[SGVLUG] Writing CD's -- what media do you recommend?

[Tom Emerson]

On Wednesday 12 October 2005 1:33 pm, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> On 10/12/05, Tom Emerson <osnut at pacbell.net> wrote:

> > So, am I just banging my head against the wall, or is it that the sony
> > drive is "very picky" about CD media? 

> Well there are a couple of things that could be going on. One have you
> seen if you can write with cdrecord directly

k3b does call cdrecord in the background

> iso files. Is your laptop running the exact same version of stuff as
> your main system?

very close -- my main laptop shows:
traveller:~ # cdrecord --version
Cdrecord-Clone-dvd 2.01a27 (i686-suse-linux) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg 
Schilling
Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version with DVD support
Note: and therefore may have bugs that are not present in the original.

while at home I see:

beast:~ # cdrecord --version
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01 (x86_64-suse-linux) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling
Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version

Interestingly, there is a specific "cdrecord-dvd" program noted:
beast:~ # cdrecord-dvd --version
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01-dvd (x86_64-suse-linux) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg 
Schilling
Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version with DVD support

so it looks like under the "normal" development tree, cdrecord has dvd support 
built in, while under 64 bits these are separate programs.  I'll have to see 
if I can get a more up-to-date version of cdrecord for the 64-bit system 
(though I thought the 64-bit system would have been newer as that has suse 
9.3 on it while the laptop is still under 9.1  (but come to think of it, I've 
probably upgraded to "the latest" KDE on both systems anyway, and this would 
kinda-sorta be brought along for the ride...)

> Because there is some info written to the disk by 
> the manufacture that tells the cdwriting software things like media
> type, writing power, max speed. Or your dvd writer is picky(firmware
> upgrade maybe available).

This is one thing I've seen "come and go" with k3b -- I remember seeing a 
"disk info" screen in a very early version that included what type of 
substrate it was using and so on.  Then later versions seemed to drop this 
altogether, and now it's back, but less detailed.  [k3b, btw, is at version 
0.12.4a on the laptop, and 0.12.3 at home]

> As for recomendations I have never had a media incompatablity problem.
> I have gotten very lazy as resent gnome desktop has left click option
> "write to disk" for isos, which works better then cdrecord for dvd
> isos.

are you sure it isn't just calling cdrecord like k3b does?  if it does it 
"better than cdrecord", then perhaps they've optimized what flags and 
settings are passed to the program, settings you're not likely to include if 
your typing the command in a one-off fashion on the command line...