Question about "Best" Burn / Write Speed

[harryshin]

1. When one is about to burn a DVD, there's a list of various burn speeds and the default is "best".

 

2. Via the Toast Help data, it notes that Toast is able to determine the best burn speed via the hardware specs and media specs.

Question: how is Toast able to do this?

 

Question: between the hardware specs and the media specs, I'm going to assume that the "best" burn speed would be the LOWER of the two specs. Am I correct in this assumption?

 

Question: I think this has been asked before--> is there any way to determine what speed a particular

disk was burned at?

 

Question: Whether a disk was burned at 4X vs 16X, if the disk passed the verification process, can one assume the "quality" of the burn was equal in both cases?

 

 

Thanks for the info. Harry Shin

[tsantee]

The term "Best" means the fastest speed that the drive told Toast it can write to a specific disc. The drive's firmware and info on the disc decide what speed burns are available. When you press the speed setting button in Toast (after inserting a disc) you'll likely see some speeds in italics and some in bold face. The ones in bold face are supported by that media on that drive. The fastest one is what Toast calls Best.

 

I typically write discs at slower than best speed. Audio CDs in particular should be burned at the lowest supported speed, which seems to be 8x with most current media.

 

Verification is a good indicator the disc is burned okay. However, other drives can still have problems with the disc. Media problems with various drives is not uncommon. Slower burning may reduce the chance of those problems.