interesting burn tests w/ 4x dvd-r & sony dru500ax

[msuiter]

so i'm finally getting into the dvd burning game and decided to do some testing. i wanted to test burn speeds and also see what was compatible with my home dvd players. everything i burned in the tests worked fine with my home equipment, but my burn speed tests i thought were interesting. i bought the dvd-r 4x sample pack from rima.com and also used a fuji 2.4x dvd+rw. both my video and data burns used around 98% of the media's 4.7GB capacity.

DupEZ dvd-r 4x
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video 28:45
data 30:33

Optodisc dvd-r 4x
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video 16:08
data 21:21

Princo dvd-r 4x
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video 28:46
data 30:36

Ritek dvd-r 4x
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video 15:18
data 30:34

Fuji dvd+rw 2.4x
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video 21:23
data 22:33

my computer is an athlon xp 2000+, 1GB ram, 7200 rpm ata-133 drives, so i think that should be plenty. my sony is 2.0f firmware. also, i checked and dma is enabled for all drives - my hard drives on the primary and sony on the secondary. the ritek did great with video, but burned at 2x for data. the optodisc seemed to be in-between 2x and 4x for data. i expected ritek to kick some butt, but optodisc (which i had never heard of) did the best. of course, it was just 1 video and 1 data test each.

i burned the video with sonic foundry's dvd architect and the data with nero 6.0.0.11 (dvd iso, no multisession). the data was all mp3 files and my drives are defragmented 3 times a week.

of course, i was hoping for 4x burn speeds for everything. no media did that for both video & data. any ideas on why i couldn't achieve this with all 4x rated media?

[tazdevl]

I'm totally consistent, doesnt matter what's being burned.

[msuiter]

tazdevl - so are you consistently getting 4x burns with both video and data? what media are you using? thanks.

[tazdevl]

Sticking to Ritek 4X -R for compatibility reasons more than anything else these days. But Verbatim, did a bit of Princo (got a couple bad discs so won't be using them again), TDK couple others I can't think of at the moment.

[jase]

This reflects what I have been saying for a while about the Sony writer.

Occasionally, you'll get a good one (like tazdevl's evidently) that'll record to anything at 4x.

However, most of the Sony writers slow down with anything less than excellent quality media. This same media that the Sony doesn't like will burn at 4x properly quite happily all day long on other writers like the Pioneer A05/6.

The Sony is picky, pure and simple.

The firmware recognises that the disc is 4x-capable, but refuses to write it at this speed, without warning.

[tazdevl]

If anything I think they must be stressing the hardware or did something screwy with that FW update that offered a write speed increase.

My drive is a 510, some difference in hardware. So there's a good chance they fixed some of the bugs that existed in the 500 series.

[msuiter]

i'll probably go with ritek, but i wish it would have burned data at 4x. only doing one video and one data test of each media doesn't tell a lot, so maybe the majority of my riteks will burn at 4x.

[wicked1]

The only media that I have ever got to burn at 4x was TDK +R.I have never gotten a -R to burn at 4x. I just bought the 4x HQ disks from meritline and they dont even like burning at 2x. The Sony seems to prefer + over the -. Might have to buy a Pioneer now as I burn almost exclusively - for compatibility reasons as I have never had a - not read. The +'s plenty havent read in xbox's and the such.