Hay, first time poster here. BTW, great site guys, keep up the good info.

Like the thread tittle says, I am a newbie to DVD burning. I just got a NEC 3520AW (stock FW of 3.04). And I have some free after rebate CMC discs to play with until my TYs come in later this week. The codes are AF1 and AE1. And I burned using DVDD. Now to the point of this thread, which of the two following scans are better? I know they aren't good; as the media is just cheap junk, but which would you trust if you had to pick one of the two scans? And why?

Both scans don't show any real problem areas so it's hard to say which one is better. I also see you only burned around 2GB of data, this is too little to judge the media. Often, problems appear on the outer area of the disc so it would be better if you burned the complete 4.4GB of the disc and then scanned them again. Here is a link to our Media FAQ. There is a lot of useful information in there.

Good luck and welcome to the forums!

I am such a newbieee!!!

Ok got my TYs today from shop4tech (hope these are real TYs??). How do you limit the speed of the scan? I have 0x to maximum, but no matter what I select it always does the test at full speed...atleast I assume that is what the speed box should be doing, limiting the test speed??? Either I got a bad burn here, bad media, or I am doing something way wrong.

I to all your knowledge folks.

Try again at 8x and see what happens.

Ouch, I'd certainly wanna check into whether or not they're real after that... Take a look on the underside of the disc at the center, I believe a real YUDEN will have a serial number starting with "TG" or maybe "GG" on the inner ring. While you're looking at the bottom, are there any flaws in the dye? It should be a nice smooth purple. If there's a splotch or something, grab a clean one and try again.

Hmmm, in the nero speed settings I only have this: 0X, 0X, 1X, 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X, 48X, and maximum. Should there be a 8X there???

Oh (should have included this info) these TYs are supposed to be 8x and I burnt at 16x. It waved around during the burn like ramping up to 12x at one point then droping down to 10x, then ramping back upwards, did this a few times at different speeds.

TIA

On the burning side there is this: TG00159. On the plastic way inner hub not on the burning side there is this: 2D529A307550PG

Dye looks good, better then the CMCs that I used, but thats just coming from a newbie like myself.

Lets see what an 8x burn looks like.

Here is the CMC 8X burn of the same movie:

I will go burn a 8x with TYs....

Here is a 8x burn on the TYs.

Find another drive, or have someone else try those ty's at 8x. Could be bad Ty's or a bad drive.

Not what I wanted to here...hehehe.

Oh, and for now, I have the burner on the same IDE cable as my hard drive, that wouldn't cause these scans to be bad, would it? The other IDE connector as gone belly up, and I have a new motherboard coming early next week. I guess I will re-test everything at that time, who know maybe both IDE channels are flacking out on me. Thanks again for all your help guys! And thanks to CDFreaks for a newibe posting area.

Here is the 1.UG firmware with an 8x burn on the TYs.

I've never seen genuine TYs burn like that. Both the PIE and PIF are disasters. Setting the burner on the same IDE channel as your HD should not cause trouble, as 2 comp techs. told me they did that and they never had trouble and avoided any possible 'crosstalking' from having two burners on the same cable.

I would retest with the new mobo and follow harley's suggestion: have someone else burn something with those TYs on friend's similar or different DVD writer and see what happens. If your friend's system gives the same result as your burn, it's the media. If they burn fine on your friend's system, then you know it's your system or drive that's causing the trouble.

Something is not right with your scanning speed. Mine does not even give me the 4x scanning option. I would start suspecting something with Nero CD DVD speed. Maybe try reinstalling Nero or reflashing your Firmware as described in the NEC forum FAQ's. Nec forum uses 5x for scanning so it may be worth a look to see why yours allows 4x scanning? If you haven't already use standard MS IDE drivers to see if it fixes your problem. Good luck with your mew Mobo.

OK take a gander at this one, used the 8x burned one that used the 1.UG fw for the burn.

Only thing I changed was using CDDVDspeed 3.8 instead of 4.0. Can I get a UMMMM! out of anyone?

Maybe I should just get a liteon for testing burns, that is the one most people use right? Remember I am just a newbie so take me to the promised land of testing burns...

Again I to you guys.

I think you are right, something is messed up with nero CD-DVD speed 4.0. I tried deleting it, and re-downloading it, then re-installing it, but it has the same problem with the selectable speeds of scaning. And of course none of those speeds do anything as it just tests at max speed anyway. But with 3.8 (see my post prior to this one) the speed setting worked! I have an older version of CD-Speed on my computer and can't get rid of it and the rest of my nero install, as I tried to use Add/Remove programs in my control panel. It keeps on coming back with a prompt for needing Nero Burning Rom disc, I put it in and then it just comes back with a fatal acception error of some sorts and says it can't remove the nero suite. Of course that could be nothing to do with my problems with 4.0.

Ok, this one is the same as the last one, but now at a 5x scan.

I have seen very erratic scans from the NEC 3520. When I compare the same disc in four different drives for scanning, the NEC always varies from the Liteons and the BenQ. I would not use the results as definitive.

Sound like you are having trouble with Nero and that it causing the the CD Speed problem. You tried to delete it and that is why you are having a problem uninstalling it. Try reinstalling Nero then unistalling from add/remove programs. You should also delete the registry and program file folder (ahead) if you get it uninstalled properly.Then reinstall Nero. Think you are the first one to have problems with CD Speed version 4.0. Registry: Hkey_local_machine> software>ahead folder.

I tried that too. When reinstalling it says there is a older version of nero is already installed and that I need to unistall that frist. Thing is that it is the version I have on disc. So its not a older version it is the one I have. And ya I tried updating from nero.com and that didn't work either.

Is that the only registry entry that I need to get rid of?

Oh my gosh, it finally uninstalled. Don't know what combo of things I did to get it uninstall, but its all gone now.

Anyway, reinstalled CD-DVD Speed 4.0 and all is right with the world. I have the proper speed settings and all. It came back with a very simular scan that 3.8 gave me, I forgot to save it, but it would have been pretty redundant as it was just about spot on to what that last scan I posted looked like.

Thanks everybody for the help and pointers!!!

Glad to hear it's working for you. Happy burning!

@CrossG

Is there some official steps on how to install the standard Microsoft IDE drivers? I realize my burns on my Plextor 716a don't indicate I have trouble, but I'm currently running a search and not finding anything here yet on steps on how to do it--just in case.