Hi, bit of a newby question here but I've been trawling through the internet and after lots of forum threads which went along the lines of "HOW I BURN DISCS?" and "WHAT IZ MODCHIP?" I finally found this place, which appears to be full of a few fairly knowledgable chaps so I hope someone here might be of assistance.

My slimline playstation (V16) isn't modchipped, but I do however have a the "Magic Keys" installed and I use a "Swap Magic V3.6" boot disc. This hasn't given me any trouble to date and I can run a fair amount of imported games.

I've just created an image of my "Rogue Galaxy" game for the PS2 which I promptly burnt (burned?) using a recently downloaded trial version of "Alchohol 120%". Being completely uneducated in the matters of burning I stuck with what it was suggesting and burnt the image to a DVD+R at ( I think) 8X speed.

Now, the game does run but the issue is that it doesn't do that very well. Speech and music during cut scenes will often stop playing, only to restart at innapropriate times and events (notifications, entering menus) will often lead the game to stalling for a few minutes before catching up. My playstation is also making an awfully worrying grinding noise.

I've been looking around quite a bit and I've seen things telling me to burn ONLY to DVD-R and to burn at 2X speed. Is this truth? And have I been quite foolish? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Sounds like your laser may not work well with the burned discs you're making. You could try a different media, or varying different burn speeds (usually slowest is best, but sometimes faster speeds work better). It could also be an indication that the drive is failing, which can manifest in burned discs first because they require more power to read.

No, there is really no truth to the 'slower is better' myth when it comes to DVD burn speeds. Most media will burn best at or near its rated speed, such as 8x media at 4x to 8x, 16x media at 8x to 12x, etc. This applies whether the disc is intended for a computer, a DVD Player, a game console, whatever. Regarding DVD-R vs. DVD+R, there may well be one format better than the other for your console and its drive, the answer to that I do not know. I would try DVD-R and DVD+R bitset to DVD-ROM if your burner supports it (bitsetting +R media basically 'fools' the drive into recognizing the discs as DVD-ROM pressed discs). Reflectivity can also be a big factor for these consoles, so what works fine in other devices may be less successful in a console, you'll just have to try out different media - Verbatim -R media would probably be a good place to start.

You do realize that Rogue Galaxy is a DVD9 game, right? I don't believe Swap Magic can boot those, could be wrong, it's been a long time since I've used that.