I suggest you go to the GLOSSARY tab and learn the lingo. your DL burner is capable of burning DVD9s which are Dual Layer Disks (DVD+-R,DL) check out the glossary for more terms: DVD-9, DVD-5, DVD+R DL, and so forth..... this way you'll get first hand knowledge of what's what.
now you want to know how to use your burner..... I suggest, you being a newbie, to go to this guide page and learn all you can:
http://www.dvdplusvideo.com/tutorial007.html check everything out..... the guides, the software, the FAQs. this will start you off to doing everything. and if you want to read more:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/183136 this is a little more advanced for a newbie but it will make you grow and learn! adn here are some more tips of the trade for a newbie:
1. use good media will stop many problems you might run into. Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden, Maxell, Sony..... look for the ones Made In Japan. the exception to this rule is Verbatim.
2. burn at half the rated speed of your media (if the disk is an 8x media speed then burn at 4x). This will stop reading errors from your player.
3. Don't burn too close to the edge of the media. 4484MB is the max and on good media you can go as close as 4400.... to be sure I only go up to 4384MB just in case and I use Taiyo Yuden where I know my buddies go up to 4400 without any problems.
4. keep your firmware up do date..... this will make your writer recognize all the disks and burning speeds and other improvements with the software of your drive.
5. keep the source disk free of finger prints, dust or scratches. this will prevent a lot of reading errors that could/will make your drive slip into PIO mode which will slow your system down...... if that ever happens, you need to reset your drive to turn your DMA on... here's how: http://my.afterdawn.com/alkohol/blog_entry.cfm/231/dmaissues
this is just the beggining! happy reading, happy burning, happy learning....... welcome to AfterDawn!
