So... I thought I might make a copy of something on my DVR. I've got a Sony RDR-GX355 that I hardly have used (if that matters). I find I'm ignorant about the kinds of discs to use. Or perhaps something is wrong outside my brain!

I had only one DVD-RW disc left, and I wanted to copy something that would take two discs. Hey, I've got some DVD-R discs. Let's use these.

First thing up, the recorder doesn't allow formatting and seems to be stuck with VR format. Well, okay... I believe I recorded more than two hours of stuff, all in one pass. I hit STOP. I named the disc. I exited and hit PLAY. The message pops up: No Title. I go to the title list. No Title. The disc appears to be empty. But when I look at the status of the disc, I'm told there's only five minutes left at the recording quality I chose for this. So it's not empty. It just doesn't have anything on it. ? ? ?

Is there a simple explanation other than just "only use DVD-RW discs?" I've used those successfully before. This is obviously something I've never looked into.

Did you finalize the DVD-R after you were done recording? You need to do that because since its an R (write once) and not an RW (write many times).

Finalize was not a choice in the options menu! It skipped right over it.

I'm used to seeing, with DVD-RW, the choice to format and record as VR or Video. This was not a choice here, either.

Not a choice for VR versus video, as in the choices are grayed out, or you haven't found that part of the menu?

It should have the term 'Finalize' somewhere in the menu, knowing Sony it's likely hidden under some other setting or button press that makes no sense.

Format and record sounds more like erase and record. Format usually, in the computer and disc media realm, means erase...such as format a hard drive. But then again I'm not familiar with that model but have used other Sony DVD recorders and the terminology was ways 'finalize'.