Conversion to X?

[willrob]

I'm math impared.

If I ripped a 7.64 G DVD in 19 minutes, what ripping speed is that expressed in X (as in 8X, 10X, etc)? Is there a formula I can employ in the future?

[Baldrick]

7.64GB * 1024 = 7823.36MB / 19min / 60s / = 6.86 MB/s

1x DVD is around 1.3 MB/s

so

6.86 / 1.3 = around 5x


http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.2

[willrob]

Thanks.

So it seems that cross grading my DVR-109's firmware to the 1.40 version for the A09 hasn't really improved the ripping speed. It does now run very quietly, but I was lured by the promise of 12X ripping.

Doesn't burn any better on 16X media either (was at the 1.17 firmware before)

[galactica]

so all that hastle of putting it into a pc to upgrade wasnt worth it then

[willrob]

It is quieter during playing CDs and DVDs, and there is new media supported, plus -RDL support.

It's possible the disc I use to test ripping speed (Disney's Finding Nemo) has some serious copy protection that slowed MacTheRipper down.

There is also a good possibility (as expressed on this site and at the RPC and CDFreaks siteas) that some, possible many, 109s arre not up to speed—Pioneer has let a bad batch onto the market that can't perfom to specs.

Or I need to move my optical bus from the ATA 33 to the ATA66 bus—which is currently filed with harddrives, as is my ATA100 cable.

[goat]

I don't think its just the Pioneer A09 having problems ripping and burning to the rated speeds. I bought the A09 from Amazon and flashed it to the 1.4 firmware using VPC in an external box. I then put it internally in my G4. It does NOT burn Verbatim 16x discs at 16x!!!

My flashed Pioneer 105 rips at or slightly better than the A09.

Being a little pissed off at the speeds ... I purchased a Plextor 716 to try out from BestBuy. It actually ripped and burned slower than the A09 !!! (its supposed to be a faster drive) So I returned it.

I then purchased a NEC 3520 from NewEgg ($49 shipped + tax). Flashed it RPC1 and 12x ripping. I used it first in a firewire 400 box. The rip and burn speeds were basically the same as the A09. So I placed it in a firewire 800 box .... no improvements with speeds.

So my conclusion is that the makers of these drive post the highest possible ripping and burning speeds but you are unable to attain those speeds.

If anybody knows how to fix either the Pioneer A09 or the Nec 3520 to actually rip & burn at the rated speeds please let me know.

[willrob]

It's been mentioned that some apps, like Toast, report an estimated time for burning a disk, and then count down merrily as if actually achieving those speeds. A stop watch proves how off they are.

This morning while poking around in my user library logs I discovered the DiscRecording log which not only tells you the start and stop times of burns, but also the Requested Burn Speed and the Actual Burn Speed. Also the method (i.e.-DAO, SAO) and firmware. So I can make firmware comparisons, since I recently went up to the 1.40. It also reports the pseudo burns of MBBench, giving a final X speed, which the application itself doesnt (it tells you the speed moment by moment, but gives no report at the end and clears its screen).

I had noticed that iTunes, when set at 24X, sort of does the reverse of Toast—it will say, for exampe, 11 minutes to burn a full audio CD, and countdown every second of it...but the real burning time is more like 6 minutes, by stop watch. The log times confirm my stopwatch, which eans I can put it back in the drawer and just view the logs after a burn.

The only anomaly I've noticed is with the Disk Utility logs. I recently burned disc images of a couple of very short DVDs (using up some 2X media that the 109 will only burn at 1X—thus the very short content). The log says the requested burn time was 47X and the actual burn time was 1X. I'm not sure where the 47X is comng from—that's a CD speed for this drive, and Disk Utility doesn't give one the option of speed choice when burning disc images. MBBench logs also have this Requested 47X speed.

So while I haven't burned any full length DVDs in the past two weeks, I do have a good record of
1) 109 at 1.17 firmware
2) A09 at 1.15 firmware
3) 109 converted to A09 with 1.40 firmware

According to the logs number 3 is the winner. The reported speeds for the 1.40 A09 firmware are faster and the actual burn times are fast—although never reaching full 16X in my opinon.

[goat]

Where can you find this log?
I looked in ~user~library~logs~ ... I can not find it. I also did a search for it with no luck.
Thanks

[willrob]

For me it was in

User/Library/Logs

and it's called DiscRecording.log

If you don't have one, then peerhaps some application I've run has created it???

[goat]

Nope ... don't have it

[willrob]

I just looked on another volumn which has 10.3.9 instaleld. I start up from it to run Disk Warrior. The log file isn't on that drive. So it is either something that Tiger started doing, or some application I use created it.

If I get info on the file, it appears to be a Console log—or at least I'm offered to view it there. The first entry I have in the log is for MBBench. Perhaps it created the log when it was first launched. The first date in the log and the files creation date are May 6, the first time I launched MMBench under Tiger.

Are you running Tiger? Have you ever run MBBench to test your DVD recording speeds?

[willrob]

I removed the log to the desktop, but kept the Logs window open. I launched MBBench and started a test burn. The log file immediately was recreated in the Logs folder. That's still not conclusive that MBBench creates it. I'll have to try burning in Toast or something to see.

The log for the Test burn on cheap (Staples brand 8x diskcs—50 for $7.99 on sale this week) looks like this

MBBench: Burn started, Thu May 19 15:31:22 2005
MBBench: Burning to DVD-R media with DAO strategy in PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-109 1.40 via ATAPI.
MBBench: Requested burn speed was 47x, actual burn speed is 12x.
MBBench: Burn underrun protection is supported, and enabled.
MBBench: Burn finished, Thu May 19 15:38:49 2005

That's 7 min 45 sec to burn at "12X".

[willrob]

Update:

i removed the file once more, launched Toast 6.1 and burned an audio Cd. The log file was not re-created. So it must be MBBench that starts it. and once it's there other apps report to it.

[willrob]

Correction:

Burning in iTunes also creates it from scratch. So maybe MBBench has nothing to do with it.

[willrob]

Final amendment:

Burning an audio Cd in Toast doesn't record in this log.