Does burning speed matter

[vitualis]

So are you completely dismissing waldok's experience then?

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>As far as I'm concerned, I have noticed blocky videocds when burnt at 8x, and correct ones when burnt at 2x (same blank CD-Rs used). </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Try doing a search of the forums. This is a recurring theme. As far as I'm concerned, this phenomenon is fact for some systems. You are the only one here that is denying there is a problem. If you can prove to me that phenomenon that waldok described has a psychological basis rather than a true physical one, then I would agree with you.

That YOU have never experienced this is rather meaningless. I never have a problem with burn speed either but I don't pretend that this problem doesn't exist for other people.

Furthermore, there has already been a simple solution found for many people. Also, as I have written before, this phenomenon has an easy to explain hypothesis.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>speedy, don't be so quick to dismiss other people's experience.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I state this again. YOU are not helping anyone by denying the existence of a problem when the original poster (Bullworth) clearly observed and described one. Just because it doesn't fit into your understanding of how CD media and DVD players work doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist and it clearly does.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>So far you haven't come close to doing anything but saying there are problems without identifying them specifically which helps no one.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm sorry, but I don't see you posting any solutions?? But of course, you deny that there is a problem in the first place. The solution in this situation is simple... it has been posted dozens of times, and for those people, it works. Surely simply highlighting this potential issue already helps those people where this phenomenon is applicable.

Regards.

_________________
Michael Tam

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vitualis on 2001-09-24 19:18:50 ]</font>

[AT]

IMHO, gererally speaking, burning speed have no impact on VCD/SVCD quality.

Through I'm not known for sure, I don't think high speed burning would give a light "hole", and slow burning would result a deep "hole". I think there are relative the same, giving the fact there are designed to do the job. laser beam has a lightling fast speed so the rotation speed of the CD media pretty much won't make a difference.

So it all down to we say it from which aspect, I believe vitualis may be correct under the condition of not so good media and/or DVD player. But I disagree with what he said about digital and anolog. One of the advantage of digital over analog is that digital can overcome relative high "value shifting" (better tolerance), for example, in digital domain, system can consider everything between 0.51 to 1 as 1, 0 to 0.5 as 0 (just to make an example, not a reality), so in case of burning a media, even high speed does make a "lighter hole", it still doesn't matter.

Then why some people experienced the difference regarding high speed and low speed? Besides what vitualis had said, I would say it's the system, including CPU power and hard disk speed, made the difference.

When you burn the CD at 8X or 16X speed, CPU bearing a heavy load, and you hard disk need transfer data at either 1.2MB (8X), or 2.4MB (16X) a second. Notice that the CPU power is also essential to the data transfer speed of the hard disk, so even you have a high speed hard disk, you still can't achieve high data transfer rate without a powerful CPU. Unless you have a relative high power CPU and a high speed hard disk, there will be some problem to keep up suppling the CD burner with steady data streem, thus the bad quality VCD/SVCD.

Having said above, it's clear that when I said "generally speaking", I mean you have a system suitable for this kind of the job.

One thing is right of what speedy said, we need to give spicifications and conditions of our experiments when discussion certain issues, so all of us knom what we are taliking about.

For my personally experience, with my PIII 800, 512MB memory, 20GB 7200RPM hard disk as data disk (seperate from boot disk), I tested from 1X to 16X with TDK velo CD 8-4-32(no burn proof), and Digital Research 16-10-40 (with burn proof), in normal situation, I did not see the difference.

recently, I needed to do 100+ VCD direct copy (TV series), I did it at 16X, a few of them did have quality issues, after dropping the speed to 8X (just for those few disks), the problem solved. At the time, I found those few disks were very hard to read by my CD-ROM drive, that's why they are hard to burn at high speed. This is another case when we need lower the burning speed.

[waldok]

Hmmmm...Same situation I had known about audio cd-Rs. Team A wants Team B to prove what they say, and Team B wants Team A to do the same. I personaly don't care about proving anything to anybody. I think people give the information here for what it is, their experience about it and the point is not to have to prove evrything everytime someone says something.

Anyway, yesterday evening, I experienced this again. I burnt a SVCD for testing a one pass encoding compared to 3passes encoding. This was done on a CD-RW (brand TDK) and when I played it on my Tokai 715 (aka Raite or yamakawa), I had block from time to time, sound drops and so on.
SO I burnt it again, on the same CD-RW, at 2x speed, and then, no problems...

I also noticed that CD-Rs could be burnt at 4x speed with less problems than CD-RW in the resulting movie.

So for me, there is an effect, and honestly, I surely won't spend hours trying to convince anybody about it. I know how to produce good SVCDS and the solution is 2x speed, congratulations to those who can burn at 8x without any problems

Let everybody do as they please, the time we spend arguing about this is lost for burning great SVCDs

Waldok.

[vitualis]

Once again, let me stress that burn speed is unlikely to make a quality difference if your DVD player is DESIGNED to read CD-R/W media. This is not the issue and I don't dispute this... indeed, I agree with this and have stated as such in posts above (twice).

However, is is CLEAR that burn speed does make a difference in some situations where the DVD player has not been designed to read CD-R/W media. The post by waldok just above describes this PERFECTLY and I can't believe people are still debating on the existence of this phenomenon.

I'm have a hypothesis on what causes this (which I detailed before) but of course, I'm not 100% sure. I'm not an engineer. In any case, there are two obvious solutions: burn at lower speeds on current equipment or get a better DVD player.

I have to agree with AT's sentiment on the "light hole" vs. "deep hole" thing. I'm not entirely convinced that this is the issue either -- but whatever the underlying mechanism, there is a real effect on some equipment.

I find it hard to believe that buffer underruns are cause though -- otherwise there would be quality problems for high speed burning for all types of discs (audio cds, CD-ROMs as well as VCDs).

As for my previous post on "digital data", I stand by my argument. Digital data is no more then a form of data representation ultimately on a physical medium, thus in a sense "analogue". I agree with AT that digital data CAN be made more robust as it arbitarily quantitizes the signal (i.e., 0-0.5 = 0 and 0.51-1.0 = 1) but this is by no means certain or foolproof. Assuming that the reading mechanism is 100% to specs, the physical medium can still degrade or be damaged.

However, in the case of CD-R/W media in DVD players (esp. those not designed for CD-R/W media) the normal above assumption that the reading mechanism is 100% to specs no longer applies.

As a simple analogy, consider some of the audio CD hi-fi systems when CD-R media was first released. Many of these audio CD players would play audio CDs with crackles and skips. On most CD-ROM drives though, these audio discs on CD-R would play perfectly. The digital data on the CD-R hasn't changed but the reading mechanism is an important factor too. This example also applies directly to those DVD players with marginal/poor CD-R/W support.

Regards.

[waldok]

Hey Vitualis,

Thank you for calling me a "PERFECT" describer
I indeed am perfect, I won't deny it

Waldok
THE Perfect Guy (as long as SVCD quality is not involved)

[d4n13l]

The answer to the post is undoubtably yes. Sometimes you can get the best results from single speed. But, it is also possible to get the worst results from single speed. The reason behind this is that the burner writes best at what speed it has been optimised for. It is mainly older drives that work best at 1X, where as newer drives perform better at higher speeds.
The burning of a CDR/CDRW is not a linear process - it varies from burner to burner, speed and the medium used. Before a burner begins to write the data to a disk, it will calibrate the speed and laser on a small designated test area on the disk.
From personal experience I can tell you that my drive works best at 1X and thats a fact.

[d4n13l]

Here are some graphs showing BLERs (BLock Error RatEs) that different combinations of CDRs, burners and write speed produced.
www.digido.com/graphsmain.html

[speedy]

The last thing I'm going to say is simply that no one yet has presented ANYTHING where someone else can attempt to duplicate the problem using the exact equipment assuming they have it which would then clearly point to a defined problem and perhaps a solution if someone else could duplicate the problem and effect a cure doing the same things. I have not seen anything approaching that.

Too many variables are in the mix. Person A as opposed to person B may have a different operating system, use a different make/model CD burner or have different firmware, use different media and different DVD players.

Someone saying that dropping recording speed down from 8X to 2X or whatever "fixed it" does not necessarily mean that's the solution...for everyone. Surely it isn't. That's what I'm trying to get across, I'm not saying it won't or didn't work for some indvidual. I'm sure it does/did. That's great for that person but how does it help me or anyone else if no specifics are offered?

Could very well be the person has a system not up to the task of burning CD's efficiently and dropping down the recording speed solved the problem. Could be the media was bad. Could be his DVD player can't handle it. Could be the hard drive wasn't defragged recently. The list is endless.

I again think making blanket statements like dropping burning speed will result in X effect isn't very useful except to anyone where it has worked and that person can't possibly know if it will or won't work for others unless they provide more factual information like I tried to burn a vid in X CD burner running at Y speed and then played it in Z DVD player and my results were, a, b, c. I'm not seeing that.

[waldok]

Amen.

Waldok.

We will all BURN in hell but the question is "at what speed"...

[Björne]

No it doesn´t matter what speed you are burning in, but it does matter what CDR´s you are using, Bad CDR´s are often difficult to read, and that can result in a jumpy movie, it looks like you have lost a lot of frames, but they are still there, try reading the disc from your burner and you will get perfect quality! = what burn speed you should use depends on your reader and your CDR´s!

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-25 13:18:05, speedy wrote:
The last thing I'm going to say is simply that no one yet has presented ANYTHING where someone else can attempt to duplicate the problem using the exact equipment assuming they have it which would then clearly point to a defined problem and perhaps a solution if someone else could duplicate the problem and effect a cure doing the same things. I have not seen anything approaching that.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

you obviously don't own an acer burner. i've got an acer burner, and i've seen enough posts by other acer burner owners to know that there is a widespread problem with burning at the higher speeds with an acer burner, no matter what brand media. so burning speeds does matter, especially with an acer.

[hitechjunkie]

if i had to recommend a burner, it'd be the plextor...

[d4n13l]

Bjorne, speed does matter - follow the link for proof.

Again, what matters is:
Media
Burner
Firmware
Software
Speed

There is no de facto solution here, everybody has to find the best combination for themselves unfortunately. Everybodies situation is unique, so there will be no 'one liner' to help you out.

Go here to find out more:
www.digido.com/meadows.html
This link has lab test results that show how altering the media/speed with a burner produces very different results.
It clearly shows how changing the speed with a given burner and media can affect the final product.
Let me stress that everybodies situation is unique to them - Changing the speed MAY help... then again it MAY not. The outcome also relies on several other factors as mentioned at the start of this post.
Go and test what works best for you is the best answer.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: d4n13l on 2001-09-25 14:21:08 ]</font>

[vigilante]

Dang o' question confuzzlin' everyone every which way. I think this is somethin' for you to check out for yourself on your system. Too many variables in comp. world to get a decent answer.

[waldok]

THanx Vigilante, you talked gold.
THat's exactly the point and I still don't understand why some people here want others to give details, examples and proofs of spped problems they have. I personnally would be more interested in examples of working configurations, if it was of some use, which is probably not the case.
Like Vigilante said, each of us has to cope with his own equipment, and find out the best compromise between speed and quality.
THere is no 'magical' and universal rule to this.

Happy burning folks.
(and remember that the final goal of all this is to watch movies ! So enjoy your movies)

Waldok.

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-26 01:39:06, waldok wrote:
I personnally would be more interested in examples of working configurations, if it was of some use, which is probably not the case.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

wouldn't configs that don't work be also good to know as well? it would help someone trying to make a purchase decision weed out that which was questionable.

i don't own the best config money can buy right now, but i do have a config that works:

amd k6-3 350mhz, 256mb ram, pag2130 mobo, win98se,
20gb 5400rpm master on primary bus,
60gb 5400rpm slave on primary bus,
creative 6x dvd-rom master on secondary bus,
acer 8x4x32x burner slave on secondary bus,
80 conductor IDE ribbon cable on both bus',
ati rage, ati tv wonder, 1394 firewire card,
2 usb hubs, usb keyboard/mouse, usb multimedia reader

i think it's a bit much for this system, but i've learned a lot trying to work around the little quirks i've run into. i enjoy tweaking almost as much as creating VCDs.

limitations i've run into:

- anything i burn at 8X speed on the acer cannot be read BY ANYTHING (cd-rom, dvd-rom, dvd player), even though the burn ended successfully, so i burn at 2X and 4X speeds

- don't try ripping from dvd-rom drive if there are any other memory intensive tasks running (several tmpgenc encodes, editing a 120 minute WAV in sonic foundry, etc.); with DMA enabled on the dvd-rom drive, win98 does a poor job at memory management and eventually the machine "locks up" or gets unbearably slow; i got around this once by freeing up RAM with a neat utility called RAMBOOSTER.

[johare]

For those who think that write speed has zero effect on final CD/VCD/SVCD quality, here is a series of articles with test results showing that write speed can indeed have a significant effect on the quality of the final disc...

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/cdrdisktest/index.html
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/cdrdisktest2/index.html
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/cdrdisktest3/index.html




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: johare on 2001-09-27 12:01:59 ]</font>