DVD burn speeds borked?

[ZIYAD A. M. AL-BATLY]

On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 12:57 -0400, Brian Pack wrote:
> This is getting to the point of sending me back to the dark side! :p
> 
> I use K3B to burn my DVDs, and I cannot get a good burn out of 8x media @ 8x 
> speeds with a 16x capable burner. I've tried different brands of media, 
> different burners, different distros, and even different computers. The 8x 
> discs I try to burn @ 8x come out as coasters. Their viewable to a point but 
> the burn is physically bad, with blank strips, scorches, and other errors.
> 
> What I'm not getting is that @ 4x or 6x speeds the burn is fine. AND 16x media 
> will also burn fine, although K3B is picky about media at that speed. It will 
> reject 3 or 4 discs that will burn fine at 6x or lower.
> 
> OTOH, Nero can't yet handle 16x media, but will burn these 8x discs at 8x 
> without error nearly every time.
> 
> What can I do here?
> 
Upgrade you DVD device's firmware to the latest version.  Use
“growisofs” without the “-speed” option and try it.

On my DVD writer (Sony DRU-710A) I couldn't write anything to cheap
“no-name” DVD banks until I upgraded the firmware.  Also, that helped a
lot with the quality and speed of the writing.

“growisofs” is smart enough to pick the highest possible speed of
writing depending on your drive and the media.

(As a small note, blank DVD media have a preset of supported speed.  You
could check by issuing the command “dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/dvd”.  I had a
DVD+R disk that accept only 1x and 4x but not 2x.  Your millage may
vary.)

Ziyad.