Adding a forum for Media testing, media scans?

[steve2713]

I sent this suggestion to Baldrick, he said to post it in the feedback forum, which I stupidly overlooked. I'll just copy and paste the message I sent him:

I wanted to run by you the desire for adding a forum for posting media scans, such as PI/PO scans and transfer rate scans of burned media. I was thinking of starting a few new threads with scans of different types of discs and the thought occured to me that it'd be nice to have a dedicated forum that would make it easy for others to add their own scans and for those interested in seeing the quality of different types of discs. I'm aware that these tests are not a surefire way of telling the quality of a disc, but if you know how to interpret them, they tell alot. Having a forum specifically this purpose would make it easy for users to look up info on specific brands/media codes of discs and make their own judgements based on others' tests of discs when considering what media to purchase, speed to burn at, etc.

With so many threads being started by people constantly complaining about discs skipping and freezing near the end of movies, etc., having a forum dedicated to showing these different types of tests and how they are done would probably be useful in answering some of those questions. I know that there are people posting tests from time to time in the Media forum and you probably figure if it isn't broken why bother fixing it. But I figured I'd run it by you as I thought it would be a useful forum to have for this purpose.

Thanks for considering it

So if anyone has any other suggestions, ideas, issues with having a seperate forum for this purpose, etc. please comment. If you like the idea of having such a forum, please let me know too. Although I'm not sure what percentage of those burning DVDs and CDs know of or understand doing PI/PO scans, transfer rate scans, scan discs, etc., I'm sure that having a forum dedicated to testing media will help to increase peoples' understanding of different discs and some of the reasons why their discs skip, etc, which seems to be an increasing topic on these forums.

[lordsmurf]

I think the MEDIA forum is sufficient as is.

[RickTheRed]

The cdfreaks forum has a dedicated section for scans.
Pi/pif scans is just a rough indication, far from being a test that one can seriously consider.

You can take a look at cdrinfo dvd writer reviews, you will see that the same disc, scanned with both Kprobe and Plextor (info tools, not sure the exact name ) show very different results.

I also think that one of the best marketing move that Lite-on did, was to offer a free scanning software (Kprobe). Some people buy a lite-on writer just for this!!!! They do not use it for burning, just for scanning.
I can't believe this

However, a sticky on disc freezing, skipping may be good. A lot of post are like this:
- Help, DVD skipping near the end!

And the answers are usually always the same...

[steve2713]

I'm aware of cdfreaks, I don't think that anything any other site may or may not have should be reason to decide against this site having a given forum though, obviously.

And PI/PO tests are EXTREMELY useful if you know their limits and how to use them. I've gotten to the point where I know exactly how many PO (PIF, same thing) errors at a given spot on a disc will lead to unreadable sectors on any of my drives, which is obviously a quick way to determine a coaster. Also, I wasn't intending for a dedicated forum to be ONLY for PI/PO scans, transfer rate scans are very useful as well, and in some cases a more useful test than PI/PO scans in judging how well a disc can be read.

There's always going to be people arguing for and against the usefulness of these tests, but the reality is they are, along with playing the discs on multiple different DVD players, how you test the discs, period. I can do one of these tests in about 15 minutes, or I can spend hours and hours playing the full movie on multiple players to get the same answers I'm looking for. I prefer to spend 15 minutes on judging whether or not I feel the disc is a coaster (and Nero CD-DVD Speed now has a 'quick scan' PI/PO test that can do rough scans in under a minute).

[Fandim]

Steve2713, if you're posting scans of burned media, should check out the link under my sig for various media types I've done, then just add to those posts your scans.

[steve2713]

Yeah I know of your scans (obviously), I just thought that it would be useful to have a forum for people like you and I that do scans to place them.

[daamon]

I think the MEDIA forum is sufficient as is.

I agree.

Start a thread (or threads) for the different types of media tested, then provide feedback on the media whilst quoting the link to the relevant thread(s).

Is there any guide in existence explaining how to read the various tests in, say, something like DVDInfoPro? If not, maybe right a guide explaining how to interpret the graphs (is this easy to explain?) and then post your findings in there, using them as examples.

That said, I think it's good that forum members are willing to positively contribute by coming up with such ideas. Well done steve2713.

[steve2713]

That's a worthy suggestion, maybe creating a 'Sticky' thread in the media forum would be a decent alternative, if no one wants a forum dedicated to it. The 'Sticky' could link to any threads posted with tests of different media, as well as a basic description of how to interpret the tests.

[daamon]

Sounds good - Easy to maintain, matches people's feedback, readily available coz it's a "sticky".

[lordsmurf]

That forum has an awful lot of stickies as it is. We'll see.

You CAN add images in the DVD MEDIA LIST and that may suffice. Maybe ask Baldrick to add an image ESPECIALLY for the media scan. It would probably be more appropriate there anyway.

[RickTheRed]

That forum has an awful lot of stickies as it is. We'll see.

True.
Having too many stickys is a pain.

But a scan sticky, hum, sounds good to me