DVD Capabilities

When writing on DVD-R disks you can store up to 4.38GB of data (510mins). There is some confusion with some programs using different measurements. Instant CD/DVD is straight forward as long as you remember not to write more than 4.38GB (NERO uses different measurement and confuses things further).

The following is taken from PrimoDVD FAQ may answer any questions as to why you cant burn 4.7GB on to DVD-R blanks:

How big are DVD blanks? This depends on your unit of measure. While the specifications for the media describe the disc as being 3.9GB for DVD-R (or 4.7 for the new RW), DVD Rep considers the disc to be 3.6Gb (or 4.3Gb for the new RW). This is because we calculate the free space in Gb (1 gigabyte = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824), which is the method used by Windows to calculate free space. The specifications speak in terms of GB (1000 x 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000,000 ).

The above is from Instant CD/DVDs DVD-R disk properties and below is NEROs ISO properties. I must say its annoying having to convert between different measurements and only leads to confusion I hope its standardise soon. For example in the UK CRT screen sizes werent measured the same with some companies specifiying the screen size not the CRT size, this process was later outlawed.

A big problem we encountered with the drive was that disks were burning slower than they should have been, the applications were reporting writing at x2 for DVD-R on (www.fswltd.com and Infiniti media) but timings showed that they were taking around 57mins (x1 writing speed).

Above, a DVD-R disks takes around 53mins to complete at x1 (due to incompatible media).

BURNPROOF

You will be pleased to know the drive supports burnproof and it works quite well. I tested it on a DVD-RW by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL during a burn. This brought up the task manager and emptied the buffer. The orange light went out to signify that writing was not taking place. After a 1 minute wait, I pressed cancel and the orange light went back on to signify writing was taking place again. Only VOB Instant CD/DVD supported this feature and only when writing to DVD-R/RW media.

Note: Burnproof is only useful when you have a slow source, whether it is caused by a scratched disk or a busy disk sub system, other problems like an unstable system, or bad media and the burnproof will not help you. (A frequent error that pops up is "write error" often caused by poor media which I encountered it a few times with the Pioneer -- it seems its a little fussy on what CDR media it will write to.)

Page 6 - Last Updated: 21 October 2001