I'm now a believer in 4x vs 8x Burns

[rkr1958]

1. The media I use is TYG02 DVD-R 8x (from rima.com). Great media and great burns. My burner is a Plexor 712-a. Never a problems. I've used by Nero 5 & DVDDecryptor (.iso) to burn

2. Just for grins I did a few scans of 8x burns. No PIO errors, PIE errors max'ed out around 30+ and seem to increase slightly at the 4-GB mark. Again ... no bigger, burned media play well in all my players.

3. I though I'd try some 4x burns. Scans showed again no PIO errors but PIE errors max'ed out aroung 10 and were consistent over the entire scan (i.e., PIE errors after the 4-GB mark were similar to errors prior).

4. I'm now a believe in 4x burns even though it takes 15-minutes versus 8-minutes to burn.

[GKar]

Interesting. I still am waiting for my 4x Aopen drive to die (it refuses, darn Ricoh mechanism) before I will purchase a new one. Do you think it is a DVD media, burner speed or Nero problem? Have you tried Nero 6 and experienced this?

[rkr1958]

I've never tried Nero 6. I'm still using Nero 5.5 which I got off of ebay for $20 2+ years ago.

I don't believe it's nero. I get similar scans for the same burn speeds whether I use Nero or DVDDecryptor to burn.

I don't believe it's the media. TYG02 (Taiyo Yuden DVD-R) are top notch, from everthing I've read and from my own personal experiences with these and other media brands.

By the way, I use plextools (and sometimes nero speed test) to do my scans. I've also scanned commerical (pressed) DVDs for benchmarking. The PIE errors from scans of commerical disks are consistent and somewhat (but not significantly) lower of scans of my 8x burns. Commerical disk scans are consistent over the entire disk (0 to 8GB).

[lordsmurf]

I think you're reading too much into this.

[classfour]

rkr1958 - That's exactly where I've settled into - using the same Rima TY media. Which firmware version on the 712A are you running?

I'd gone through every firmware up to 1.06 with mixed results at all burn speeds, getting excellent support from Plextor; but version 1.07 (downloaded from the Belgium site 2 weeks before US release) solved pretty much all the problems that I'd had since I purchased the drive last year.

I even went back and burned discs that would not finish before:

Cheap media like Dupsonic, ProDisc 4X & 8X, and Linkyo without a bad burn - they all play.

I'm not certain if it's the write strategy on the Plextor at 4X, or the lower burn speed ensures accuracy - I do know that 4X burns are worth the time: Having to waste media to save a few minutes is nuts. I still see better quality on Plextor 4X burns than 2X burns on the old Toshiba 4X drive in the machine.

[rkr1958]

rkr1958 - That's exactly where I've settled into - using the same Rima TY media. Which firmware version on the 712A are you running?

I'm running 1.05. I wanted to be able to do bitsetting on DVD+Rs and, if I remember correctly, 1.05 was the first firmware that allowed this. Funny though, I only burn DVD-Rs now ... but I do have bitsetting capability. Since 1.05 works well for me I don't see a reason to upgrade. I've learn to believe in the old saying, "If it ain't broke don't fix it".

I think you're reading too much into this.

I know that scan of burns is very inexact ... however, I consistently see a factor of 3 lower PIE errors (using plextools) on 4x versus 8x burns. Why do you think this is not compelling? In your opinion & experience, would be a compelling test and test result for measuring the quality of burns?

[lordsmurf]

Well, the "scans" you're doing are only one of the tests. Never use one single test for quality.

Surface scans, read speed, PI/PO scans, player tests, etc. Use the whole arsenal to judge, not just one kind of test. Can be very misleading.

[classfour]

rkr1958:

After upgrading to firmware 1.07, I noted the following:

When burning, the drive buffer does not cycle - it stays
at 100% through the burn. On previous firmwares, the
drive buffer went completely wild, on a machine with
768MB RAM. It may be worth watching during a burn on
the Plextor drives. I'm certain the drive isn't/wasn't bad -
I've burned 500 to 600 discs with it during the past 10
months.
Plextor's tech - nice guy - asked me to
uninstall various programs, which seemed to help....
but NOT as much as upgrading to firmware 1.07 - that
cured it! I'm in the process of building another machine
for burning - will have 2 712A's - they will both have firmware
1.07. BTW: My 712A had FW 1.05 when delivered, I installed
each upgrade progressively - if FW 1.05 had worked, I'd
have stuck to it.

Lordsmurf: I do scan some of my discs, both with Plextools
on one machine, and Nero CD Speed on a machine with an
NEC burner (another with a Sony drive), to gauge the
quality of the disc: If I see a noticeable spike after 4GB
on a few burns, that brand of disc falls into the suspect
category - and is used for testing & under 4GB burns.

The TY discs from rima have thus far burned to 4.38 (4.7) GB
without any coasters - as have Verbatims. Some of the fake
TYs & others have made it into the "suspect" pile.

[rkr1958]

rkr1958:

After upgrading to firmware 1.07, I noted the following:

When burning, the drive buffer does not cycle - it stays
at 100% through the burn. On previous firmwares, the
drive buffer went completely wild, on a machine with
768MB RAM. It may be worth watching during a burn on
the Plextor drives.

I'm running with 1024-MB of RAM. At all burn speeds 8x, 4x (even 12x on a DVD+R) my buffer is very stable and stays around 95%+ (or better).

I love my Plextor 712a. I got over a year ago from Tiger Direct for around $40 after rebate. It replaced my Sony DRU-500a which I paid around $325 after rebate around 3 years ago. My Plextor has been a workhorse and produced very good burns ... compared to by DRU-500a which could only write reliably at 2x.

[classfour]

That could've been the source of my problems - maybe Plextor changed the firmware to work with less RAM???

That should be fixed on my new build - 1.5GB RAM.

BTW: For final testing of DVD-R quality - the disc goes in the pickiest
player I own - if it don't play, it don't stay!

[Gen-An]

Plextor drives tend to get higher PIE/PIF with -R anyway. The 716A does better with TYG02 than the 712A IMO, but it's not like TYG02 performs *poorly* at 8x on the 712A.

[chas0039]

Keep in mind, as smurf said, there is more to testing than the max peak of the PI errors. You also need to conside the total PIF and PIE.

I have seen some burners that do better on some media at slower speeds and I have seen the exact opposite. While it is a general rule that +R can improve at slower speeds and -R are the opposite this is not always the case.

The point is, don't fall into the trap of thinking this is the case for everything. I don't own a Plextor, and my TYG02 performs better at 8X in all 7 different drives I own. My older Ritek R03 all improves at 4X or 6X as opposed to 8X. My Ritek G05 used to burn better at 8X but I have now seen a 1000% increase in the max of the PIE and have had to reburn all of it before it became unreadable. Only 3 months old; rather a short useful life.