How can I accomplish this? I have a bunch of Sony DVD+Rs that I’ve been burning at 4x with my Pioneer DVR-109, but I’m not sure if burning at 8x might be better.
Even though they’re probably crappy DVD+Rs, I don’t want to waste any in tests if it is unnecessary.
Megalith,
The best way is to burn some media at 8x and check the results. Compare them with your 4x burns.
In most cases it is best to burn at the rated speed as that is what your drives firmware generally has the best write stratagy for. There are some exceptions of course. Really poor quality media sometimes isn’t good enough to burn at it’s rated speed and must be burned slower (and still might not burn that great). Very high quality media can sometimes be burned faster (if the drive and firmware support it well enough). There are a few issues with burning 16x media at full speed (probably because it is the newest media and may need a little more development of the drives I’m guessing, not to mention, 16x burning is the hardest to do for the media and the drive). Overall though, the rated speed is best.
By the way, sony can be very good media. Use dvd identifier to tell what it actually is.
Unless you have a scanning drive, it will be tough to determine differences even if you do burn. The only short cut is to look for your media ID and then look in the Blank Media Test forum and see if other 109 users have tested your media at different speeds. It can be a little work but the other alternatives are costly.
Without your media ID it is a shot in the dark, but I would not think that you need to go to 4X for a good burn.