Quote
I am a newbie with 2 questions and this is not the correct place to post this.
- Can some body please point me to the instructions on how to post a question to this user group correctly.
- Looking for a reccomendation list on Blu Ray burner hardware most compatible with PowerDirector 17
Thank you
I'll answer the second:
Pretty much any BluRay burner will work with PD. I recommend the LG brand, such as the WP50NB40, which is a USB external model (awfully handy as opposed to an internal model, which I use).
But remember this: There is more to what kind of discs you 8use and what speeds you burn at compared to the brand of drive you use:
1. Use "HTL" (high-to-low) discs as opposed to "LTH" (low-to-high) bluray discs. This is a reference to the type of dye used in the dye layer of the disc, meaning that that once the laser hits the dye, it transforms it from high-to-low refelctivity or vice versa. LTH discs have a very short data retention lifespan and they go bad quickly, even within months - they are a failed product and should never have been released to the market, and have caused nothing but pain, frustreation, and surprise catastrophic data loss. The HTL discs, howver, last many years. These are the types of discs Hollywood uses to release movies. I use Optical Quantum brand discs and my blurays are in pristine condition with zero loss or degredation after 9 years. Out of my now 253-disc archive, not one single disc has ever gone bad.
2. Never burn at the disc's highest burn rating. If you have "6X" discs, never burn faster than 4X. If the discs are 4X, never burn faster than 2X. This will guarentee good strong burns that will last (if you're using HTL discs). The burn rating of the disc is the highest speed that the manufacturer was able to pull off before experiencing burn errors. Play it safe and kick it down a bit. There's a lot of morons out there complaining on Amazon that even good HTL bluray brands are somehow bad and that the discs didn't last. In fact, they simply burned their discs too fast and as a result, the dye layer wasn't hit hard enough by the laser. The next thing I speak about below solves this issue entirely.
3. Just an FYI, I am very serious about home movie archiving for long term storage. As such, I have shifted from using standard blurays to M-DISC blurays, made by Verbatim. I am also copying all my old DVDs and Blurays over to M-DISC as well. I have had conversations with the two inventors of M-DISC, both professors of chemical engineering at BYU.
Playback-compatible in all bluray players, MDISCs are a different type of bluray disc in that your burner is not making weak and arguably perishable changes to a perishable dye layer in the typical bluray, but actually kicking up the power to a hotter beam and actually engraving holes in an embedded layer of carbon on the disc. This requires an M-DISC-compatible bluray burner, which most burners are today. LG makes the best and msot compatible drives in my opinion. if you go this route, make sure it says "M-DISC Compatible" somewhere in the details of the drive and make sure you buy M-DISC blurays. The cost of the discs are about a buck each as opposed to the standard $0.50c each. And well worth it in my opinion. My 80-year archive of home movies is precious to me and I don't trust anything else. Note that M-DISCs hav a max burn speed of 4X, so never exceed that no matter if your drive or even the disc itself allows you to burn faster.
Hope this helps.
Bob
This message was edited 7 times. Last update was at Feb 14. 2020 14:36