How to Choose a DVD Burn Speed

DVD burn speed is one of the few technical aspects you need to understand when buying and using a DVD burner. The burn speed refers to the data transfer rate of 1350 KB/s. A 10X burner means the DVD can burn 10 x 1350 KB/s. At 1X, a full DVD may take an hour to burn. At around 16X it will take only a little more than five minutes. Utilizing the fastest burn speeds on a DVD writer can save a lot of time.

Things You'll Need

• DVD burning program
• DVD Burner

Instructions

1. Know your limits. Your DVD burner comes with limited read and write speeds. Look at your manual to determine it's fastest write speed. This will be a number followed by an "X."

2. Get a CD/DVD burning program. A program like Nero will let you customize the exact specification you want when writing information to a CD or DVD.

3. Open the DVD burning program. Select the files you want to copy or burn onto the disk. There will usually be a wizard that will walk you through all of your choices.

4. Change the speed. If the wizard did not let you choose your speed, look for a burn properties box or menu. This should allow you to choose which drive to use and what speed you want to use while writing. You can't use a faster speed than your drive is capable of handling.

References

• Henry Amon; Information Systems Specialist; Salisbury, Maryland
• Newegg.com: DC/DVD buying guide