it's an audio CD) is unplayable, but all the other tracks play fine. I have an 88 minute burn that "failed" but every track plays flawlessly.

Note that the 90 minute CD-Rs can be burned by almost every burner there is. I've never found a device yet that won't read the discs correctly.
I am less optimistic about the 99 minute CD-Rs (my burners can't burn them correctly, by the way), but if 90 minute blanks won't work for you, you can gamble and you may get lucky with the 99 minute ones. Almost nobody sells them outside of Europe, so you have very few choices on price. I bought some 90 minute CD-Rs from yesbuy a few years ago and they are OK.

[Noahtuck]

I still have some 99min cdr's, about 50 actually.

I used to use them quite a bit for putting whole concerts on one cd so i did not have to split them between 2 cd's, or for splitting into 2 cd's instead of 3, making extended comp's of groups, ect.

Every burner i have ever had burned them fine and i never had a problem playing them back or my friends, except one cheap @$$ little boombox.

Overburning can wreck your burner when trying to overburn by a large margin, say trying to overburn 99 minutes to a 70min cdr will definately screw it up, the cd-r for sure and most likely the burner.

But when there is enough room to overburn it will not hurt anything.

I still have some screen shots showing the setting's i would use in nero to overburn my larger capacity cdr's because programs & burners will only show them as standard cdr's

[redwudz]

When I used to make SVCDs, I would burn them in Mode 2 with Nero. That burns them without error correction. That way I could get up to 830MB on a regular 700MB CD. But that's not overburning, it just used the space normally taken up for error correction. I never tried the 99 minutes CDs.

I suppose the damage could occur if you forced the laser mechanism to the extreme outside of the disc. Not something I would mess with. I think you would also generate a lot of coasters trying to burn to the very edge.

BTW, a fair number of those SVCDs I made then have errors now. Whether that was the burning method or because I used cheap discs then, I don't know.

[AlecWest]

I think it might be best to stick with 90-minute CDs like these:

http://www.burnsmart.com/pr9080cd90mi.html

They're in Fullerton, CA, so I won't have far to yell if they screw up (grin). But, I'll check locally first to see if anyone has them in a smaller quantity. The BurnSmart page "says" a smaller tester pack is sold. But clicking on the link to that tester pack takes you right back to the 100-stack page (sigh).

Regards,
J. Alec West

[hech54]

I use 90 minute 800MB TDK discs all of the time too.
My LG drives and Prassi Ones read them correctly at
90 minutes/800MB so there is no need for overburning.
Can't beat that with a stick...

[Noahtuck]

You were talking about making VCD's with them ?

I thought music, but i used to do what redwudz did also, except VCD & not SVCD, to squeeze whole movies onto 1 - 99min disc way back in the day before DVDr.....


I remember some program, don't recall the name, but i found it through here, it would rip from the dvd and convert to VCD on the fly, man would that drive & disc be hot when it was done
And it was NOT fast!!!!
Even using TMPGEnc on the ol' 500mhz (might have even been 266mhz back then) taking 18+ hours to convert a 1 1/2 hour video to vcd

But as long as there is enough room on the cdr, it wont hurt anything overburning, it's just when you run out of room on the blank and the burner tries to keep on going 8)

I use 90 minute 800MB TDK discs all of the time too.
My LG drives and Prassi Ones read them correctly at
90 minutes/800MB so there is no need for overburning.
Can't beat that with a stick...

Does the prassi program recognize the oversize disc for what it really is ??
Every program i have ever tried only list's the cdr's as 700mb i believe, even though they were the larger disc's so i still have to tell the burning software to overburn, even though you are not really overburning the larger disc.

I used to use prassi way back in the day for VCD's, PSX games, Music cdr's but have not tried it in quite some time....
But it was only with these 99min disc's, never tried any newer 90min disc's.

never had a burner damaged making them, but then again i've never had anything be able to read them but the drive that burned the disc.

In short, a DVD player that normally recognizes VCDs doesn't recognize it as a valid CD? Is this always true or just true in some cases?

I also never had a problem with my VCD's burned to the larger disc's playing back on dvd players, except players that did not play vcd's.
I remember when the top priority back in the day was finding a dvd player that WOULD play VCD's

[MOVIEGEEK]

I bought a bunch of 90/99min CD-R's several years ago in the VCD days,I still have a few left.Every DVD player recognized them and when I used them for audio CD's all my players did also.I had great luck burning them and I don't recall ever making a coaster,the only drawback is they don't have a printable surface.
I read a few years ago Ritek stopped making the 99min to concentrate on DVD-R.
BTW:Fireburner and Nero are the only programs that allow you to overburn 99min and only certain writers support it,Sefy used to have a comprehensive list of writers that supported it.

[stiltman]

I remember some program, don't recall the name, but i found it through here, it would rip from the dvd and convert to VCD on the fly, man would that drive & disc be hot when it was done
And it was NOT fast!!!!
Even using TMPGEnc on the ol' 500mhz (might have even been 266mhz back then) taking 18+ hours to convert a 1 1/2 hour video to vcd

DVD2VCD is what I used
It's DVD2SVCD now

[Super Warrior]

Why would anyone bother with those 99 min CDs when there is DVD tech available?

P.S. This is actually a video-related question. While I don't burn VCDs for myself anymore, a bunch of friends do and I wanted to give them the best advice on this question that I can. They'd be burning a program that's 85 minutes long.

Regards,
J. Alec West

Dude, save yourself the hassle and just use a DVD-r. It is not like they are any more expensive. Heck, you can use one of those mini-gamecube style DVDs and it would be better than the 99min CD.

If its for music purposes then just burn a second CD.

I remember when the top priority back in the day was finding a dvd player that WOULD play VCD's

Ha I remember those days!

Reading this thread made me feel like i warped back to 2002. I wonder if all those countries like asia still bother with VCDs, in this era where DVDs cost almost the same to make. Just spend a buck or two more and get 300% better quality.

[hech54]

Does the prassi program recognize the oversize disc for what it really is ??
Every program i have ever tried only list's the cdr's as 700mb i believe, even though they were the larger disc's so i still have to tell the burning software to overburn, even though you are not really overburning the larger disc.

I'm told first and foremost that it is the burner that dictates whether the full amount of these discs is readable and useable. LG used to clearly state in the specs of their burners that they did infact read oversized CD media correctly....no other manufacturer even mentioned it in their specs. Another reason I am a huge LG fan.
Prassi Ones is my only burning program that shows any kind of visual statistics as far as capacity of the media....so I guess what I said was a bit misleading....but not intentional.

[piano632]

Or find a Plextor burner with GigaRec function, which is able to adjust the pit/land size on CD's and fit up to 1GB on a standard 700MB CD. If you use the 1.2x setting you can fit 96 min. onto an 80 min. CD and it supposedly will play on most drives.

[RabidDog]

Ha! yes I used to use 99min Cdr , but the problem I had was when they were being read back by a dvd player. On about 25_30-40% of cases they would start to stumble and falter at the end of the disc. I started burn these with about 10% underburn to avoid the bad edges. Overburning and 99 mincdr are two different things.. overburning was for sticking a few extra mbs on a disc beyond the stated capacity., That plextor drive was meant to be good in its day, but in the end its all about compatibility and if you dont take things to far then you should be ok. The way overburning would damage your drive is that on badly designed drive it would push the write head beyond its safe limits causing it to damage itself.