-R and LG burner weirdness

[Neverread]

Burning consitenly fails when I burn to -R disks with nero and the DVD-Shrink generated files.

What is so weird is that if I encode and burn with DVDXCopy the machine burns to -R disks just fine.

Even weirder, if I use DVDShrink on a disk created by DVDXCopy, that burns fine with nero and -R disks.

It doesn't make any sense to me, but there must be something about the data that the burners don't like in that mode.

I've used 3 different brands of disk including TDK.

It happens on nearly all movies.

+R disks work just fine.

I've tried this with 3 different DVD burners, (all of them happened to be from LG). I've got the latest firmware for all of them, and have the latest DVDShrink and Nero.

Any ideas?

[setarip]

If you are using DVD Shrink in the "automatically burn with NERO" mode, whether you like it or not, NERO will burn at the MAXIMUM burn rate possible for the media - and anything above 4x (actually 2x is most preferable) has the potential of creating a flawed burn. Turn off the "automatic" feature and use NERo separately, selecting a safer burn rate...

[Neverread]

Thanks for replying.

Yes, I've noticed that. Nero will occasionally even choose to burn 4x disks at 8x speed. You really do need to run Nero yourself, and only one copy. That way you can control the burn speed.

Unfortunately, this isn't the issue. Even using Nero directly and burning at the slowest speed it has this strange behavior. It works reliably with +R and nearly always fails with -R.

It looks to me, as though it has something to do with the -R, LG, DVDShrink combination.

I'm going to install B's burning software to see if that is any better.

[Neverread]

Solved!

It turns out that there was a problem with all three LG burners.

Once I discovered that B's didn't work any better than Nero I started to look elsewhere.

I tried a panasonic burner that only burns -R. It works fine.

Then I dug a bit more. The updated firmware for one of the LG drives I borrowed fixed the problem with that drive.

Sadly the drive I own, an LG GWA-4161B, does not have an updated driver and does not burn Ritek, optodisk, TDK nor Infodisk.

Thank you for your help. It's great to see a community of people so willing to lend a hand.

[nwg]

The GWA-4161B is a odd drive. It is the same drive as a 4160 but hasn't got DVD RAM support and no updated firmware. It was a quick version between 4160 and the 4163.

I have a GSA - 4040B and that has been fine since day one.

[setarip]

"Thank you for your help."

My pleasure ;>}

"It's great to see a community of people so willing to lend a hand."

This IS just such a place...