I thought Verbatim (MCC) was good stuff? Fast degradation?..no it's paper labels!

As of late, I started having problems with discs burned about 8 months ago in my standalone DVD player, and even some just burned a couple of months ago. I tried to copy the contents and couldn't, the read errors forced it to fail.

So, I did a scan and was shocked with what I found.

The media is Verbatim 16X DVD-R for the most part (MCC 003). Some DVD+R (MCC004) too. I thought from what I read around here and other places that it was good, so that's what I've been using. As I read stuff as of late, it seems like the popularity in Verbatim is waning and TY is the only way to go. Too bad I just ordered a 100 pk of 8x DVD+R from NewEgg that can't be returned.

Here's the scan. Any thoughts on what the heck is happening with this media?



Thanks.

It could be a number of problems. My initial guess has to be defective media or damage due to light or humidity. I have not seen anything that bad since Ritek G05.

Sorry to see your problems. At least Verbatim should replace these, and then you can reburn from your originals.

BTW, this has nothing to do with your problem, but you should scan at 4X.

Thanks. I figured Verbatim would warranty them, but it's not worth the effort. I think I piad $9.99 for a 25 pack. Lost money.

So many went bad though. The discs are stored in protective sleeves, vertically, away from light, heat and humidity. I think they just stunk.

Is the quality of Verbatim iffy now, and not consistent? I'm thinking I should just go with TY YUDEN00T02 and call it a day.

I have not heard any other reports of problems like this, but here is a lot of fake Verbatim in EU. I prefer YUDEN myself, better burns, but I would not have any problems buying MCC 004 0r MCC 003. I don't like the -R though.

Are both batches of your MCC bad or just the MCC 03RG20? Where did you buy them?

I bought these packs from Best Buy here in the states, so I would guess they're real. I've also since switched to +R so I could bitset. Also, my tabletop DVD Recorder uses +R too.

All the new discs I have are MCC004 and some of them are bad too. I'll scan one and post it. But the majority that were bad were the -R MCC03 discs. For the bad MCC004 discs, new burns yield good results, but that's what happened before. It seems like they are degrading very fast.

The odds of two bad batches of MCC of different types at the same time are extremely low. I would look for a problem elsewhere, maybe your burner or somewhere in the Best Buy storage. It just would be too unusual to have +R and -R both have the same problem. I would look at your Liteon. Do these play in a player?

Were these burned on the 1693 or the stand alone recorder?

Some still play fine in a player. Some of the really bad ones, like above, I couldn't even create an ISO file from. It was totally unreadable for that purpose. They do seem to be ok in the burner itself, but I haven't tried it all the way though. They also seem ok on my standalone dvd recorder. I'm sure my dvd player (sony) is being finnecky, but obviously from that scan the disc has problems.

As I mentioned though, new burns are ok and play fine. Just like before. Then they seem to go bad. I will scan a new burn and post it. It will have just been done.

The only other thing I can think of is firmware. Maybe something was screwed up in the write strategies. I just upgrading the other night. It's a 1673S@1693S KC48.

If a scan looks good after a burn, what else could I do to make sure it's not the burner itself? And again, some discs burned a while ago are still ok.

To exclude the burner as cause of these results you can try to burn a disc on another drive. If you don't have another burner, you can ask to a friend to do a burn for you.

You should never burn MCC004 slower than 8x, keep that in mind.

Thanks guys. Thing is, new burns produce pretty good scans. I'll post one soon, I'm scanning a bad MCC004 disc right now.

Also, when burning 16x discs, I usually leave it set to "maximum" or 10x.

But why does that matter?

A lot of people rave about verbatim. I stopped buying because the quality was so variable depending upon the source. Now only use TY. recently tried some old verbatim stock in a BenQ1655 and the results were not bad. anyway my guess is that your scans are so bad either because they are fake disks or the drive is dying.

Ok, here's a burn made only 3 months ago on MCC004, +R. Horrible and hence why the player is having problems with it. It worked fine for a while, and they went deep six.

I'll scan a burn I just did next.

Fake discs from a big retailer like Best Buy?

Another important thing is the way you store discs. Keep them away from direct sunlight and in single jewel cases is a good thing.

Also giving discs to kids is a rather "dangerous" thing

I disagree strongly with this. MCC 004 is designed to be burned at any speed, and I have burned it at 2.4x in my NEC 3500 with good quality and at ½x - 1x (real time recording) in my Sony RDR-HX910 HDD/DVD recorder with very good quality.

If you have problems burning MCC 004 slower than 8x, then there's either something very wrong with your batch of media or something very wrong with the firmwire writing strategy for MCC 004 in your DVD burner!

I have only seen scans like this from Bulkpaq and that kind of 4th grade rubbish fake stuff. There's something terribly wrong with something about these discs and it's a pretty isolated incident so i belive it's about your setup (burner/fw), storage (what kind of "protective" sleeve/moist/heat) or the discs have been destroyed before you got them. If it happens again you can be sure the problem is somewhere in your setup. Verbatim may not be as consistant as TY but they are nowwhere as bad as your scans suggest

Thanks Guys.

Ok, here's a new scan. MCC004 +R. Same disc type as the last one. Different package though, but bought at the same time. Much better results. Just burned 1 hr ago.

I wonder what's going on? I do store in paper sleeves. Is that not ok?

In my opinion no. The best way, again in my opinion, is to use single cases for each disc (or double ones if you find them for a reasonable price).

But the burn looks good right, meaning the burner is probably fine?

So what affect do paper sleeves, vs say slimline hard cases, have on a dvd?

Paper sleeves can scratch discs. And with time this reduce disc quality. Repetitive scratches can damage discs.

To exclude the burner as cause of bad burnings you can try to burn some discs on another burner. I suggest to ask a friend to do some tests if you don't have another burner.

Paper sleeves means the disc is actually resting on it's edge, this can lead to warping issues, they can also scratch the surface, and even a small scratch may make a disc unreadable. Whereas jewel or DVD cases, the choise is ours, support the discs in the middle and so no weight is taken by the edges. Though there has been somedebate over UV getting through and clear cases, though if you know anything about UV, and if you keep reptiles it is something you need to learn about, you will find UV is unable to penetrate too far through a glass window, add the plastic of the case you have effectively filtered it out entirely.

I strongly suspect this is your problem, SteveG.

Any disc resting on its edge is prone to warping! Or would you happen to store them horizontally, which would even be worse?

Simple paper sleeves should be used (if ever) only for pressed CDs, as warping of these don't have a dramatic effect on their playability (but it does have an impact nevertheless). I strongly recommend to never use paper sleeves with recordable media, unless if for very short-term, temporary purposes.

I'm not saying that it's impossible that you've had a very marginal Verbatim batch, but such fast degradation has only been reported, as yet, with Ritek G05/G04, as Chas0039 mentions. Even Princo doesn't degrade THAT fast..!

Faced with ultra-fast degradation problems, my opinion is that all possible storing/handling problems should be ruled out first, before coming to the conclusion that the media itself is unstable.

Great info, thanks. I will now store them in slimline cases and we'll see what happens.

I've certainly learned a lot here.

Am I correct though, that the last scan I posted, with a grade of 95, is what you would expect of Verbatim?

The PIF are great. The PIE can usually be better if you burn at 12X. Most drives do best on 16X media at 12X. My LG 4166 is an exception and there are a few other new models that also do well at 16X.

Thanks. This is crazy too, here's one more disc. This one's scan wasn't even able to be finished. This disc was made in Sept 2005 and has only been used about 2 times since it was made. This was the result when I just scanned it. Also shown is the surface scan. Horrible. I still can't believe the sleeves could be the cause, but I believe all of you know more than me, so I just switched everything to cases (the new burns).