Ok, more and more engineers are asking me to supply this or that on DVD. So, the new computer that's coming can write these. Went to Costco to et a stack of DVD and here was the puzzler: They had both DVD-R and DVD+R, same price. I herewith openly confess that I had no clue. We don't even have a DVD player at home but I guess that excuse ain't good enough.
The new computer will be able to write both. Which one is the preferred format?
Google resulted in very mixed opinions, mostly that +R has less write errors but that -R is more compatible. Much of my material will be drawings, ultrasound images and so on. It must run on other computers including older models but also on DVD players in conference rooms. My hunch is that -R would be better because it seems to be the older standard (1997 or so) but I am not sure.
DVD and DVD-R are the early standards, and are well supported, and (as you mentioned) DVD-R is slightly more compatible. Except for some high-end Macintosh models, DVD-RAM never got anywhere (and should probably be avoided), but the other variants all have good read support.
There were write support issues with DVD+R at one time (burner programs that didn't support it).
The problems concerning engineering and DVDs is not so much formats as wherer the disk is going to be used. For conference rooms, schools, and home use, you would want maximum compatibility, like DVD+RW or DWD+R. Put for systems that get a lot of wear and tear, like cars, aiirplanes, it's preferrable in most cases to use a lower compatibility format like DVD-ROM.
On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Dec 2006 01:56:27 GMT) it happened Joerg wrote in :
If it needs to play on _old_ DVD players use DVD-R.
DVD+R has many advantages, but needs the so called CDROM bit set for older DVD players to be able to play it. Soem modern DVD burners (like a 16x NEC 7173A I just installed) are unable to set that CDROM bit for single layer DVD without a firmware upgrade. This may cause problems.
So use DVD-R.
That said I always use DVD+R, let them buy a newer player. mm maybe I should order some DVD- anyways, now I use the NEC, it is always a disappointment if you give somebody a DVD and it does not play in their player. And firmware updates... YMMV.
After reading the article Gene mentioned it looks like DVD+R is vastly superior from a technical point of view. Now the question remains whether most DVD players can read that. I guess a lot of them should.
Firmware updates is what I'd really like to avoid, for me as well as for the recipients.
I have often found that the problem with reading is more to do whether the disc was written multi session or left open for further writes. I have found that if one writes a disk single session , and close the disk, then the discs are readable by fairly old drives regardless of whether I used DVD-R or DVD+R. With CD-Rs written as a single session and closed using the ISO format, I have found that only very old 8x and slower have problems reading the discs.
Hi every one.. I dont burn many dvd or cds for that matter... but i do backups of stuff everynow and then... and for backup i always prefer to burn every thing in duplicate...
all the photos the videos i shoot and the stuff i download from the internet gets written to dvds at one point or the other... and for that purpose i always use two dvds for storing the same set of files...
earlier i used to use CDs and at one point i discovered that the ones which were made by a company called PRinco had their datalayer getting peeled off... that was a horrific experience...
at that point of time i googled out the reviews for dvds and cds for hours at end and came to a final conclusion :
1) keep your hard disk defragmented and shut down your computer properly everytime.. if there are bad sectors on your hard drive.. then your computer might get hiung up while writing a cd/dvd and your cd/dvd will get spoilt
2) even though you dvd writers support 16x writing and the dvd media you use is 16x, never write at that speed... i personally dont write at speeds above 4x... that ensures that the throughput that your dvd drives require are quite less than your computers' limits.. hence lesser chance of DVD burn process failing...
3) dvd/cd writer drives made by LITE -ON seem to be the best of them all in terms of price and long life/reliability
4) always verify the dvd/cd after burning... most dvd/cd buring software have an option to verify the written files ...
5) never use multiple DVD writers while recording multiple copies of the same set of files
6) never do "copy on the fly" .. ie copy a DVD from one drive to another direct... always copy the DVD/CD to hard disk first and only then copy it to the target drive
Personally I use only Sony's DVD-R to back up stuff/distribute photos/videos to my friends and I use Nero with a LITEON DVD-RAM drive
On a sunny day (1 Jan 2007 04:00:43 -0800) it happened snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :
In case of DVD+ it is perfectly OK to stop writing for a while and have the computer do other things due to load. For example (I am a Linux user) I can record DVB-S digital satellite directly to a DVD+R, but the stream comes in only at about 4 Mbits/s, so the DVD writer light will go on and off as it waits for data. This is the way the TV DVD recorders you can buy work too.
Well, I have a Philips, it was one of the first, it has burned a half thousand or more DVD+, plus some respectable number of CDRs, and is still OK. However it can no longer work with anything above 8x it seems, so I upgraded. Also it was on 24/7 for 6 years ... Philips fails 100% with firmware updates, not only are newer ones not there, older ones can not be found on the ever changing Philips website.
Absolutely I always do that.
Same as above, makes no difference for DVD+ if the hardware is OK.
Same as above, makes no difference for DVD+ if the hardware is OK.
Mmm, I wrote much of the software myself for Linux, use dvd+rwtools from Chalmers, contributed to Linux dvdauthor (subtitles, multiple audio channels), did some other stuff, see my web page:
formatting link
login with user 'guest' and password 'none'. So, for me at least DVD+ works great :-)
I cannot speak for MS windows, I _have_ Nero (it came with a DVD writer). The only thing I would now need to write (software) is a labelflash utility for my NEC, it seems to be a module in the later Nero versions (supported), but this was a bulk writer, and no data available on how labelflash works.
(labelflash has the laser burn text onto a blue backside of the DVD, it is different from that other system 'lightscribe', and looks a bit better, disks are _very_ expensive.
At this moment I use an Epson inkjet to print nice colored layout directly on printable DVDs. The Epson sucks however, so does their support. Next one will no way be Epson.
The inkjet printed DVDs look absolutely beautiful however, and allow you to be as artistic as you like. It will set you back $$$ in ink, especially if you use a lot of dark or colored background. If you want it for production, then you can try this perhaps (have not tried this myself):
I have picked up problems with media written at the maximum speed in the past. The first time it happened I used the utility software that came with my plexor writer to do some investigation. I checked the quality of discs written at various speeds. The plextor utility checks the number of errors (correctable) per sector or track and plots this with a threshold line that indicates where the number of errors are to many to correct. When writing at the maximum speed the number of errors were already at close to 80 to 90% of this threshold. At 4x writing the number of errors were at less than 10% of this threshold. The system it was checked on were fast enough to handle the transfer rate at 16x, so the writer did not need to stop/start. On a slower machine where the writer needed to stop/start, there were definitate peaks in the error rate where the disk was stopped/started again. Hence for important data I never write faster than 4x. For less important data I might consider 8x on a fast machine.
I have found both benq and lite-on drives to be very good. Many other brands are actually manufactured by benq or lite-on. Both companies seem to fix problems with their firmware and provide very good quality burns.
On a sunny day (Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:14:47 +0200) it happened Anton Erasmus wrote in :
Yes this happens, I have seen some tests that confirm that. If you want to write slower to reduce error rate it is OK I think. There are big differences between disks and writers too however.
If this was DVD+ then there is something wrong. I emailed the author of dvd+rwtools years ago about this, as I had errors too, but he pointed out I must be imagining :-) Later I found out my setup was wrong (cannot remember what it was). Have a read here:
formatting link
It is Linux specific, but scroll all the way to the bottom, where its says: 'Unlike DVD-R[W], DVD+R[W] recordings can be suspended at any time without any side effects.'
It is a very interesting page from the autor of the soft himself. And we are all learning :-)
In general I am very satisfied with the optical media, just use good disks. I use Verbatim now, have tried many.... Sometimes you get a bad batch, had some Ritek last year that sort of get black spots, same problem I had with TDK years ago. Best look up the media code, and then google if somebody had problems. TDK for example changed manufacturer.... just after I recommended these to somebody. Buying more expensive disks is worth it, just avoiding the stress of re-trying.
Well, after a cold night we were blessed with an absolutely gorgeous day this Jan-1. Almost like summer.
Thanks. However, mostly they won't know what's in the conference room. Also, it happens a lot that I get there and they say that there is an urgent ad-hoc meeting in the room we were supposed to be in and we move to some other place.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.