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After many coasters, using several different drives, several apps and several different media types, I decided to try and nail down whether or not I just happened to pick some crappy media.
I was using DVDXCOPY which was the first software I ever tried. You can't beat it for simplicity sake, but unfortunately since 321 was nailed to the cross, they didn't have a chance to really fix it so it worked consistently. Also, since media and drive standards are still not consistent, they were probably trying to hit a moving target. But for now, DVDXCOPY is dead...rest in peace.
Anyway, I decided to break the process up into 2 parts...first, creating the ISO, and then burning it and comparing drives and media, as opposed to using the 'diskcopy' features that some of the rippers offer.
Using DVD Shrink, I've been able to create perfect ISOs without any problems, so I figured I'm halfway there.
Now for the burning, I took a couple of Imation spindles of -R media which had been giving me more coasters than anything and tried to simply burn the ISOs using Roxio Media 7 on my XP machine. I also copied the ISOs to my Mac G5 and tried using the Imation media and burn using the basic Disktool tool that's built into OS X.
So far, I've gotten 16 perfect copies on this previously unusable media while burning on both, PCs and Macs. I tried some other 'coaster-prone' media and had similarly good results.
It seems that the 'diskcopy' features were improperly recognizing the media I was using and tried to burn at the maximum speed the drives allowed. By manually running the burning, I kept the burning speed at 2X and have had no problems.
Now granted, this media is probably older media or it may have quality control problems, but at least I'm getting good, consistent results in a variety of drives and DVD players. I have ordered a couple spindles of Ritek media so I'll see if that improves things.
For those who remember 5.25 and 1.44 floppies and low-density, high-density issues which we old fogies had to deal, it seems the DVD-ROM market is experiencing this now.
So, if you are having inconsistent results, try to burn at 2x and see if your success rate is better.
Also, Roxio Media Creator 7 seems to be much more stable than the crappy version 6. And, I only have to double-click on the ISO file and have a blank in the drive and it will properly auto-detect the media type I put in and burn a DVD-9 in about 30 minutes at 2X.
We all want speed, but I'd rather have accurate playables that will work in a wide variety of DVD players.
Good luck!
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