DVD- write speed(s) when authoring

[jimfarn916]

When authoring a DVD for playback in a player; does the write speed affect final playback quality?

After giving up on Cyberlink softwares ability to give me a quality end product; I am trying DVDstyler... unlike Cyberlink (which 8x was the lowest) you can adjust the write speed down to a 1x.

2nd: does individual DVD media have a minimum write speed.

thank you.

[Kerry56]

I prefer AVStoDVD, but DVDStyler probably has better controls for making menus.

Write speed for DVD's depends on the firmware of the drive. No software can force the burn to a slower speed than the firmware of the drive allows you. And burn speeds in the firmware vary according to the MID code of the blank media and the specified speeds for each code.

So it is a combination of drive capability and speeds for each type of media that are laid out in the firmware. As a general rule, burn your media at half of its rated speed if you are using a desktop drive. If you are using a slim drive, or a laptop drive, don't burn faster than 4x to 6x.

Errors can be introduced into media by burning too fast. But the firmware of modern drives have been optimized for faster speeds, and less attention was placed on compatibility of media and firmware with slow burns (below 4x). Very slow burns aren't necessarily better with the media we have now and modern burners. Which is why I advise to stick to middle speeds.

[jimfarn916]

I prefer AVStoDVD, but DVDStyler probably has better controls for making menus.

Write speed for DVD's depends on the firmware of the drive. No software can force the burn to a slower speed than the firmware of the drive allows you. And burn speeds in the firmware vary according to the MID code of the blank media and the specified speeds for each code.

So it is a combination of drive capability and speeds for each type of media that are laid out in the firmware. As a general rule, burn your media at half of its rated speed if you are using a desktop drive. If you are using a slim drive, or a laptop drive, don't burn faster than 4x to 6x.

Errors can be introduced into media by burning too fast. But the firmware of modern drives have been optimized for faster speeds, and less attention was placed on compatibility of media and firmware with slow burns (below 4x). Very slow burns aren't necessarily better with the media we have now and modern burners. Which is why I advise to stick to middle speeds.

thanks Kerry since posting my question I have been doing some reading on the topic thru this forum as well as another site linked to from this forum... reading more information is helping but having a direct Q & A definitely gets answers fast.

EG: my DVD says 1x -16x and the writer firmware is 8x.. so I would burn at 8x as that is the slowest burn speed that the DVD burner can burn at?

does a slower burn give a better image or just less likelihood of errors??

thank you.

PS I also have downloaded AVS to DVD but have not tried it yet.

my goal is to get the BEST possible playback from a standard DVD.

[jimfarn916]

for my internal LG dvd writer these are the write speeds;

DVD+R
2.4x CLV 4x CLV, 8x PCAV, 16x, 24x CAV

what is the difference between CLV... PCAV, and CAV?

thanks

[Kerry56]

If you have a full sized desktop burner, I'm a little surprised that 8x is the slowest speed you can go. Most will allow 4x with good media. Do you know the make and model burner and the MID code of the discs?

I personally recommend ImgBurn for virtually all burning tasks. Be careful of the installer if you choose to use it, but the program itself is well worth the effort. It can tell you MID codes too.

But back to your question, yes, if your media is 16x and your have a full sized drive, 8x is generally a good bet for burning speed. This helps guarantee fewer errors, not higher quality in the video itself.

[Kerry56]

for my internal LG dvd writer these are the write speeds;

DVD+R
2.4x CLV 4x CLV, 8x PCAV, 16x, 24x CAV

what is the difference between CLV... PCAV, and CAV?

thanks

Those are different writing strategies, chosen by the drive. Constant linear velocity vs Constant angular velocity. I'm not the best to explain them. Ask over at MyCE.com.

[jimfarn916]

Thanks Kerry for all of you knowledge on this topic.

[Kerry56]

I did find this explanation for you on the writing strategies:

CAV= Constant Angular Velocity.The drive's RPM stay constant, resulting in higher speeds at the edge of the disk compared to the the inside.

P-CAV: Partial CAV. Usually applies to burners.The drive starts out in CAV mode then at a set maximum speed maintains it for the rest of the burn.

CLV: Constant Linear Velocity. The drive adjusts its rotation speed to maintain a set burning speed as it moves towards the edge of the disk, starting at a fairly high rate of rotation and slowing down as it reaches the edge.

Z-CLV: Zoned CLV. The burner starts at a given constant linear velocity and at a predetermined point switches to a higher CLV speed ("changes gears").

[hech54]

When authoring a DVD for playback in a player; does the write speed affect final playback quality?

Better "visual" quality(better colors, clarity)? Absolutely NOT.

[johnmeyer]

When authoring a DVD for playback in a player; does the write speed affect final playback quality?

There has been a lot of misinformation posted about this, in forums all over the Internet, ever since CD writing started in the early 1990s. I mention CD writing, even though you are asking about DVDs, because much of the bad information has roots in problems that existed in the early days of CD writing, but which no longer exist. Thus, people got accustomed to offering advice to burn at a lower speed, back when it actually made a difference, and continue to offer that advice now, long after most of the problems no longer exist.

Here's some useful background information.

When we first were able to write onto round shiny objects (CDs), computers were slow, and the drives were first-generation. The computers often couldn't provide a continuous, uninterrupted stream of data to the CD, and when an interruption happened, nothing could be written to the CD for a few moments, and since the CD burner cannot re-align the laser beam to the exact point where the interruption in data occurred (it is writing data in a continuous, uninterrupted spiral), the disc was ruined. The problem was called a "buffer underrun" and was quite common.

As technology evolved, the CD writers became capable of writing at speeds faster than playback speed. These faster speeds were expressed as a multiple of the playback speed, hence 1X, 2X, 4X, etc. The computer subsystems got faster in order to keep up with these faster speeds, but at some point, depending on your computer and how it was configured (e.g., what other programs were running in the background), if you burned at a fast enough speed, some people eventually got buffer underruns and ended up creating "coasters" (i.e., discs that were ruined, and therefore only useful to put under a cold, sweaty glass of soda).

The other problem with faster speeds involves vibration. For both CDs and DVDs, the rotational speed when burning at these higher speeds causes the disc to vibrate. If it gets even the slightest bit off-center, you can hear that vibration. You can imagine how difficult it is to focus the laser beam during a "burn" operation when the plastic disc is wobbling up and down and side-to-side from the eccentric rotation. So, with some burners and some media, at faster burn speeds, the vibration causes the burn to have more errors. You may not notice this when you play the disc, because the "write strategy" involves burning a huge number of redundant bits that are used, on the fly during playback, to correct these errors. So, the disc will play just as well, with a picture that is identical to a disc with fewer errors but, as the disc ages, more errors will appear because the reflections degrade, and at some point the picture will break up during playback. A disc with more errors to begin with will get to this unfortunate point at an earlier point in time than a disc that starts out with fewer errors. The same thing happens with bad media which, because of the lousy formulation, has more errors. Like many people, I initially bought whatever media was the cheapest, and some of this junk media will no longer play reliably, after only a decade. By contrast, if you use Taiyo Yuden (now JVC) or Verbatim, and your error rate is low, accelerated aging tests suggest that your disc might last for 100 years before errors get bad enough to cause the picture to break up.

All of this may make is sound like burning at a slower speed is going to give you a burn with fewer errors. However, this is not a correct conclusion because many setups will burn perfectly fine at the media's rated speed.

So, how can you tell what to do?

Well, it turns out you can tell exactly what to do because you can measure the error rate on a DVD and can adjust the burn speed to give you the lowest error rate. To do this, you download a free program (DVD Speed) which measures and reports on the total number of errors on your DVD. If you haven't done this before, you may be horrified to find that each disc you burn has thousands of errors. You cannot burn a DVD that is free from errors (i.e., where a "1" becomes a "0", or vice versa). You will also need to have a DVD burner that supports DVD Speed. Unfortunately, not all of them do. Lite-On drives usually do, and I think the old Plextors also did.

Here's what I have found from my own tests over the past fifteen years. I always test a new batch of media and, as part of those tests, I usually test at both 8x (the fastest speed for the media I use) as well as 4x. I have, in the past, also done tests at 2x.

What I have found with my HP, Plextor, Lite-On, Ricoh, and Pioneer drives is that lower speed has never provided a better burn. Not once. However, there are sites where people obsessively post the test results of every burn they do, and once in a very great while some of those clearly show better results at slower speeds. However, that is quite rare, especially these days.

So, I recommend you do the tests yourself, if your hardware allows it. That will give you 100% assurance that burning at the media's rated speed will give you the best quality burn. If you can't do this test, my advice is to burn at rated speed because, in all likelihood, that will give you just as good a burn as at a slower speed, and you won't unnecessarily waste all that time waiting for a burn to finish.

Here's a link to a site where people discuss these things:

http://club.myce.com/f76/

After giving up on Cyberlink softwares ability to give me a quality end product; I am trying DVDstyler... unlike Cyberlink (which 8x was the lowest) you can adjust the write speed down to a 1x.

2nd: does individual DVD media have a minimum write speed?

The media does not have a minimum burn speed, but the burner does. Very few modern burners include "write strategies" for 1x burns any more. I still have a few 2X high quality Maxell discs from a decade ago (they used to make good media, but don't anymore). I'd like to use them up, but the Lite-On in my main computer won't burn them. I also have some 1X RW DVDs, and I get coasters if I attempt to burn them on my main DVD burner. Fortunately, I still have an old Plextor in a seldom-used computer and I can do a full erase on the RWs, recover them, and then do a 1X burn. However, that is painful, and so I don't do it very often.

[TimA-C]

I tend to burn Verbatim single layer DVDs at 6x or 8x mainly because if I burn at faster speeds then often the DVD/Bluray player will take noticeably longer to read the disc and bring up the main menu. When I was still using my Liteon DVD recorders, they would often struggle to load DVDs that had been written faster than 10x.

[johnmeyer]

I tend to burn Verbatim single layer DVDs at 6x or 8x mainly because if I burn at faster speeds then often the DVD/Bluray player will take noticeably longer to read the disc and bring up the main menu. When I was still using my Liteon DVD recorders, they would often struggle to load DVDs that had been written faster than 10x.

The only way you can know for sure why these things are happening is to do the tests I recommended.

[TimA-C]

I tend to burn Verbatim single layer DVDs at 6x or 8x mainly because if I burn at faster speeds then often the DVD/Bluray player will take noticeably longer to read the disc and bring up the main menu. When I was still using my Liteon DVD recorders, they would often struggle to load DVDs that had been written faster than 10x.

The only way you can know for sure why these things are happening is to do the tests I recommended.

Thanks. I probably will do as I'm interested and didn't realise that it was that easy. Having said that, it's not a problem. I'm OK with burning at 6x or 8x and I very, very rarely have issues with the disks I burn.