Write Speed - Dumb Question

[will7370]

Newbie burning question here: My Pioneer DVR-118LBK burner deck takes 11 minutes to burn a DVD when I select 6X speed. It takes 10 minutes to burn the same DVD when I select 18X speed. What's going on here? I was expecting a 4 minute burn on the faster speed selected.

Sorry if this is a dumb question.

[fritzi93]

What speed you select may not be the same as the speed you actually get. Did you look at your log to see the average write speed?

There are a number of factors involved: Your burner may not have a write strategy for writing at 18x for a particular Manufacturer I.D. (MID), or the discs may not be rated for that speed. Your computer may have difficulty keeping the buffer full. Or your burner may slow down in spots if it's having difficulty writing the disc. I've seen that fairly often with crummy CMC discs.

Then again, 18x is asking a lot for burning a DVD. Personally, I never burn a DVD faster than 12x; it's less reliable to go much higher, IMO.

[will7370]

Thanks for the input. I checked my discs and they are rated for 16X. So I will check my logs and see what speed I'm actually getting. I've been running low on funds recently, and bought these crummy Memorex discs at Sam's Club. Normally I prefer to use Sony or Taiyo Yuden.

[fritzi93]

Put one of those Memorex discs in your burner and start up ImgBurn. I'll bet it tells you that your discs are CMC_MAG.

[hello_hello]

Burners don't burn at full speed for the whole disc. They start off slow (maybe 4x or 6x) and virtually don't hit maximum speed until right at the very end of the disc. How fast they ramp up probably depends on the disc being used and the burner's write strategy. Use a better quality disc and it'll possibly ramp up to a faster speed earlier in the burn.

Plus if the burn quality drops too much, the burner will usually automatically slow down a bit.

I burn mainly using Verbatim Azo discs. I own a few Pioneer burners of various vintages. I generally burn at 12x when using the older burners as that seems to be where they do best. The newer burners actually seem to do a little better (on average) at maximum speed than they do at 12x, so I burn at maximum speed using them (18x and 20x). The difference is fairly small anyway, but there's no hard and fast rule.

As burners don't hit maximum speed until towards the end of the burn though, depending on the disc and the burner's write strategy, there's every chance the majority of the disc will be written at the same speed regardless of whether you tell the burner to burn at 12x, 16x or 18x. If memory serves me correctly, I've got an older Samsung burner here which burns some of the disc at a slower speed when burning at 16x than the newer Pioneer does when it's burning at 12x.

[jayw]

There are many factors which may affect wring speed, e.g. burning software, disc, writer. Also, the speed is not constant when writing, when disc is closing, it may also take some time. Also, did you let the writer to verify the content after writing? It will take some extra time also. So you will not see speed double when you double the writing X in software.