Some general questions

Just some general questions.
my burners are Plextor 760A and BenQ 1655.
I use TDK +16x CMC MAG M01.8
HP -16x CMC MAG AM3
prodisk -8x PRODIS CF01


When DVD FAB does the original scan of the dvd and gives me the compression, is this the actual, or an estimate?

When it is burning it shows the speed as ?.?x and mg/s. Is this the current speed, or average up to that point?

I used to burn everything at 8x, and then saw the 'recommened setting'.
It seems to get up to speed faster, and gets a bit higher (9x) and about a minute faster with no loss of quality
What or where is 'recommened" coming from?

last - maybe the wrong forum, but - i have a Pioneer 111d, and the last few i used it for would play on my computer, but when i put them in any dvd deck, it came up as 'no disk' or 'not recognized'.
any ideas??

Thanks
dow.

Should be the actual compression required...

That should be your current write speed...

I don't know where the recommended is coming from unless you are using Qsuite with your BenQ...it will analyze the disc and present you with a recommended or optimal burn speed. I wouldn't worry about the speed dipping down or maybe getting a little fast. I burn my 8X media at 8X and my 16X media at 12X.

Your choice of media could be the problem with the Pioneer...make sure your firmware is up to date for all drives

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Last edited by LOCOENG; 04-07-2007 at 01:20. Reason: spelling

"Recommended" comes from the burning engine based on the disc info reported by the drive.

Sounds like your drive is maxing out at 9X or so.

The pioneer has been 'retired'.

i just wondered why the computer would play it, but not a deck.
could it have been a problem with the lead-in or lead -out track?

thanks for the quick replies.

dow.

It seems to be the rate either averaged up to that point, or perhaps averaged over the last few minutes. At least, this is what I surmise based on how the per cent completed changes compared with how the reported write rate changes. Especially notable is that at the layer change, nothing is being written for several seconds, but there's very little, if any, change in the write rate.

Much the same applies to the read rate, and for reading it's very noticeable when the change in per cent completed suddenly slows to a crawl due to reading problems (such as a dirty/scratched/defective disc), but the reported read rate drops off slowly.

Okay, I admit that I also watch the "bytes written per second" to my hard disk when reading the DVD, and the "bytes read per second" from my hard disk when writing the DVD, which isn't an exact method, but with almost no other applications running, ought to be reasonably close, and indeed seems to agree with what I see in DVDFab's per cent completed.

Perhaps Fengtao will give us more information regarding the reported rates?

The rate averaged over a fairly long time may be better for estimating the remaining time required to complete a task, but it seems to me that for user information, the "current" (well, averaged over a few seconds at most) rate would be more useful. That said, the most important thing is the total time to complete a task, so I wouldn't lose any sleep over temporary drops in the read/write rates.

Of course, as often noted in this forum, for a given angular velocity, the read/write rate is lowest nearest the center of the disc and highest nearest the outer edge. Assuming a constant angular velocity read/write strategy, for a single-layer disc, this means that the rate starts low and increases, and for an "opposite track path" double/dual-layer disc, starts low, increases until the layer change, and then decreases. Some pressed dual-layer originals have a "parallel track path", and for these the rate starts low and increases, then suddenly drops and increases again. I suspect that when the drive is writing at less than its maximum rate, it changes its angular velocity (in steps) to keep the write rate somewhere near the specified rate.

Of course, the rate may also be limited by other "bottlenecks" in the system, such as the maximum rates for the bus, hard disk drive, processor, or memory, other tasks running at the same time, perhaps any copy protection method, the DVD drive itself re-trying a read at a lower speed after a read error, or adjusting its laser power or focus while writing.

Almost certainly bad burns resulting from bad or incompatible media. The reason your computer will play the burnt discs whilst your stand-alones won't is because your computers roms have significantly better error correction than any stand-alone player.

mwdia is the same as i use with plextor and benq with less than 1% coasters.

dow.

That could be. The "stand-alone" DVD players that I've tried generally won't read a disc that hasn't been finalized, but using the DVD drives on my PC and the (free) VLC Media Player, it will read just fine. One way to check whether a disc has been finalized is with ImgBurn (also freeware); if the disc shows up as "complete", then the problem is something else, but if it shows up as "incomplete", then use ImgBurn to "close" first the track, and then the disc (but don't try to close the session).

Other than that, try Nero's free CDSpeed utility. This will also tell you whether a disc is "open" or "closed", and includes a quality test to tell you how many (hopefully "correctable") errors the disc has.

The usual recommendation is that, as a general rule of thumb, start by using the lower of half of the write rate the disc is rated for, or half of the drive's maximum write rate. If this works well, you can try gradually increasing the write rate, or if you still have some problems, you could try decreasing it even more.

What media are you using? Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden are highly recommended, although some report good result with other brands. Note that media is usually manufactured by a factory other than the brand name might lead one to believe; better than the brand name would be the MID (Media IDentification) as reported by CDSpeed or various other tools.

Sorry 'bout that.

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Last edited by James_50; 04-07-2007 at 05:59. Reason: Inadvertent double posting

Sorry, I forgot that you already posted which media you use. Being that it works okay on your other drives and I guess worked on the Pioneer in the past, my guess is that the Pioneer drive has "gone south", but perhaps just isn't compatible with your current batch of media.


PS:

Maybe the laser in the Pioneer needs cleaning?

too late

dow