what is the best way to burn an avi file should i burn to dvd+ or dvd-? I bought a dvd+- burner but what is the exact differance?
If your talking about burning your AVI and being able to watch it on a stand alone DVD player I would suggest NVE (Nero Vision Express) As far as the + & - goes it dosent really matter I would say what ever most of your equipment is compatable with. The more important issue is which brand of media you get. [bold]What's the Best media out there?[/bold] There is no such thing as Best media. No two people's computers are exactly alike, and different hardware as well as different software make this question impossible to answer. There are other reasons as to why you can't assume a BEST when it comes to DVD MEDIA as I will explain. [bold]Now for the Biggest Misconceptions and Fallacies of DVD MEDIA.[/bold] Just like with everything else in the world, I ALWAYS get what I pay for. If I pay extra money for expensive DVD MEDIA then I'm surely going to get the best quality, right? This is the ABSOLUTE BIGGEST FALLACY regarding DVD MEDIA. I have seen many posts where people think that they are getting the best quality media simply because they spent a few extra dollars. This couldn't be more false. Yes, MANY times in the real world, you get what you pay for. You won't get filet mignon for the price of Salisbury steak, and you won't get a Ferrari for the price of a Ford. In many cases you do get what you pay for. But in the world of DVD MEDIA, you absolutely can NOT associate price with quality. I will give two strong examples. It was assumed for a long time that companies like Verbatim make some of the best media in the world. If you spend extra money for name brand "VERBATIM" disks...you were getting what you paid for, right? Wrong! Recently, Verbatim has been known to have allowed the production of countless inferior Verbatim disks from a variety of different production plants and manufacturers. CMC is the company primarily responsible for producing the MAJORITY OF Verbatim's crappy media, but other companies have been known to produce faulty, error-plagued Verbatim disks as well. The point though is that you must first understand that the MAJORITY OF THE TIMES you are purchasing "name brand" media, the name on the top side of the disk, is not the name of the company that actually manufactured the disks. You also have to understand the DVD Production process a little. You can't just assume things. You can't just say for example, that because TDK is making excellent disks now that they will always continue to make excellent quality disks. Most of these DVD manufacturers have a wide array of production plants around the WORLD. Companies like Verbatim have at least 7 different manufacturers of their media! They also have manufacturing plants in different States as well as different countries! For one reason or another, not only can one "brand" of disks be better manufactured then another. such as TAIYO YUDEN Verbatim disks being higher quality then say CMC...but in addition, the quality of the disks that come from a plant in Singapore may be superior in quality to a plant in North Carolina. Quality control can also be more lenient at one plant then it is at another. It can also certainly be more stringent for a company like Taiyo Yuden, than it is for a company like CMC. For these reasons as well as many others, you can't just ASSUME because a disk is more expensive, it is absolutely better. The reverse can also be said. Just because a disk is inexpensive, does not make it cheap or of inferior quality. As a matter of fact, there are NUMEROUS unbranded "generic" media being sold at many online sites which are superior in quality to a lot of more expensive "NAME BRAND" disks such as Verbatim, Memorex, Fuji, etc. Just to name some of the highest quality disks I know the majority of people have had the most success with success with are as follows: Ritek, (mainly G03 & G04), Ricoh, Lead Data/ Primarily sold under the name ACCU, DUPEZ, AND PIODATA. Prime disks - Manufactured by Gigastorage. Samsung BeALL DVD-R (Not +R) Optodisks - The highest quality appears to be the Gold-Topped 4x disks from the majority of the people who have used them. This is a list of the most compatible and highest quality inexpensive media which can in many cases be far superior in both quality AND compatibility to more expensive name brands. Which certainly is better for all of us? Last but not least, I want to mention that I’ve seen too many fallacies and assumptions from people who think because they got one bad batch of disks from a manufacturer, then surely, that entire particular manufacturer's disks or brand of disks must be crappy. Again, this simply isn't true. Case in point: CMC has been known to produce a high percentage of inferior disks which have some type of issue or another. In the Verbatim example listed above, they were known to be responsible for the majority of inferior Verbatim disks. However, CMC also manufacturers many other brands of disks. Philips DVD+R media for one is produced by CMC. And for one reason or another, the Philips media CMC produces is of a higher quality and superior to that of most other CMC Produced media. There can be a number of reasons for this. It could be the dye used for the Philips disks is of better quality...maybe it's because the Quality Control is more stringent for the Philips disks then it is other brands. Or maybe it's because the entire production process is just better for the Philips disks. Whatever the reason, one thing that is for sure is that I burned a successful 75 out of 75 with these CMC disks, and I've not read a single post to date from anyone saying that they've had issues with the Philips media. I have however, read many posts where people have had success with the Philips media. So as you can see, you can't just ASSUME that because CMC produced the media, that the media will absolutely be crappy. And the exact opposite is true. Memorex has had a lot of negative Feedback regarding their DVD MEDIA. Incidentally, the majority of their DVD-R media is CMC manufactured. and of POOR QUALITY. So this means that everyone who has used Memorex media can say that Memorex sucks and they'd be correct, right? Once again...WRONG! Memorex also has DVD+R media and their DVD+R media happens to be produced by RICOH..one of the world leaders in DVD+R media and one of the companies at least at this point in time who people can rely on for high quality media. The point though is that just as poorly as the Memorex CMC DVD-R disks are...the Memorex DVD+R disks are some of the best out there. The point is that you are only misinforming yourself by saying that all Memorex media is crap or all CMC media is crap or ALL Verbatim media is the Best...because the facts prove otherwise. In order to continue to get the highest quality media possible, you have to keep up with the times. At any given time a company may contract with a media manufacturer and you wouldn’t even know there was a change. Today Memorex has CMC manufacturing its DVD-R media, but tomorrow they contract with Taiyo Yuden and cut CMC. The same can be said for ANY media company. Right now the TDK DVD-R disks are produced by Maxell and themselves (TDK)...tomorrow they may decide to cut costs and allow a lower quality product to be produced and they may contract CMC to produce their DVD-R media. What a nightmare that would be..lol...but it can happen. As long as people understand these concepts and look a little deeper then just the obvious...then they should have no problem staying on top of the highest quality DVD media on the market at any given point in time. [bold]THE GOOD:[/bold] o Maxell is good. The MXL media formula, not the brand. o Pioneer is good. The PVC media formula, not the brand. o Ritek is good. Most RITEKG03 and all RITEKG04. o Apple is good. The brand. They have a high quality control in their contracts. o Verbatim is good. The MCC media formula, not the brand. o Optodisc is good. The gold ones. OPTODISC media code. [bold]THE NOT-SO-GOOD:[/bold] o Lead Data is questionable. LEADDATA or LD01 or LD or LEDA media codes. o Accu is questionable. ACCU media codes. o Princo 4x is questionable. PRINCO media codes. [bold]THE BAD:[/bold] o CMC is bad. The CMC media formula, not the brand. o Princo 1x and 2x is bad. PRINCO media codes. o No-names brands like GQ*, Kyphermedia, and others that often use CMC or Princo. o No-names brands like Matrix and shop4tech that have their own media ID and brands. [bold]AND THE UGLY:[/bold] o Fake MXL media. Silver-topped "Maxell" fakes. o Fake TDK media. White-topped and silver-topped "TDK" fakes. o Fake Pioneer. The "PioData" with PIO codes are NOT Pioneer. Pioneer is PVC. o Be very cautious buying on ebay -- lots of fake disks (but not all - many are fine also) o These are generally true. Not always, but most times. o The DVD-R and DVD+R are different as well. So while CMC has proven itself a loser on the -R front, it appears to have decent footing on the +R front. Ricoh is not a -R manufacturer at this time either. So be sure to treat -R and +R media comparisons differently, as they are seemingly made differently as well.
ok then whats the difference bettween dvd+ and dvd-? Is it quality of the disk itself or the quantatity it can fit?
There is virtually no difference. Check out this link http://www.digitalfaq.com/othervideo/dvdformats.htm Good Luck
The Maxell +R is made by TY and is defiantly good BUT Maxell -R media is made by Hitachi Maxell Ltd and sucks. Its dye is listed as unknown. A dead give away for untrustworthy media. Verbatim is as bbmayo stated is not all good. When I recommend Verbatim, it is only Verbatim DataLife and Verbatim DataLife Plus. They are 2 of the best discs out there and proudly boast the name of Advanced Metal AZO. Other discs that should be in the "Good Column", TDK, Sony and RiData NOTE: Please pay attention - AZO aren't all that good. I've tested Great AZO ($.26ea) and I showed a 13% failure rate - not a good thing Source: Media Match MEDIAMATCH DIRECTIONS Use "WorldLingo" and BableFish" to translate the German to English If you don't have those, all you have to know is - Down in the lower right-hand corner, under "Erweiterte Suche" you'll see "Offerer:" where you look for your disc's name and, under that "Hersteller:" which means Manufacturer. Select one OR the other to use. To the right of those you'll see an arrow and the word, "Anzeigen" which means Next - Again, choose the disc's name OR the manufacturer and click "next". On the next page, you'll see a group of media, select which media you wish to check up on and click the arrow with the "search icon" on the right and that will supply you with a break-down of each disc, i.e., Dye and Manufacturer, in the Database.. After all of that, enough will be in English so that you won't have that much trouble - http://www.mediamatch.de/showdvdanbieter.php Cheers, Pete
Hey Pete, Before I started shopping online, I was buying Maxell 4X +R from walmart and they were Ricoh. RICOHJPNR01 was the ID if I remember right.
OK I got a question about this now, you all have got the hamster wheel smoking upstairs.... Disregarding the "brand" name of any certain type of media, how do you tell how it was made, what formula, what plant, etc etc; and how do you read the data?
This is a very good question in deed. It has become harder and harder to tell the fakes from the real disk's. Companys are even using the same manufacturing code on there disk so you really never know? I wrote Taiyo Yuden an email a couple of days ago inquiring as to who sell's true TY disks, and a couple of links I had provided them to some disk's that read as TYG02 in disk identifier, and they told me that that company is illegally using there code. So how many others are doing the same? To be safe You should buy from a reputable company that tells you exactly who manufactures the disk's like Ritek/Ridata, Taiyo Yuden, and even Prodisc is pretty good anymore. It is almost a crap shoot anymore. If you must buy in the store your best bet is probably Verbatim, or Maxell try to buy disks made in Japan or Singapore I'm not saying that others are all bad you will just have a better chance at getting good quality disk's if they are made in either of those country's. Good Luck
Thxs for the info BBMayo. Got one more for you, rather more of a 'what do you think" type question. I've only burned using FujiFilm -RW type media since I'm relatively new at this. Then I got the Disc Ident proggy and ran it on my discs just for curiousity and it came back with this: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-RW:MCC 00RW11N9] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disc & Book Type : [DVD-RW] - [DVD-RW] Manufacturer Name : [Mitsubishi Chemical Corp.] Manufacturer ID : [MCC 00RW11N9] Blank Disc Capacity : [2,298,496 Sectors = 4,489.3MB = 4.38GB (4.71GB)] Recording Speeds : [1x] [6x And Higher Might Not Always Be Detectable] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** INFO : An Empty Writable Disc Is Recommended For Accurate Results ** INFO : Drive = _NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A [FW 1.0B] ** INFO : Write Capabilities = DVD+R DVD+RW DVD-R DVD-RW ** INFO : Disc = [DVD-RW:MCC 00RW11N9] ** INFO : Write Speeds (Supported By This Drive On This Disc) Listed Below ** INFO : GET PERFORMANCE Write Speed Descriptor(s) Descriptor #1 = 1352 KBPS ( 1.00x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV] ** INFO : MODE SENSE Write Speed Descriptor(s) [Legacy Command] Descriptor #1 = 2822 KBPS ( 2.00x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV] Descriptor #2 = 1411 KBPS ( 1.00x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV] Descriptor #3 = 706 KBPS ( 0.51x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV] - [Invalid Entry] ** WARNING : Drive May Have Returned Incorrect Descriptors --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** WARNING : Some Drives Do Not Return The Entire 'Media Code'-Block When Dealing with Discs That Are Rated 6x And Higher. ** INFO : Hex Dump Of 'Media Code'-Block Listed Below ** INFO : 4-Byte Header Preceding 'Media Code'-Block Discarded ** INFO : Format 0Eh - Pre-Recorded Information In Lead-In 0000 : 01 40 d6 fd 9e d8 20 00 02 0e 07 05 88 75 0d 00 .@.... ......u.. 0010 : 03 4d 43 43 20 30 30 00 04 52 57 31 31 4e 39 00 .MCC 00..RW11N9. 0020 : 05 05 88 75 0d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...u............ 0030 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0040 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0050 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0060 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0070 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0080 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0090 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ DVD Identifier - http://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com ] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I bought these, I really randomly picked them because I figured a disc is a disc. Did I get lucky and pick a good media, or did I get lucky that I didn't end up with any coasters? I've only burned 5 discs (was a 5pk) but they all burned excellent, and I've had no problems erasing and putting something else on them several times over. Any ideas what the "life" of a disc is, in terms of burning and reburning the same disc?
Weirdo007, You did very well indeed. I would say that any discs made by Mitsubishi Chemical Corp should be fine. They have a top-notched reputation in the world of media. As we now know, these discs don't last forever BUT if you keep them in plastic cases, out of sunlight and in a temperature controlled environment, you should have many, many, many good years of safe storage of your DVD's - Ya done good Pete
I 100% agree with Petes assesment. You did very good with that media. You really can't do any better in my opinion.
