Burn Speed affect quality?

[Smooth4evr]

I have heard with burning music files onto a cd the burn speed is an important factor when thinking of quality. So my question is does this apply with (S)VCDs as well? The lower the burn speed the better the quality? Because my burner can do 48X so I burn at 40X which is 6,000KB/s. Should I be using a lower setting?

[PlaiBoi]

The speed that you burn your discs cannot effect the visual quality at all. The MPEG is already encoded and done...burning it fast or slow will not change the quality. I burn ALL of my CD's at 40x and have never encountered a so called "quality" problem with audio CD's or any other CD. The only problem i can think of is that, some DVD players may not be very good for reading CD's and when you burn at a high speed (like 40x) more errors are found on the CD, thus causing some readers to not read the cd correctly and may cause skipping, etc. I have not experienced this problem...and if your DVD player is a new one, it shouldnt either.

[jkl]

slower the burn-> the deeper the pits-> the longer your cd stands up to scratches.

but i always use 48x.

[Bullworth]

For some reason TV captures I can burn at full speed and no problesm. DVD rips, particularly live action flicks, seem to cause playback problems on my Apex player. It all depends pretty much on the quality of the media/burner/player.

[Jester700]

Burning doesn't MAKE any pits! Only pressed CDs have pits!

Burning essentially changes the reflectivity of a dye at a certain spot, and burning too slow can make these spots LESS defined due to an effect called "dye splatter". Please get your facts straight...

[jkl]

get your facts straight...

CD Replication, or disc pressing, is done with large manufacturing presses.
Pits, representing the digital information containing the music or data on the disc, are laser etched onto a piece of glass, which is used to create a stamper, which has a negative image of the final disc (i.e. raised areas where there should be a pit). Polycarbonate resin is pressed at high pressure within a mold against this stamper, creating the disc. The disc is metalized and coated. The metalized backing acts as a mirror, and the cd player reads changes in reflectivity caused by the pits.

CD Duplication, or disc burning, is the same process you use to burn a CD on your computer at home. It uses a pre-manufactured recordable CD, or CD-R, which has special dye's imbedded within the disc. A laser in a CD-R recorder heats the dye, which changes the reflectivity of the dye, creating spots of reflective and non reflective dye, similar to the pits in a recorded CD.

are those straight enough.

btw, if you want to make a correction. make a correction. i made a bad choice in words. everbodys knows when someone says pits
on a CDR we mean the reflectivity. some people say bits. some people say groves. so what, slower is better.

[PlaiBoi]

see...exactly what i said...no quality loss...only problems reading.

[vitualis]

In fact, slower is not necessarily better.

The laser on the CD burner will change intensity depending on the burn speed. Otherwise, a 1x burn as compared to a 48x burn will have a laser that is 48 times brighter!

Often burners (for a particular type of media) will have an optimum burn speed where there will be the LEAST C1 and C2 errors (jitter). This is usually not the lowest speed of the burner (but usually is a low one).

A lower jitter rates may have an effect on audio CDs but I seriously doubt anyone could hear the difference (or if there would even be one on a good quality CD drive mechanism). It does not (in my knowledge) have any effect on VCDs.

Lower burn speeds may make more clearly defined pits (or "effective" pits) compared to higher burn speeds, but this is really only of relevance when using a drive that isn't designed to read CD-R media (e.g., many older DVD players).

If you have a DVD player that is designed to read CD-R/W media, you will not have a problem playing back the disc no matter the burn speed (assuming that your drive and media are OK of course).

the deeper the pits-> the longer your cd stands up to scratches.

This is a conjecture that I don't necessarily agree with. The data on a CD (CD-R or pressed) is actually much closer to the TOP side (non-recording side) compared to the recording side. You can generally repair most scratches to the polycarbonate substrate and if it were really that deep that it damages the data layer, your CD will be stuffed either way.

On the other hand, scratches to the top layer will KILL your data if it affects the actual data layer (and burn speed won't matter). This is why good quality CD-Rs (e.g., Kodak Ultimas) have a special lacquer and UV protection layer on the TOP surface.

Regards.

[bani]

A lower jitter rates may have an effect on audio CDs but I seriously doubt anyone could hear the difference (or if there would even be one on a good quality CD drive mechanism). It does not (in my knowledge) have any effect on VCDs.

jitter has 0 effect on audio CDs because of the anti-skip buffers in most CD players in the past 10 years eliminates them. to claim jitter has any effect on audio quality is as silly as claiming that different floppy disks have better audio quality when playing back MP3's. 8) 8)

and jitter has 0 effect on VCDs also.

[vcdfreak]

How about doing an experiment with a CD-RW? However, things are not the same between CD-R and CD-RW. Even the CD-R of different speed and brand. Try it out and you will see if you are willing to sacrifice time and money.

I usually burn at 8X with my 32x burner. I get skipped video if burn at 12x. This applies to CD-R with green dye. Not sure about other color. Probably that's the minimum reflectivity(burnt by burner) level that most players are engineered to recognize. Things can change from time to time. After some time, I believe the acceptable reflectivity range will widen after years of improvement.

[Jester700]

get your facts straight...

are those straight enough.

...very nice info snipped...

btw, if you want to make a correction. make a correction. i made a bad choice in words. everbodys knows when someone says pits
on a CDR we mean the reflectivity. some people say bits. some people say groves. so what, slower is better.

I did make a correction, and your bad choice of words can spread bad info.

You said, "slower the burn-> the deeper the pits-> the longer your cd stands up to scratches"

This is a totally different mechanism than changing dye reflectivity. There is NO depth, because there are no pits. The effect of scratches, therefore, are also unaffected by burn speed (besides the fact mentioned above that the dye layer is much closer to the label side).

And, slower is NOT better. Objective tests exist that show WORSE BLER rates on slower burns with some media & hardware. Your belief may have been true at one time (I think it was in the 4x days). But with newer hardware & media, the "rules" are changing all the time.

You can't just spread personal conclusions based on wrong information and then say "whatever", assuming everyone know what you meant. Well, you can, but then why would anyone come here looking for good info?

[Zeronada]

Wow, a lot of info in this thread. I still have one question: At what speed can you reliably make a vcd with 40x media?


On several other threads, people are asking about green blockiness and sudden stops and starts of vcds. The one common element I'm finding among them is 40x burners.

I have been having a problem of late and have narrowed it down to either:

my 40x Sony burner
or various 40x cd media

I've tried slowing the burn speed down to 32x and that helps a little, but I still get problems with every other odd vcd.

Sometimes they come out perfect. Sometimes there is just a tiny glitch. Sometimes they are awful. The *one* thing in common with every one that is messed up is that the error seems to happen after the halfway point of the vcd.

I've had my DVD player checked. Old vcds I've made play perfectly. Anyone have any experience with this problem?

[jkl]

true

[Jester700]

There are a few possibilities.
1) The media itself. Try a substantially slower burn - say, 16x. If it still gives problems, there may be issues with THAT media. Or, the media just isn't reliable with YOUR burner & player (but maybe a different brand is - try some others).

2) If a 16x burn is fine, it may be true that slower works better with YOUR burner, media, & player. But don't take this as a general rule - mine is happy at 40x, for example.

3) Most 40x burners use a technique called "zone CLV". they start at 16x or 20x, then speed up to 24x or so after a few minutes, and keep ratcheting up the speed until they hit their highest (40x in your case). Sounds like yours runs into issues at the higher levels of switching speed. Keeping a burn to 16x will definitely address this issue, since none of these designs start at less than 16x. If you know what your model starts at, I'd try a burn at that speed.

[markc32]

Hmm - I have an ace 40x burner, and branded & unbranded media.

I have a problem burning above 8x for SVCDs encoded with cce.

They come out perfect on 4x.

I use a Pacific p1000 dvd which plays anything but may be me suspect with cheap media recorded fast.

I suggest burn at 4 speed for 1st gen. - then any speed from that copy - but crap dvds play fine on my dvd player.

Yet to try my verbs fast - gotta be worth a try...

[Zeronada]

Jester and Mark
Thank you for the info! I'm thinking you are right about the Zone thing. Makes perfect sense to me. Do you know of a site that I could find that stat/spec or would I be best to check the manufacturers website? (It's a Sony crx195e1)

Thank you both for the great info!

[Jester700]

That's a rebadged Lite-on LTR-40125S. Nice drive (it's the same as mine!). Its zone CLV starts at 20x.

Here's some interesting tests about writing quality with that drive.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=79&Page=8

Also, the hardware is THE SAME as the 48x version, and a hacked firmware can make it a 48x drive with CAV (which doesn't use zones - it smoothly increases speed from 20x to 48x). My drive is living proof. But I'm not going into that - YOU risk your drive!

[pharlap]

get out your tool box and use nero cd speed burn test and you will find how crappy some cd-r's are and some cd r that say they are 80 minute long for the simple people but when analysed are actually able to be overburned to 97-98 minutes

[Jester700]

That's true, sometimes. But I stay away from CDRs over 80 minutes - the spiral is so tight that it's sometimes harder to track on crappy machines. In fact, I prefer standard 74 minute ones, but they're getting harder to find.

CDR Diagnostic is another great tool to measure error rates.

[Zeronada]

Jester700

Wow! Jester, I owe you a beer, my friend! That site you suggested is great! What a wealth of cool info.

I'm curious as to how you knew the Sony drive was a rebagged drive, but if the answer is on the cdfreaks site, nevermind, I'll find it.

Did you hack your drive? What write speed do you use? What cdr brand do you use?

Thank you for your info!

- Zeronada

[Jester700]

The info is there on CDFREAKS. Yes, I hacked mine, and it works with 48x TDK media. I usually find the "sweet spot" for many burners & media to actually be a step or 2 down from max, so I usually burn at 32x or 40x even after hacking, but YMMV.

A guy had hacked the actual Lite-On firmware loader so it would "update" the drive from within windows. You need to be careful if you do this stuff, since many firmware loaders balk if the drive IDs aren't right. A friend cooked his Lite-On 40x by trying to update it with Lite-On's official (non-hacked) 48x firmware loader. Now the mobo BIOS doesn't even see the drive!

The procedure for a Sony rebadge may be different from an official Lite-On, so if you go this route, follow TO THE LETTER the info on how to update a Sony. And really, it was as much to "just see if I could do it" as anything - the speed difference is negligible. I WOULD be interested in knowing if a 40x CAV burn fixes the VCD issues you get with a 40x Zone-CLV burn, though!

[Jester700]

Oh, and make it a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, please...