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I been burning CD's and DVD's since the burners were 1X and $1000. I've learned a few things since then.
1- Burning slower, doesn't always work.
2- Cheap disc, aren't the same; as "A" class disc.
3- What you see, may not really work.
4- Two pass conversion, may not look better in all cases.
5- I seen VBR look better, than a CBR at it's highest rate.
6- You get what you pay for, in most cases.
What got me into DVD videos? False advertising. "Make Hollywood type DVD's", on your DVD burner. I still had a USB 1.1 motherboard. Now $$$$ of dollars later; I'm trying to make my DVD's or BD's look as good as my HDef camcorder, without it rendering anything.
Some answers to above.
1- Going direct to my DVD burner, making a AVCHD disc; the first time, I didn't set the DVD speed; which was at max. DVD worked. But saw laser banding on the DVD. Next time, I lowered the setting to 4X (16X disc); the disc fought the burner, until it failed. Thought my burner burned out, until I tried the next day; @12X. Good working AVCHD disc, stilll some laser banding though. So much for lower speed. Made 2 coasters, and messed up, my erasable DVD. had to erase, on another computer.
2- Use to use; cheapest disc, until I saw dropouts. Now sticking with TY.
3- Typing the VBR settings on X2; is a joke. It should be two settings; low and high. VS11 had a thread, where you could change 3 settings of the VBR. The low, average and high. Would have been great; but it didn't really work either.
4- I tried the two pass rendering with a AVCHD file. Took longer, video files was smaller, pixeling was worst.
5- I didn't believe it; but it looked like it to me. I use VBR always now.
6- The main thing I found out; is the rendering engine, is what makes the videos. Why my last video was not made with VS11. I could not get the quality video, I wanted with it. Hollywood, was putting 2+ hours; on a single layer disc. People was telling me, it was multi-pass; but that wasn't it. I took a 2+ hour single layer DVD and watched to see what they were doing. I then saw, the VBR went all the way down to 4000, and up to around 9000, depending on the scene; saving lots of bits. Uleads' encoder does not vary that much. Around 12000, it only drops to 9000; imagine if it went down to 4000 or lower. To put my 2 hour video, on a single layer disc; I had to buy; a more expensive editing program. Imagine how much video we could get on a AVCHD disc, if Ulead had a better encoder. One that drop down to 4000 VBR, and up to where we set the max? Yes, you get what you pay for; but why have a misleading feature; that never reaches the maximum stated bitrate? Low & high; would have been just fine, and not misleading. Me, like other people; have wasted time; on typing in bitrates, that made no changes at all. And yes I would pay more (not over $700; new HD camcorder prices) for a video encoder, that we can really adjust the lowest, average and peak bit rate. Because that's how hollywood does it. Plus, there are others; where you can adjust the bitrates, where it is not that important. That's my VS X2 wish. Why am I not using my more expensive AVCHD editing program; and bought the X2? It doesn't make AVCHD disc, and it just started letting you do blu-ray burning; without the extra $$$. Great from the people; who made Blu-Ray. What I need now from Corel, is a real rendering engine; of more than a difference of; 2000 in VBR; and a encoder, that doesn't change rates on me; when I make a AVCHD disc, or file; from the timeline. Maybe with other encoding, the bitrate is variable. But with making AVCHD files, disc; there is only two rates; low & high. And there's a problem with the high setting; it reverts back, to the low rate.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Just a couple of brief comments on your 4 and 5. I have been saying for a long time that with AVCHD, you should always avoid two pass encode. In fact, apart from the artifacts you mention, more often than not I have found that the rendering process totally fails when two pass encode is enabled. You should also avoid using SmartRender.

As for VBR vs CBR, AVCHD is *always* VBR anyway. It's the nature of the beast. By contrast, HDV is always CBR. You can't vary that.

In terms of the VBR max bitrate, I would tend to agree with your comment that the max is rarely reached, and in fact VS more often than not seems to use a (much) lower average bitrate. But with my own production of AVCHD hybrid discs (i.e. on a standard, single layer DVD), I have found it best to edit the video, and then go straight to the burning module and allow the conversion to take place there if conversion is necessary. This is because I can change the burning properties of the AVCHD in the Options icon in the bottom left of the burning screen. This seems to give me more flexibility in the settings than accepting one of the VS defaults in the Editing module. I always set a VBR max 17 Mbps. This means that in the end I can only fit around 20 minutes of AVCHD on a single layer DVD. But DVDs are very cheap so I don't mind. And the quality appears to my eyes at least equal to the original AVCHD quality.

As a footnote, I use 8x and 12 x DVD blanks (Ritek), and always burn at 4x with no laser banding such as you have encountered. Nor any struggle to burn at that speed.

Ken thanks,
I'm tired; I've been off work messing with this thing; since Wednesday. Please let more people know; that there is a patch out there; since November. It may help most. I'll find some solution; until we get another patch? 4 days & nights of this; and back to work tomorrow. Ulead; used to make it better known; and obvious, when a new patch came out.
November..??? Maybe X3 is out, and we don't know it.

Regarding burn speed I can only sopeak from experience.
I use cheap DVD discs and providing I burn at 4x or if that is not availabe 6x. These play in anything I place them in.
I have previously burned discs at MAX and found that some DVD players would play but several others would not. This tends to suggest that there is a weaker image burned onto the disc due to the faster speed.

Have you checked your burner manufactureres wensite for updated firmware? Even when you buy a "Brand New" burner it is often not up to date because you have no idea how long it was in the shop and before that the warehouse.