Lightscribe CD's and DVD's

[parazythum]

Congrats Tom, for a first try

[Tom]

I normally burn at 8x for DVD's, and usually go full-tilt with CD's...which burn in about 90-seconds.  I haven't burned a DVD at 18x or 20x, yet, but often will burn a DVD at 12x and 16x.  Curious why you suggest 50% speed for burning.  I've buned well over 1,000 DVD's over the past five years, and have never had a problem with burning or playing the DVD's.  Though I never burn a DVD at 100% of its rated speed capacity (for fear of writing errors.)

I've never had a DVD drive go bad on me, either...though WinXP has played havoc with a couple of older SONY drives I've had upon trying to read a badly scratched or broken DVD.  The only bad DVD-R or DVD+R DL discs I've ever had were produced by Memorex, and surprisingly, Sony.  I normally use TDK, Maxell, or Ritek.

[Jim R]

  LIke you, I usually burn CD's at max with no problems. And I'm a fan of Ritek/Ridata discs also. Only bad ones I ever made were "operator error". It's only a "general" suggestion since the completion time at 50% doesn't vary much from faster speeds. A burner won't burn at max unless you have it securely mounted. Any movement of the burner in your tower will make it slow down.
  And if you need it, I have a copy of the lightscribe extended contrast utility as a stand alone program that was released prior to in being incorperated into their new software program. A 5.24Mb file if you have a high speed connection. I used it with Nero, and it made a difference, but don't use Nero any longer.
  Amazing where we have come from in terms of computer techno in such a short time.
  Best,
    Jim

[Tom]

Yes, please....I'd love a copy of the extended contrast utility!  Thanks!

Good point with the SECURE mount.  I'm in-between PC's (waiting for my new PC to arrive), and my DVD drive is temporarily only secured with two screws at the moment, since it'll be coming out of the current system and going into the new PC.  At 18x, it sounds like the drive is getting ready to blast off into space.