I recently got a TDK DVDRW-880N for use on my Linux machine. It should support up to 8x write speeds on both DVD-R and DVD+R media, and while I've otherwise had few problems with it, I havn't been able to get it to operate at faster than 4x with +R media (havn't tested with -R media), even when using Verbatim 8X DVD+R media (as reccomended by TDK).

Cdrecord-ProDVD-Clone 2.01a24 defaults to 4x if the -speed setting is 4x or higher; it also seems to ignore the -driveropts forcespeed setting.

growisofs version 5.17 reports the following error:
:-( Failed to change write speed: 5408->10816

Attempting to poll available burning speeds with k3b spits this out on stdout/stderr, while concludeing the maximum burning speed to be 4.1x
k3b: (K3bCdDevice::CdDevice) /dev/scd0: Number of supported write speeds: 6

I've heard reports of Linux users successfully making DVDs at 8x...any ideas on where I'm going wrong?

-Andrew

try upgrading to a new cdrecord-prodvd, if I remmeber he capped the speed on purpose, not because it can't handle it, but cause of liscensing and purchasing and such, check his site:
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/.../cdrecord.html
this si the dvd-specific page:
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/

you should also try upgrading the kernel to a 2.6 branch then you wno't need scsi emulation, which will make things burn a lot faster.

Do you really want to be burning DVDs at such high speed? Maybe in a few years when the burners are better... but for now I won't burn a DVD at >4x.


0.02

Upgrading cdrecord-ProDVD from 2.01a24 to 2.01a27 did little; speed settings higher than 4x are still silently ignored.

Upgrading my system to kernel 2.6.4 also didn't seem to change the upper limit any, either.

Any other suggestions?

I realize that high speed DVD burning is still somewhat experimental, but I'd like to take advantage of it where possible...especially since I just put the money into this high-speed DVD burner :P

-Andrew