Is there a program out there (preferably freeware) to test dvd quality either blank or written to see if a batch of dvds are good or not?
there is a program dvdinfopro http://www.dvdinfopro.com/, which lists the manufactuer id of the disk, which you can look up to see if they are tops. here is a website which lists the different tiers of quality. http://digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm. dvdinfopro also has a test which reads the disk and searches for bad sectors on the disk. i use ritek ridata 8x dvd-r and have never had a problem through 100 disks, two different cakes. they seem good to me.
went from ritek which were very good writing at 8x to prodisk which gave me problems. Slowed to 2x and the problem solved. I have dvdinfo and others of that nature but looking for something that looks at the dvd and says whoa or go.
