do burned dvds have a shelf life?

[roryBorealis]

DVDs burned on an optorite dvd-r burner using taiyo yuden 4x disks don't seem to be holding up anymore. They play one or two times then start going wonky.

They still seem to play ok on the machine that burned them, but when I plug them into any of four different set-top boxes (phillips, jvc, samsung, sony), they won't play all the way through without locking up/skipping/chattering.

Just got another desktop with a Pioneer burner and I'll see if disks burned here will hold up any better--but for the time being, any clues o ye mighty ones?

Thanx for the width,
r

[tinker]

Do you mean one or two times over few years or how long.
It is possible that you got fake TY discs, they were around.
Mine are about 4+ years and still play fine.
There is a shelve life for recordable discs, but still debatable. It looks like anywhere from 5 to 75 years, depends what you read.

[roryBorealis]

That would be once or twice over a period of a year or so.

And yes I've heard about the fake taiyo yuden disks which is why I got dvdInfo to check the integrity of every disk I burn.

Failures used only to be with ritek and the like disks--but now I'm getting failures with genuine taiyo yudens as well.

As said I'm gonna try burning exclusively with the Pioneer machine for a while and see how my disks hold up.

Thanx for your response,
r

[lordsmurf]

DVDs do not really have an easily-seen shelf life, however DVD players do. Lasers usually die within a few thousand hours of use, or at very least weaken. Most "dead DVD" problems are a statement about the hardware used to read the discs, and not the discs themselves.

Replacing the hardware is only important if being replaced with something good. "Brand name" does not necessarily mean anything here, making it more complicated.

[samijubal]

I've got generic discs burned in early '03 that still play flawlessly. I'd guess the original burn quality was poor.

[tinker]

I am not so sure if all four players will dye at the same time.
Only suggestion I have is to re burn the disc and see if it play OK.
How do you store the discs? Do you use labels?
I cannot say the labels are bad, because I use them and all is fine, but some people experience unbelievable change when they take them off. Not sure how, you can try, but not before re burning the disc, because I think the disc will get damaged.
I definitely cannot take my labels off without destroying the disc.
Like samijubal suggest, the original burn could have been poor.

[roryBorealis]

The fact that they still seem to play fine on the machine that burned them makes me wonder if the set-top players are faulty or wearing out. Thing is, that Sony was a pretty decent purchase and from the very first it was picky about the disks it played.

Rented/borrowed disks for instance; if there's the least bit of damage to the protective layer of the disk the Sony won't play them at all. Sometimes I can wash the disk and dry it and it will play better--but sometimes not even that will do it.

I can put one of these really horribly scratched disks in my optorite machine in the pc and it will play just fine. It's just not as much fun watching movies here in the studio as in the "home theatre."

As someone said, name-brand doesn't necessarily connote quality. The first player we had was barely the size of two packs of cigarettes and cost less than forty bucks and played anything we threw at it. The Sony cost well over a hundred and seems to be the pickiest of the lot.

Thanx all, for the input,
r

[SaiLo]

I definitely cannot take my labels off without destroying the disc.

I only needed to do this a couple of times. Last time I put the disc face down on a plate of dish detergent water for a few hours, then just scraped the label off with my fingernail, it came off pretty easy. The CMC disc then was able to ripped fine abit slower than normal. The labels were Memorex brand. No more sticky labels for me!

[orsetto]

Pardon a personal question, but is there anyone in the house who smokes? If they do and you don't, the burner in your studio would be clean and work fine, while all the players in the main part of the house could have a fine layer of oil on their laser pickups from the smoke. Players in a smokers home can be more erratic in what they will and won't play.

Try the problem DVDs at another persons house, preferably on both their computer and on their DVD player, and see what happens. Also see if you can try one on a store's demo player. If they work OK outside your house, you can be fairly sure its your players and not the discs.

Finally, do you have labels on them? As they age, labels can make otherwise good discs play poorly. How do you store them? Prolonged exposure to light can age organic dyes prematurely and cause tracking issues.

[samijubal]

There have been a lot of Sony players that are media picky. You mention the discs not playing on Philips and JVC too, they aren't at all picky, not the ones I've seen anyway.

[dfisher052]

I've had a similar problem. All the discs (various brands) I've burned in my Optorite in DVD format won't play in my new Philips 5982, but play fine in my Philips 642. The AVI data discs play ok, but not the DVD's. If I recopy the disc to my other burner they play fine. Any ideas?

[[_chef_]]

DVDs burned on an optorite dvd-r burner using taiyo yuden 4x disks don't seem to be holding up anymore. They play one or two times then start going wonky.

They still seem to play ok on the machine that burned them, but when I plug them into any of four different set-top boxes (phillips, jvc, samsung, sony), they won't play all the way through without locking up/skipping/chattering.

Just got another desktop with a Pioneer burner and I'll see if disks burned here will hold up any better--but for the time being, any clues o ye mighty ones?

Thanx for the width,
r

If you can buy TY discs then spend a few bucks and buy a NEW burner too.

[lordsmurf]

Orsetto was onto something with the "smoking" comment. Optical electronics easily get "lung cancer" from smoke, and fail to work properly (or at all).

[zod5000]

I've got discs I burned in 03 that work.. actually all of them burned on the old ritekG04's still work (ritek made better blanks at the time). I've always tried to buy whatever media was higher quality at the time, and seem to have done good.

I assume dvd dye might be a little similar to cd dye and I still have cd's from 1997 that work.

And for a funny point back when g04's were good a friend of mine kept buying princo's. I told him they'd die so he swapped me a couple, i tried them out, and of all the dvd's i've used, they're the only ones that are pretty much unreadable.

[Seeker47]

DVDs do not really have an easily-seen shelf life, however DVD players do. Lasers usually die within a few thousand hours of use, or at very least weaken. Most "dead DVD" problems are a statement about the hardware used to read the discs, and not the discs themselves.

Replacing the hardware is only important if being replaced with something good. "Brand name" does not necessarily mean anything here, making it more complicated.

This is a very important issue that has come up here periodically -- the longevity of DVDs. (I'd like to broader this a bit, beyond the use of one type of burner, or one type of disc. Pressed vs. burned is another issue, however.) Have you not done a fairly substantial turnaround on this, Lordsmurf, over the past couple years ? Please excuse if I'm thinking of someone else's posts, but I seem to recall your taking the position -- some time ago -- that under ideal conditions these silver discs should last for decades as good, long-term storage. (Let's leave aside for the moment that the hardware always obsoletes itself long before that can happen. Fired up any Zip disks lately ?) But, more recently, you've stated that a good sneeze or minor accident can ruin an optical disc.

I'm not really arguing with the latter assertion. Some recent discoveries have led me to seriously question optical discs as a storage solution. I've seen a similar problem with a number of discs now, most of them 2 or 3 years old, some less than that. The problem is that they freeze on playback at certain spots. Some of these discs were made on the Pio 520 or 640 DVDRs, some on various Pioneer or LiteOn burners in the computer. The disc failures have mostly been from TDKs or Maxells, some Sonys (MIJs), a few colored Fuji's (MIJ, for the brief period when they were actually TYs). So far, I don't recall any that were Verb MIT or TYGO2 going bad. I've been using primarily the last two for the past year or so. So, I guess this doesn't quite rule out the discs.

To address the points mentioned by Orsetto, mine is a non-smoking environment. The DVDs are stored in paper sleeves, in storage boxes, kept away from sunlight. I handle them carefully. They have been played in a few-months-old Oppo 980 player. (I should probably cross-check them more often in other players -- which I have available -- when a problem is discovered . . . but I doubt very much that there is anything wrong with the Oppo.) I don't use labels, but rather hand-title them with a CD/DVD approved marker.

Thus far, I have been able to salvage every problem disc, by ripping it to computer HDD and re-burning it to a TYGO2. When I play the fresh dupe on the Oppo, returning to the time-index where a freeze was observed, I'm not finding it. As long as this holds true, the problem will remain a small but fixable annoyance. But if any of the TY recordings start going bad, a couple years out, I'm going to be royally pissed, and will have to say that this is a fatally flawed technology. It's a tremendous sense of uncertainty and lack of confidence, entrusting one's archival storage to this medium.

[lordsmurf]

The discs will last ... if certain conditions are met.

The primary one is care in handling and storage. If you scratch the crap our of it, and smear it with sticky goo (snot from a sneeze, for example), then light will have difficulty passing from dye back to the laser pickup, thus creating read problems.

Most people who's discs magically "died" have subjected the media to a number of improper storage techniques, including wallets, cases that warp media, or allowing dust to reside on the surface only to be "wiped" into it by a t-shirt (both the dust AND the t-shirt material cause micro-abrasions to form on the surface).

I was in Blockbuster two days ago, and overhead a conversation between the clerk and a customer speculate why the disc wasn't working. I was in a hurry, I didn't give my 2 cents, I just rolled my eyes at some of what I heard. The problem was an old PS2 and a scratched-to-hell rental disc, not the cockamamie things they were inventing in their heads. Why was that so hard? People are too stupid for DVDs, it's really that simple. If you don't at least slightly have an OCD for cleanliness, you'll end up with a lot of "dead" discs from your own mishandling.

I've had "dead" discs myself, but the reasons vary. The most common one is I was in a hurry, and never properly tested the disc when it was burned. It takes time to test, so I just deal with it. I test all masters, I'm only having problems with duplicates that I can re-burn from family. Most often, it's discs that came from somebody else that have problems, not my own burns on a Pioneer with Verbatim (or something else good, like SONY, TY or PVC).

[thecoalman]

Orsetto was onto something with the "smoking" comment. Optical electronics easily get "lung cancer" from smoke, and fail to work properly (or at all).

Goddamn now I'm killing electronics with my secondhand smoke... Makes sense though.

[fredfillis]

The discs will last ... if certain conditions are met.

snip ....

Most people who's discs magically "died" have subjected the media to a number of improper storage techniques, including wallets, cases that waave rp media, or allowing dust to reside on the surface only to be "wiped" into it by a t-shirt (both the dust AND the t-shirt material cause micro-abrasions to form on the surface).

Lordsmurf, what proper storage techniques would you recommend? I have most of my burned media in binders with sleeves. I've been a little concerned that over time these sleeves may cause microabrasions.

[lordsmurf]

Use DVD cases that do not warp the disc. This usually means a good case that costs you $1 or more, not the 25 cent in-bulk buys you find online from stores that mostly sell blank DVDs.

You can also use spindles for discs that are not moved much, as the discs have a natural stacking system in place (assuming these are not some of the "no stacking ring" discs that exist). Be sure to optically insulate the spindle with a dark piece of paper, or better yet, place inside of a dark cabinet. Just be sure the cabinet is not humid inside or trapping heat/cold, it should be a vented cabinet that simply blocks out most light.

Sunlight is NEVER ALLOWED AT ANY TIME.

If you rarely access the disc, and it's easy to replace, a wallet is fine. I keep used DVD movies that I've bought (no cases) in wallets. I can buy those again. Burns of precious home movies are triple-archived, one off-site in a spindle, one on-site in a slim jewel case in a media safe, and the "main" viewing disc either in a DVD case with artwork, or on a spindle awaiting a DVD case with artwork (those take time, I'm years behind on cases).

Sure, proper storage takes a little more room than a wallet, but at least your discs will still work in a few months or years.

[orsetto]

I second LordSmurf's storage advice: good hard cases for frequently-used DVD-R discs, wallets for commercial discs, and spindles for the archives. Spindles save an ENORMOUS amount of storage space and are very protective when used correctly. It is not that difficult to keep a computer log of what discs are in what spindles, and if you limit yourself to 25-count spindles its easy to just look thru them. I personally prefer 50-count spindles, because I have recorded *way* too many TV series and movies that are seldom watched and I just find 50-count spindles easier to physically manage. Never use 100-count spindles for permanent storage, they are clumsier and offer more risk of handling mishaps. If you burn mostly TY silver DVD-R, note these do not have standard stacking rings on the top side, only the bottom- they can be stored in spindles but require more careful handling when adding or removing them.

[Sidney23]

If it's done right it will last for years. But i have had issues with audio

[lordsmurf]

Reading back over this, remember that you need to author 100% compliant (or near-100%) discs, and that could be a problem if you've done anything non-standard (on purpose, or by accident, or due to lack of skill/knowledge).

Audio can be related here too, as MP2 is not officially supported, but all-too-often used.

[SLK001]

Audio can be related here too, as MP2 is not officially supported, but all-too-often used.

I thought that one of the more recent releases of the DVD spec allowed for MP2 to be use with NTSC discs (it always was approved for PAL). I remember reading this only because the first couple of discs that I made used MP2 encoding, before I learned that this was not compliant for NTSC discs - and before I switched over to AC3 exclusively.

Some early DVD players can't handle MP2 audio, but all newer ones should handle it okay.

[Schmendrick]

One advice: From own experience never ever use a paper sleeve which still has a sticky layer left of the glue with which it once was glued shut to store CD-R's oder DVD+-R/RW's. This remaining glue deterioates with time and then diffuses into the plastic media of the dics changing its reflectivity. I had this problem once and the affected discs were unreadable starting from the range were this had happend.

On the other hand I have CD-R's from as early as about 1996 and DVD-R's (even just Princo-DVD-R's) from about 2001 which are still fully readable. Then I had Verbatim CD-R's with the dark-blue Azo-type discs which started to form bubbles on the side opposite to the recording side.

By the way CD-R's and DVD-R's usually are much less sensitive to scratches on the recording side than on their opposite side.
Scratches on the recoding side even can be removed if you very carefully use car polish.

Schmendrick

[SLK001]

By the way CD-R's and DVD-R's usually are much less sensitive to scratches on the recording side than on their opposite side.

CD-Rs, yes. DVD-Rs, no.

The CD-R dye layer is just under the top "skin" of the disc. Any scratch on the top of a CD-R will make that area (and quite possibly, the whole disc, unreadable).

The DVD-R dye layer is approximately in the middle of the disc, thus making scratches on the top layer a "non-issue".