DVD burned from a PC mounts as blank CDR

Question

A client of ours has received (on a few occasions) simple photo images burned to a DVD that when they arrive, they mount on the Mac as a blank CDR, asks if you want to "Open it in the Finder" to burn to it, etc... I have allowed the Finder to mount the "blank" media (mounts with the CDR icon), and even tried burning to it to see if it was actually blank, but would get "too much data to burn" errors when trying to burn a 52k Word doc, so it certainly seems as if there is data on them, and you can see the burned area on the DVD itself (about half full).
Since this has happened a few times to them, and it is reproducible on all machines when it does, it seems it has something to do with the way the PC user is burning them or with the media itself (dual layer maybe?), and simply wanted to know if there was anyone here that knows what the problem might be, or at least have a hint. On a Mac, as you are all aware, it's as simply as dragging stuff to the DVD icon and burning... so I'm not sure what issues on a PC could cause this (or what burning program, burn setting, format, etc...). Mounts as a blank CDR, even though there is data on it, and the printing on the media itself states it is a DVD.
Thank you very much for any info!

Answer 1

Under the directions for how to burn a DVD from an
disk image, the Apple Help document
(http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93006)
says this:
"Note: When burning a disc from a disk image, the
burned disc will have the same format as the disk
image. If you need a disc that will work on different
computers, burn the disc in the Finder."
Does this mean that the DVDs that I am burning from
the disk image won't be able to be played on a PC? a
Mac other than mine? Neither? WHAT? I am planning to
sell the DVDs of a workshop I present -- to people
who may be playing them on PCs. Should I not be using
this method (burning from a disk image) to burn my
DVDs?
Video DVDs are in the UDF format. The disk image you created is in the UDF format. When you use Disk Utility to burn the disk image to writable media, the new discs will be in UDF format and all will be well.
You are doing things correctly.
BTW, unless you have an external burner with lots of cooling, if you expect to use the burner in your Mac (which DOESN'T have lots of cooling), it's a good idea to pause between discs to allow the burner to cool down. (BTW, this comment is based on the reported results of several people in the forum. If you don't allow the cool down timer, you will start to create 'bad' discs. Also it is VERY important that you reduce the burn speed in Disk Utility to 4x or lower in order to create discs with maximum compatability with players. (You should see a way to change the speed in Disk Utility afterr you have inserted a disc.)
F Shippey