CD Speed Disc Quality Test - slow

Hi,

I just got my retail 1620 yesterday (FW B7K9 still loaded), and did 2 burns successfully. But, in doing the Nero CD speed Disc Quality test, the speed never gets much over 1x. I have the speed setting set to max. I also set it to 8x, but that was no help.

I also did a CD-DVD Speed test and it never got past 8.22x. I thought it should have ended around 16x.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
sdm

Download the latetest cd\dvd speed version from Nero here, http://www.cdspeed2000.com/files/NeroCDSpeed_355.zip
Replace the old cdspeed.exe with this new one. Most liky the file is stored at C:\Program Files\Ahead\Nero Toolkit.

Thanks for the fast response.

In fact I am using version 3.55. I went to it after a previous version showed slow results.

Any other ideas?

sdm

Update your firmware to latest version.

Unfortunately, it looks like the BenQ engineers have deliberately speed limited the firmware so that it will only read copied DVD's at a maximum of 8X. I believe that it will read pressed DVD's at a full 16X, but I haven't tested this yet.

A number of us keep hoping that someone will hack the 1620 firmware and remove this annoying limitation, but so far this is not to be...

Yes it will but only so with single layer pressed discs. DL are read at 8X max.

Ok, I just speed tested a DL pressed DVD. And it did top out at 8x. I need to find a SL and test it.

I'm still wondering about the slow quality test. I have not yet put latest released firmware on and retested yet.

This firmware is moderately old. CDSpeed was tuned only a few months ago to work with a new firmware released by BenQ that supported high speed scanning. Your firmware is likely prior to that release.

I finished a speed test on a SL pressed DVD. It toped out at 15.45x. So I guess the drive is locked out at 8x for DL pressed and burned DVD's. I wonder why?

The B7K9 firmware is dated 29 Sep 04. I'm going to flash to the latest and see what happens with the scan test.

My guess is that BenQ felt that a burned DVD will likely have more trouble reading at 16X than at 8X. In order to reduce complaints about reading problems on marginal discs, it was simpler just to lock the speed at 8X.

Alright. Well the firmware upgrade did the trick fixing the slow scan. I'm now at B7P9.

Here is a scan I did. Could I get some help de-cyphering it?



The quality score seems a bit low. What is the driving factor for a good score? Otherwise comparing my scan with others on this forum, it looks pretty good, unless I'm missing something. I"m real new at this DVD burning thing.

Thanks for the help so far...

Now that I look at it again, the PI Failures are kind of high I think. What would a major cause of that be? By the way I'm burning Verbatim 16x DVD+R (MCC-004).

PI erros are low, <280, this is good. But what most important is is low PI failures. Best is when all PI failures are at max 4, but this is not always possible. What you could do to increase quality, burning at lower speed and what I've found out is that defragmentation of the C:\ drive helps to produce better burned media. Your quality scan gives 91% because of the high spikes of the PI failures at the end of the burning proces.
Try burning one verbatim at 12x speed, I almost sure it will prove burning quality. Happy burning to you.

91% it is still a good burn , if it weren't for the spike in the end u would've got a 96 . Strangly verbatim is the best media . A better transfer or burning software should improve your score

The scan is generally excellent.

PI Errors (top graph) less than 8 are close to the best you can get and are an indication that your burner is performing nearly perfectly. However, the most important numbers are the PI Failures (bottom graph). The PI Failures graph was very good until near the end of the burn where it spiked to 15. This is what caused your quality score to drop to 91%, since CDSpeed bases this score almost totally on the peaks of the PI Failures. For comparison, a spike to 8 would produce a quality score of 95% which is what you were working on until that high spike at the end. You can rerun the scan again to see this in action.

This trailing PI Failures spike is probably nothing to worry about, although if you were to reduce your burn speed from 16X to 12X those trailing spikes might vanish. In any case, it's still in the green area (the area below 16 is the green "safe" area). There's no indication of a ramp up of errors near the end of the burn, which often happens in a marginal burn, there's just a couple of spikes near the end. Combine this with the fact that your PI Errors were nearly perfect and you get a big:

Congratulations on a great burn !

Only one other suggestion. CDSpeed is a bit hard to read when you leave it configured with its default "Legacy" colors. My above comment "in the green" would make more sense if you take a moment and reconfigure the CDSpeed color scheme as follows:

Click menu item File->Options and select the Disc Quality tab along the left. In the Colors section near the bottom, find the pulldown box marked as Theme: and switch it from "Legacy" to "Bright". Click OK and then run the disc quality test again to properly see this "green" area (and the light-red marginal area just above it).

So I'm not really concerned about the number of PIF but how high it pikes?

Here is something new. A couple of times I got this message.



Any info on this message?

Thanks

Just ran the above test again and did not get the above error...

Yes, I have had this error also. I and another poster believe it has to do with a bad CVT flash, or possibly this:.....did you eject your disc after the burn & before the test?
If so & you still get error, try this:
Re-flash your drive using BenQ official exe. When flashing, disable Virus program, firewall, auto update........ or flash in Safe Mode
Let us know which solution fixed?

To some degree you need to worry about both the quantity of PIF's and the magnitude of PIF's, but since it only takes a single bad spot to make an entire DVD worthless it pays to focus on the PIF's with highest magnitude. Most likely you'll be OK with a whole lot of little errors since they can generally be corrected. It's the big ones you worry about since they might not be correctable. In general, you want all of these numbers to be as good as possible, since other players may not read the data as good as the 1620 does.

That message has been reported by others. What program did you run to update your firmware to B7P9?

I don't recall if I ejected the disc between burn and test. Should I have?

I just reflashed with the new B7T9 Firmware. I'll do a burn and see what I get.

I used the .exe from the Global site. In fact I just flashed to the B7T9 version the same way a little while ago. I'm going to try a burn in a bit.

What are some ways to correct PIF's? I suppose if I even knew what PIE and PIF's where, that would help.. maybe. I know they are errors and failures. But of what?

Here's my latest burn/scan with B7T9. Any analysis?



What can be done with those high PIF spikes?

SDMagee, what burning speed did you use. I guess 16x. In this tread http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=113166 someone is getting better results with 12x speed burning. You ask for analyses, but you hardly give any info.
When you rip a dvd with a lot of scratches I'll gues this will have influences on the quality of the burning proces too. I would like to see a scan of Hellboy burned at 12x speed.

Your burn it's very good, but there is still room for improvement ( not too much room though)

Yes, I burnt this one at 16x. Verbatim 16x MCC004. The source DVD is clean. I use DVD Decrypt to make an ISO of the entire DVD. Then DVD Shrink to pull just the main movie off. The main movie required no compression and fit on the DVD blank. I use DVD Decrypt to burn. I'll do the same thing at 12x and see what I get.

I wonder about the quality of the source DVD. Would it really matter how good or bad it is? (Yes, as far as reading I know it does). But writing... as far as I can figure when you scan the DVD, it really does not care what is burnt to it, (good data, bad data), but how it was burnt... the quality of the burn. I don't think the scanning program knows what was burnt, just HOW WELL it was burnt. Am I off base with that thinking?

A question about burning at 16x and 12x. From what I see. Most of the DVD is burnt well below 16x as it is. Only out towards the outer edge does it hit that speed. So does burning at 12x only improve the quality toward the end of the DVD? Or does it affect the whole DVD burn process somehow?