Scanning NEC 3500A DVDs with 712A

Will the Plextor 712A (plextool) provide an accurate representation of burn quality with DVD+R/-R discs burned with an NEC 3500A drive? If not, then what are the alternatives?

TIA,
CP

The problem with doing these kinds of comparisons (burned in drive A, scanned in drive B) is that the scan will only tell you how the scanning drive sees the disc. The NEC might have no trouble reading a disc it created, whereas the Plex 712 might not like it at all.

You might want to use Nero Read Transfer speed test. If the line is nice and smooth, chances are the disc is in good shape (good enough to be read by the NEC, that is). If the speed line is shaky, pop the disc in the 712 and see what a PIPO & PIF scan says. That will at least give you a rough idea of the overall condition of the disc, and where problem areas might be.

Too bad such a fine drive like the NEC 3500 can't scan...

furballi, I have the same combination of drives as you do, and like ftp1020 suggests I use both Read Transfer tests (mostly on the NEC, but also some times on the Plextor) as well as PI-PO Q-Scan tests on the Plextor.

You should consider one thing though: It doesn't make much sense to talk about an absolute burning quality of a disc - the only thing you can measure is the reading performance of the disc in one specific drive under the current environmental conditions. The result you get is always an "accurate" representation, but only valid for that particular drive at that particular time. I have examples of PI-PO scans done of the exact same disc in the exact same PX-712A drive on two different days, that produced enormously different results (5-10 times more errors on one scan compared to another).

Don't expect your scanning results to be 100% reproducible - and certainly not from one drive to another.

If you do as ftp1020 suggests and test a disc in both your drives, you can be fairly certain that you have a good disc.

Agreed. I've never had trouble reading the 3500's discs, even with ancient DVD players. Naturally, I convert all DVD+Rs to DVD ROMs using the bitsetting FW and tool.

The reason why I want to scan is to test out various FWs.

I don't agree completely.

If you burn a dvd in your nec and you scan it with the plextor and the result is bad, for that case, I agree with the previous posts. You can't be certain that the result is really bad.

But if you burn a dvd in your nec and scan it with your plextor and the result is good, no one can tell me that that result is bad readable in the nec!!!!!!!!!!!!! If the dvd was bad burnt in the nec, the plextor could never, never give a good result.

If your plextorscans show good results, believe me they are good. Only bad results are questionable.

True.

testkop, I don't agree completely with you either

It seems that you think that the drive which recorded a DVD would in some way be magically better at reading the same DVD; I don't think this is necessarily true - a drive can be a good burner and a poor reader, or the other way around, so a burned DVD might read better in another drive than the drive which burned it.

I don't have any experimental proof to backup this claim however, so take it for what it's worth...

There will always be a shade of gray. The Plextor 712 and NEC 3500 don't have issues with reading DVDs. Therefore, if the DVD is good, and if the Plextor shows a good scan, then there's a good chance that the burn is a okay.