DVD recording adventures..

[Florian Lindauer <hifan@gmx.de>]

Here is my tale of woe regarding DVD burning with Linux
over the last months. Perhaps someone can remember similar 
experiences and give some hints.

I use a current Linux installation (2.4.20) and the
most current versions of all the dvd burning programs.
Using ide-scsi (scd0->hdc). i865-Board (ICH5).

I have a NEC 1300, that burns plus and minus. If the medium 
suits it. NEC releases a firmware update sometimes, but only
with Windows installer. Thank god there is a guy named
herrie that hacks and extracts the fw for DOS installer.
But thats nothing specific with Linux. As is the case
(I hope so) with the bad quality of my plus-media (Platinum).
One is perfectly readable, the next with identical content,
burned subsequent to the first is not (or the other way 'round).
Same effects even with a Verbatim (recommended by NEC).
So I tend to go for minus, where I never had any (burn
quality related) readability problem so far.

Burning of plus-media with cdrecord-proDVD works, as
well as with growisofs. Only problem, apart from that
speed=4 is ignored completely (set to 2), with proDVD
the system clock runs at half speed..

But I wanted to go for minus: 
- cdrecord-proDVD does not work with minus-media,
  not for me and my NEC (while showing the ATIP works)
- Using dvdrecord, when it comes to fixation, it hangs
  forever. There is a scsi timeout in messages, after
  some time a bus reset takes place. I can read the
  medium without a problem with Windows (XP), but not
  with Linux (it is not fixated).
  Trying a new, manual/minimal configured 2.4.22, it is
  even worse: the bus hangs forever, I can not even
  get the disc out before I reset the machine.
  Any command regarding the drive (like eject, mount)
  hangs forever, with no kill -9 able to do anything.
  Independent of this, dvdrecord too showed the
  clock speed issue, but not if all of DMA+32bit+unmasqirq
  are set.
- Finally trying dvd+rwTools/growisofs to burn minus:
  there is no hang on fixation, but similar (but other)
  SCSI error messages in the log. The growisofs-error
  is something like "cannot close session".
  Now, such media I can read(mount) under Linux.
  But guess: I cannot read them with Windows.

So all in all you will not be surprised that I feel some
kind of spoofed, or in other words: DVD burning with
Linux is a big mess at the moment, at least for me and
my device.

Is it all because of the NEC? Can anyone confirm my problems
and/or recommend another device that is known to work well
under Linux? Perhaps one of the new 8x?

Is there any device that has a Linux firmware update-tool?

Do all DVD recorders only accept media that they know of?
(Sure, this is a measure of quality assurance, but well..)

Questions, questions..

Thanks for any help,
Florian Lindauer