best DVD-R media to buy??

thegeldingthegelding
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
making some dvd's for x-mas...bought some cheapish dvd-r, but not overly happen with the quality...the discs i'm making are a little over an hour, so that may be the problem (iDVD likes 60 minutes or less it seems)...but i am thinking it is more the media.....should i just buy from the apple store??? thanks g



(sh!T...wrong forum, right brad? sorry, please move to the correct forum.....is there a "damn that gelding is stupid" forum??)



[ 12-04-2002: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    chromoschromos Posts: 191member
    [quote]Originally posted by thegelding:

    <strong>making some dvd's for x-mas...bought some cheapish dvd-r, but not overly happen with the quality...the discs i'm making are a little over an hour, so that may be the problem (iDVD likes 60 minutes or less it seems)...but i am thinking it is more the media.....should i just buy from the apple store??? thanks g



    (sh!T...wrong forum, right brad? sorry, please move to the correct forum.....is there a "damn that gelding is stupid" forum??)



    [ 12-04-2002: Message edited by: thegelding ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Can you let us know the brand you bought so we don't make the same mistake? thx

  • Reply 2 of 8
    imudimud Posts: 140member
    I just baught some memorex dvd-r. I have used one of them for like 40 mins of video and it seemed to work fine. I didn't realize you could put more than 60 minutes with iDVD, do you know what the max is? The dvd-r I see in the stores all say they will hold 120 minutes of video. Can peecee users get 120 minutes on these things?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    ringoringo Posts: 329member
    The 60 minute limit is because iDVD encodes the MPEG2 video at a very high bitrate. The upside of this is that you get very nice quality video, the downside is that the files are bigger. A 4.7 GB DVD-R can easily hold 3+ hours of video if it's encoded at a low bitrate. Does anyone know any tricks to optimize the video files in iDVD?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    mimacmimac Posts: 872member
    I have used Vivastar, Pioneer and Apple DVD-R discs with no problems at all and quality is very good.

    I'd suggest using only "branded" discs for important stuff you're going to want to archive, use cheapie "unbranded" for give aways to friends etc.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    mimacmimac Posts: 872member
    By the way, quote from "iMovie 2, The Missing Manual" Pogue Press/O"Reilly ...



    "It takes about two hours to burn one hour of video in iDVD"



    "iDVD 2 for Mac OS X can store up to 90 minutes on a single DVD-but this long-play mode takes much longer to burn, and the picture quality is not as good."



    Maybe the time taken to burn one hour of video has been reduced a little with the introduction of faster processors since David Pogue wrote the book, but can anyone confirm the second quote and any advances made there to date?
  • Reply 6 of 8
    scott2scott2 Posts: 39member
    In response to thegelding, it is better to keep your files below 4 gig if you want to stay at the high quality rate (instead of 4.3 gig). That makes for about 50 minutes. With good and cheap DVDs alike, they have a problem burning at the outer edge, so you risk losing the end of your last movie (following the order they were placed in iDVD). I have had good results with Apple's DVDs, although for economic reasons have used cheaper brands with mixed results.



    How long a burn takes depends on the file size and now on the media. You can find 2X media on the market; it is not twice as fast but nevertheless a big improvement. I you are using an older Mac you need to update the firmware, or risk ruining the Superdrive.



    It takes me about a minute for every minute of movie, 2X about 40 seconds. Since I have only one Mac equipped Superdrive (dual 1 gig MDD) I cannot compare my results with other Macs
  • Reply 7 of 8
    multimediamultimedia Posts: 1,035member
    [quote]Originally posted by iMud:

    <strong>I just baught some memorex dvd-r. I have used one of them for like 40 mins of video and it seemed to work fine. I didn't realize you could put more than 60 minutes with iDVD, do you know what the max is? The dvd-r I see in the stores all say they will hold 120 minutes of video. Can peecee users get 120 minutes on these things?</strong><hr></blockquote>

    iDVD 2.1 lets you put up to 90 minutes of video. DVD Studio Pro 1.5 lets you encode at variable rates up to 120 minutes. Only buy media that is rated at or below your drive's maximum speed. The Pioneer 104 in most Macs is a 2x drive. If you are putting in a new Pioneer 105 (supported with 10.2.2) you can burn at up to 4x. However, if you have the time, it will also burn at the slower speeds and thus save you money on the media cost (4x media being more expensive).
  • Reply 8 of 8
    icruiseicruise Posts: 127member
    [quote]Originally posted by Multimedia:

    <strong>

    DVD Studio Pro 1.5 lets you encode at variable rates up to 120 minutes. </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Actually you can fit considerably more than 120 minutes with DVDSP, depending on the amount of compression you use. I have done at least 2.5 hours, and I think nearly 3 hours once. Of course quality suffers a bit, but it my case the originals were from VHS tape so it didn't make much difference.
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