Not too long ago, I was overjoyed to have discovered a small supply of DVD-R for Authoring discs from a local supplier. These would have been the “original” type of recordable DVD before DVD-R for General became the dominant format. The authoring type of disc was originally 3.95GB, then later increased to 4.7GB, intended for mastering video DVDs especially as its lack of embossed region meant that it could be used to write discs with encryption and copy-protection features that DVD-R for General could not.

Such media is rarely found nowadays and writers are very expensive too. While they were perhaps important for DVD production in the early days, now that masters can be provided digitally by upload in “cutting master format (CMF)” or similar, there is no need for authoring discs. As a result, they’re mostly just a curio, since practically all other non-authoring drives simply cannot do anything with them.

My recent contact with Pepst led to him sharing with me a sample of an authoring disc that he had and that I didn’t.

While I didn’t have the individual packaging for the disc, the disc itself was intact and had a nice retail-top print – mostly white with a segment for labelling, but otherwise seemingly like most retail DVD-Rs, except for the bold black text indicating DVD-R for Authoring. Being Maxell branded, most likely this disc was Made in Japan given its vintage. The underside had a slightly deeper purple dye as would be normal for slower-speed DVD recordable media of the time, but I noticed something that really made me question the credentials of this media.

Putting it into my Samsung SE-506CB drive for identification …

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Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-R:MXL RG02]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disc & Book Type :       [DVD-R] - [DVD-R]
Manufacturer Name :      [Hitachi Maxell Ltd.]
Manufacturer ID :        [MXL RG02]
Blank Disc Capacity :    [2,298,496 Sectors = 4.71 GB (4.38 GiB)]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
** INFO : Hex Dump Of 'Media Code'-Block Listed Below
** INFO : 4-Byte Header Preceding 'Media Code'-Block Discarded
** INFO : Format 0Eh - Pre-Recorded Information In Lead-In
0000 : 01 40 c1 fd 9e d8 52 00  02 86 0e 11 87 89 80 00   [email protected].........
0010 : 03 4d 58 4c 20 52 47 00  04 30 32 00 00 00 00 00   .MXL RG..02.....
0020 : 05 88 80 00 00 00 02 00  06 0a 0e 15 87 78 90 00   .............x..
0030 : 07 88 80 00 00 00 00 00  08 05 16 0d 0f 0b 08 00   ................
0040 : 09 97 07 0e 0b 6c 88 00  0a a4 00 24 00 24 10 00   .....l.....$.$..
0050 : 0b 05 19 17 a8 89 75 00  0c c6 89 88 80 00 00 00   ......u.........
0060 : 0d 00 00 d0 00 00 00 00  00 00                     ..........

** INFO : Hex Dump Of 'Control Data Zone'-Block Listed Below
** INFO : 4-Byte Header Preceding 'CDZ'-Block Discarded
** INFO : Format 10h - Physical Format Information Of Control Data Zone
0000 : 25 0f 02 00 00 03 00 00  00 26 12 7f 00 00 00 00   %........&......
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ DVD Identifier V5.2.0 - http://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

**This was no authoring DVD-R. **This is quite obviously a DVD-R for General – the “RG” in the MID likely stands for that, but also, the byte in the first line of the MID that is the letter “R” generally indicates that this disc is a general disc.

From what Pepst had told me, he had a lot of these discs which he said he couldn’t burn … so seeing this, I felt like these wouldn’t be problematic at all – so I decided to accept the rest of the discs in the hopes of having more than one of these older 4x-generation DVD-R discs from Maxell.

But that proved to be both a blessing and a mistake. Ever-so-generous, Pepst sent through a stack of 25 discs …

… so I could have a play. Looks the same from the top, but … these actually are authoring discs! Now what a twist!

The Samsung SE-506CB was consulted again – being the only drive I know that seems to retrieve MIDs from obsolete format discs just fine:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-R:NO_ID_PRESENT]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disc & Book Type :       [DVD-R] - [DVD-R]
Manufacturer Name :      [Manufacturer Not Found In Database]
Manufacturer ID :        [Not Present On Disc]
Blank Disc Capacity :    [2,298,496 Sectors = 4.71 GB (4.38 GiB)]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
** INFO : Hex Dump Of 'Media Code'-Block Listed Below
** INFO : 4-Byte Header Preceding 'Media Code'-Block Discarded
** INFO : Format 0Eh - Pre-Recorded Information In Lead-In
0000 : 01 40 c1 fd 9e d8 50 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   [email protected].........
0010 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0020 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0030 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0040 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0050 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
0060 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00                     ..........
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ DVD Identifier V5.2.0 - http://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm. The result is an MID that’s practically all zeroes. While you might expect Maxell to put an MID, I can’t say that the Samsung is necessarily wrong here, since the number of types of blank authoring media would have been quite small and they all wrote at 1x anyway, so the need to have individual identifying MIDs was probably less of a requirement at the time. But the main reason I believe this is true is because the drive had no issue retrieving the MID from the other two authoring discs, but also in all authoring discs, the byte on the first line is a “P” instead of “R”. This consistency at least indicates the drive knows there’s something different about this disc.

Looking at the scanned images closer – it’s clear that the pre-embossed region is missing in the true authoring discs. Instead, the manufacturing of the authoring discs seems to have a lip in the plastic on the underside – it’s not at a diameter that would affect operation, but suggests to me that there may be different plant equipment being used to manufacture both types of discs. As is often customary with Maxell discs, the edge border regions are quite thin and I didn’t spot any stamper codes.

A closer look at the authoring discs’ central hub region. It’s practically pristine.

Spoiler – I burned the general disc – but looking at the authoring and general discs side by side, the dye looks nearly identical. I suppose that may be okay – dyes may not be quite as selective on wavelength and the small difference between authoring and general systems may be compensated by optimum power calibration perhaps.

The only manufacturing marking I could find was heat-stamped codes in the clear plastic clamping area – M1BH064A in the case of the general disc …

… and M1BEo64A in the case of the authoring disc. Very similar codes differing by just one letter.

Let’s Burn …

In the end, out of (around) 26 discs (as I didn’t count), I have one that I can burn because it somehow seems to have “snuck in” to the authoring pile at manufacture time somehow.

In terms of mechanical construction, the DW1640 gives it flying colours. It’s a 4x media, but it almost managed to pass at 8x just fine. It’s a very good result – among the best for such 4x media where high-speed stability was not as much of a priority (as most drives operated more slowly).

The drive that got the honours to write the disc is my trustworthy Pioneer DVR-111DBK @ 111L. The drive wrote at the rated 4x, but with two rather deep OPC pauses, otherwise shallow W-OPC dips. The presence of the pauses usually is not ideal, but doesn’t always indicate problems. Rather than wasting this one on a test disc burn filled with test data, I burned an image of less-important data for archival – an image sized to within 10MB of the full capacity of the disc.

A TRT run on the same drive has a pretty smooth curve – only two miniscule bumps.

The DW1640 reads it through well with one dip towards the other. But as an older, somewhat worn drive, it rarely ever manages a whole 16x read without at least a few dips in the outer – so that’s actually an excellent result.

The quality scan shows a very good PIE rate (but perhaps not quite TY low), a very good jitter (well done DVR-111L) and a PIF rate that starts relatively low but starts to spike and climb a little towards the outer edge. Part of the reason is that this disc has a surface with some light scratches and dust which isn’t possible to perfectly eliminate even though I try. But for a disc that has been handled, this is an excellent result.

The DH16A6L concurs on the TRT, showing a perfectly smooth readback.

It reports similarly to the DW1640 – perhaps a bit higher on the PIE but the same trends in PIF and a very good jitter result are confirmed.

Somehow, the picky SHM-165P6S was not so much in agreement, thinking the PIEs are a bit on the ordinary side.

The jitter diagrams during the test were very good – clear “dips” in between each value but the big issue appears to be 14T lands being long and 14T pits being short. Other times seem to be much closer to targets, although the 3T pits and lands are also a tad short. Usually 3T is the difficult one to get just right.

The DVR-111L did a good job controlling the beta too – very tightly keeping it around the zero point, making for a “balanced” signal. It should have been good, so why the SHM-165P6S reports such crummy PIF values is beyond me.

The burned MXL RG02, showing that even older discs can still work well. Contributing to this, no doubt, is the proper storage and handling of these discs too. The burn is pretty even in terms of its darkness.

Conclusion

It’s still a mystery how a DVD-R for General managed to arrive in my hands, labelled as a DVD-R for Authoring. As that disc is just a MXL RG02 4x DVD-R, I managed to burn it and it burned rather well despite its age while also demonstrating excellent TE/FE characteristics for a disc of its speed class. I now also have a spindle of Maxell DVD-R for Authoring that I can’t burn – but it is still interesting to collect as a curio but also to know that it seemingly doesn’t have an MID either. I never thought I’d find another type and here I am adding to my collection – thanks Pepst!