whats the deal here?

i just successfully burned a dvd. after countless tries of course. i used image burn with a 10pak of maxell dvd-r. this is where the weirdness starts. the discs are different colors. five to choose from. i tried the orange, pinkish red, dark blue, and light blue with no luck. the green one worked with out a hitch. what is going on here? i can burn a cd just fine regardless of the color. so why would my drive be so picky with dvd colors?

side note on imgburn:
the erase function needs work. i erased a dvd+rw to reuse for burning only to have the program tell me to erase the disc again.

 

I've often found different drives to be sensitive to certain colored disks, but it could also be that the manufacturer just had a bad run of all those other colors. They are made in different lots and then packaged with multiple colors, so the greens could have come from a different day, different plant, different color....

 

DVD packs data more densely, so the laser has to be more finely tuned. Since the laser is of a particular color of light (red, if I recall correctly), it will interact differently with differently colored substrates; however, that shouldn't be the difference between burning and not burning a DVD unless either (i) as gerryf19 says, the disks could have been bad - which you could test by trying to burn on another computer or just another drive, or (ii) your CD/DVD drive is going out of spec, which could be anything from dirt on the lens, to irreversible physical degradation requiring replacement. I would try running a lens-cleaning disk through there to see if that makes any difference.

 

where can i find a lens cleaning disc?

 

Most electronics stores.

 

well i found one for 10 bucks at walmart. bought it, used it and love it. i used a blue disc as a test, burning went without a hitch and it plays smoothly. took only ten seconds to do!

 

Good deal--I've had really old CD-Roms greatly improve performance after a lens cleaning, but I've not seen it impact a burn based on CD/DVD color...never would have thought of it.

I am filing this away for further use

 

2 out of 10 is about right for successfully burning Maxell. Do yourself a favor and use Verbatim. With a little practice you'll burn 10 for 10.

 

what do you mean by "use verbatim"?

 

Verbatim is a company that makes storage media such as CDs and DVDs, amongst other products. They are generally of better than average quality.

 

I use verbatim for when I use convertxtodvd and burning iso's, backing up stuff etc. NEVER had a problem with them and I'll always buy them from now on.
I also burn at the slowest speed as time isn't a major thing for me, I'd rather have 1 decent burn than 3 coasters.