Media ID: CMC MAG AE1, -R 8x. Scans Inside.

[steve2713]

Clearly his Liteon will not be able to read those spots on the disc without reporting errors on a Scandisc with PO errors that high, I didn't need you to tell me that. It does look like he got a bad spindle, short of the very small chance that his Liteon is giving inaccurate scans of these discs. I did have issues with my Liteon 163 giving completely bogus scans of +R media burned on my NEC 2500 while it flawlessly scanned any other discs from other drives as well as -R media from the 2500, so the possibility does exist that is having issues reading the discs not related to the burn quality. My Liteon has serious issues reading +R discs from my NEC 2500, regardless of the media.

The main reason for even mentioning this is I've done at least 500 PI/PO scans, using two different drives, and I've NEVER seen abrupt spikes like that, only VERY narrow ones that are typically from specks of dust, that sort of thing. If you're familiar with PI/PO testing and have done a large number of scans, you'd know how unusual it is to have a wide spike (wide as in several 1000 PO errors wide, not a few errors wide) going from nothing to 200 and straight back down again. I've never seen it before, ever, and his whole spindle is showing it.

I'm not saying I don't think the discs are bad, the scans are just very unusual if the scans are accurate. A simple answer would be to do a transfer rate and scandisc on another drive (his NEC), if they show similar results obviously the scans are accurate.

[Fandim]

Heh - I think it's just crap media...or a VERY bad spindle... keep in mind - my Liteon wont even burn these all the way through without errors... (I posted teh Decrypter log of that).

I'm having my wife burn one of her movies on her NEC2500, using these discs. I'll post a scan of that shortly.

Seth

[steve2713]

I've spent some time looking through scans on Cdfreaks.com for similar lookng scans to these since, as I mentioned before, I do a lot of scans on all kinds of media and I've never seen scans like these. I did find a couple of scans on there that had somewhat similar results, so I can now say I don't have any doubts that your drive is reading the discs accurately. I'd just never seen scans like these before now and I've gone through alot of scans, looking at alot of other peoples' scans along with mine.

Clearly you got a bad spindle, too bad as I've had a couple of spindles of these so far and they've been great discs thus far for me. I've used 100's of CMC discs and have always had great success with them, hopefully bad spindles of these AE1's are not widespread

[steve2713]

Yeah, at this point it seems apparent that you've got a bad spindle and you'll get similarly bad results on your next disc They're just the strangest damn scans I've ever seen by far, I'd be slightly suspicious of the scans regardless of the brand of media.

[Fandim]

Here is a picture of the disc.


Top Side:





Bottom Side:

[steve2713]

One thing that I'm curious about now, any chance you could scan that last disc, the 4x NEC burn with the spike near the center of the disc, with Nero CD-DVD Speed? I'm very curious in knowing how the test results compare between the two programs (I use mostly CD-DVD Speed nowadays since I don't use my Liteon for testing very much anymore).

[Fandim]

Also - Something to keep in mind, Steve2713 - is that these burns DID verify, on my NEC.

And Steve, I'm going to kprobe the burn on the nec first, if it has similar anomolies on the scan, I'll just use the one burning at the moment to run CD Speed on. If not, I'll do a surface scan, and a speed test on the other one.

Seth

[steve2713]

WTF? I don't ever bother with the 'verify' function when I burn my discs and I know it is often times not accurate, but that's weird. Have you done a scandisc or transfer rate test of any of the discs on your NEC yet - I mean that as in testing the discs using the NEC? If the NEC reads the discs fine......

[Fandim]

Yes - Steve. Look on the first page. I posted a screen cap.

[steve2713]

My Teon AE1s look just the same as your discs, same looking inner hub, frosted top, obviously just different looking graphics.

Regarding the Kprobe vs CD speed, I'd be very interested in the scans from one of your already posted Kprobe discs scanned with CD Speed, but if you scan any disc with CD Speed with similar results I'll get the general idea of if there are any major differences.

[Fandim]

Just burned one at 12x. KProbing now.

[steve2713]

Yes - Steve. Look on the first page. I posted a screen cap.

Oops, didn't notice it . That's very interesting, any disc with a large block of PO errors up around 200 shouldn't even be readable whatsoever in my experience and everything I've read as well, and your transfer rate test shows that it only had a minor slowdown, down to 8x, which would probably not be any issue at all for a dvd player to play smoothly, and obviously all data would be easily extracted from the disc. I'm finding this confusing, maybe your Liteon drive does in fact just not like these discs :P

[Fandim]

Perhaps, Perhaps. Then again - I've noticed discs that slow any amount drastically like that big dip, often times have skips or at least pauses on standalones.


Of note though, Steve, is that if you look, when KProbing, the total error count is very low...1, 6, and the first one, even, has 0 errors shown. So my Liteon is displaying that the disc is 100% readable on the first one.. Just with large spikes.

Seth

[Fandim]

Here is the KProbe scan. This was burned at 12x on my NEC.

Once again steve, the Liteon is showing no errors, just huge spikes.

seth

[steve2713]

Hmm, a transfer rate test using the NEC to test on that 4x NEC disc with the large spike in the center of the disc would be telling. From my experience and what I've read, most discs will typically play without any skipping if the transfer rate doesn't dip down to the 2x or lower read speed. Of course that's by no means always going to be the case and you could even have a disc with a picture perfect transfer rate still have skipping issues.

[Fandim]

Steve, the one with the large spike is displaying read errors, even in the KProbe. A transfer rate of this disc might be futile...but since it did verify, I'll go ahead and do a rate transfer. Did you want me to do the test with my NEC or with my Liteon?

[Fandim]

Here is the rate transfer of the one burned @ 12x.

(on my NEC)

[steve2713]

I'd just be curious to see how the transfer rate test looks on the NEC, to see how well it can read a disc that is giving the Liteon errors with for comparison.

edit: I've got to admit, with your NEC showing a flawless transfer rate test of a disc that your Liteon is showing so many large spots of PO errors, I don't think that your Liteon scans can be trusted to guage the quality of these burns. A transfer rate test can be more telling than even a PI/PO test. Obviously the ultimate test for DVD video viewing is to play the disc on several standalone players, but in terms of ability to extract the data, the NEC is reading the disc flawlessly.

[Fandim]

Steve - here is the scan on my NEC of the disc burned at 4x you requested.

[steve2713]

Hmm, although it is not a very good transfer rate test and could cause skipping problems, I find it interesting that the slowdowns in read speed do not correspond with the large spikes on the PI/PO test of the disc. They do however look like they are slowdowns that correspond directly with the gradual rise of the PI errors near the end of the disc, ignoring the spikes and just looking at the unspiked parts of the PI/PO scan.

My brain hurts from trying to make sense of this, I need to quit looking at your scans :P