[MacDV] Re: Digital Video Quality - media

[Michael Winter]

On May 28, 2004, at 2:34 PM, James Asherman wrote:

> Brands marked differently are still liable to have been produced in 
> the same place.

Of course that doesn't mean they are of the same quality.

I'm extrapolating from other industries since I have no first hand 
knowledge of CD or DVD manufacturing but often quality can vary over 
time -often due to unavoidable changes in source materials. So I'm 
assuming a certain number of CDs from each run/batch/lot (whatever you 
want to call it) are sampled for quality control. One lot may pass with 
flying colors and be labeled with a name brand, but the next lot may 
have too many failures to be one brand but still good enough to be sold 
under a different brand or essentially as "generic" CDs.

> Color seems to matter.
> DVD's  are way finnicky. and the ins and outs have to be learned by 
> trial and error.
> Thta is why they are selling sampler packs.
>  Some people don't like Khypermedia . I do.
> If you made CDR's and they came up blank on your own machine then 
> probably you didn't press the "burn" button

Which can be determined if you look at the burned side carefully. 
You'll be able to see a difference in the reflectivity on a burned 
disk. You can usually see the transition between the "burned" and 
"unburned" parts of the disk.

I know sometimes a disk burned in one machine can't be read in another, 
but its pretty rare for it not to be recognized in the same drive. For 
any future CDs, I'd be sure they mount on the computer before 
considering the "burn process" complete. IOW, test every CD immediately 
after burning to make sure it at least mounts before you delete 
anything.

What program are you using for burning? One of the reasons I prefer 
Toast for burning data CD/DVDs is that it mounts and verifies the disk 
after burning.

-Mike