I agree with you completely, scoobiedoobie

The contents of all the discs I've posted are 'readable' and I agree with scoobiedoobie's opinion on this matter of TRT vs PIE/PIF test. Not experienced 'real-world' failures with good PIE/PIF/Jitter disc scans so far on my intended playback devices.

my input has created a whole OT discussion, sorry about that.

Some clarifications:

1. I also completely agree with scoobiedoobie, in case my point wasn't clear and some came to think that my idea was that scans should be replaced with TRTs, wich is *not* the case. I was merely reacting to CJ2's statement that TRTs were useless when one can perform a PIE/PIF scan, which is wrong. Both tests give different informations and one cannot replace the other. Anyone thinking differently lives in a fool's paradise, where a one-fits-all method allows to know everything about a disc's quality. Why would discs manufacturers buy expensive equipement like CATS, then?

2. TL0, I'm not referring to "unreadable" discs (but FYI, such things DO happen - just that it's not relevant in this thread), but possibly troubled reading curves.

My original point is that in a thread dedicated to "older" discs, I think it's most interesting to see how some discs possibly showing higher PIE/PIF values behave in reading tests, and (and this my personal addition to scoobiedoobie's input) also if possible structural instability can lead to reading problems. It's possible that such instabilites do not show in PIE/PIF scans, because these are performed at 4X or 8X, so 16X reading, with the additional stress, can reveal problems that a scan won't. Actually you can often tell poor quality discs from premium discs by high-speed reading, though 4X scans would tell you the poor disc is 'fine'. Two testing methods, two different aspects. Using only one and thinking you know everything you need to know is wishful thinking.

So I think further discussion about transfer rate tests vs. scans should take place in the dedicated forum (which already contains great input from advanced users: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=163379 and http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=167758), and I'll just say again that I personally would be very interested, IN ADDITION to the scans, in transfer rate tests performed with these 'old' discs... my motto: the more information, the better.
OF course, as DrageMester explains, if the TRT is flaweless, no need to post it of course...

(P.S. Thanks DrageMester and scoobiedoobie for the most sensible posts )

Hi all I think there is misunderstanding. The way I understand Santa's point, what interests her is seing how and at what stage TRTs are/aren't affected. I think it's a very sane perspective with older discs (and in general).

I certainly don't agree that it's "a matter of opinion/taste" as you put it. The relevance of TRT is actually far easier to prove than the relevance of PIE/PIF scans, though it was probably much less the case in the era of 8X readers.

I'm also interested in seing the TRTs (when not flawless) of the older discs that are posted here...

Well, we certainly don't agree about the importance of TRT vs QS. I actually don't say i'm right on this - i say it's the way it is for me - and that's pretty definate. (And think i'm right in my decision )
Also i contributed with scans to both be on topic and to give a simple example why a TRT was unneeded in that case or at least much less interesting than the QS...

Some posts about Quality Scan vs Transfer Rate Test were moved here from this thread because the other thread was being overwhelmed with the off-topic discussion.

May I ask what are your reasons to choose to disregard a test that tells you if a disc is fully and easily readable, and to perform only tests that shows you how the drive resorts to error correction when parsing ECC blocks at a given speed (4X or 8X) but tells you nothing about the actual reading process or about the integrity of the data?

In my opinion, this sounds a little like putting one's head in the sand (don't know if this expression is used in english..).

So I'd be very interested in knowing what are your reasons.

**

Personally, I use PIE/PIF scanning to check the consistency of my burns, choose the best writing speed / firmware version, media/burner combination etc... and check the possible degradation of some discs (which can be done only when an original scan has been saved and is used as a comparison - without the original scan you're relying on pure conjecture).

So I certainly don't scan each and every disc (or I wouldn't have a life, even with this method I have about 600+ saved scans ), but *every* disc is put to the TRT test (in the picky Benq 1650) because I can't take the risk that some data couldn't be retreived by my customers.

BTW if someone can advise me to find a really bad (16X) reader, I'm all ears.

Experience. (Though i'm not an advanced user)

I'm a little surprised that any of you guys don't look at the scans and read what i write Not sure how many times i have to say it but i try again. -I use good writers and good discs so any TRT i do will look perfect.. at least since i learned the difference between good and bad media. The QS will tell me if there's a problem with a certain brand or id or anything else that make a difference for a disc, burner fw. In case of the above scans QS showed dirt on a disc that TRT didn't see. (I know i could just look at the back of the disc but thats not what i'm used to) Off course QS tell about degredation as well... As many others i never saw a good QS disc that wasn't fully readable.

You can also ask yourself why your favorite site and the other large cd/dvd sites use QS to tell if a certain disc is good with a certain writer. I don't know but i think it's bc it's considered relevant.

Also, you don't need a bad reader, you need good discs...

I'm a little suprised because I think the same... but the other way round.Without performing TRTs, you tell us all of your discs show perfect TRTs? Impressive. I'd love to have this special sense. Can you also predict how a PIE/PIF scan will look like by looking at the brand's logo?As many others who burn more than a couple of discs a week (I burn about 200 discs a week), I have encountered such cases. This scarcely happens I agree, but what does happen rather often is a disc with marginal mechanical characteristics, that will show excellent PIE/PIF values in a scan, BUT a troubled reading curve.

Whatever. You can have all the good or bad reasons in the world to not use TRTs for your personal use, I have no problem with that! My problem is that when people like me and others show interest in TRTs, people like you pop in just to tell us that TRTs are only for people who can't scan and that they are useless for media testing (which is incidentatlly why this discussion has been moved to this thread, though I was just originally asking if members would be OK to post TRTs along their scans in the original thread about old discs, and you of course popped in to say that TRTs were useless...), and try to make us look like fools, though you obviously have very little understanding of media testing in general. So.. why not leave us alone? Why on earth is our interest in TRTs bothering you?Who said quality scans were not relevant for media testing? Did I? No, I didn't. You twist my words and choose to attack beside the point because you don't want to discuss the point. You don't need to educate me about quality scans. That's NOT the point.

The point is that you keep on saying, more or less: TRTs are useless unles one uses poor media, and that we are several trying to tell you that you're so wrong about this that it's not even funny anymore.

And to add an argument similar to the one you use in the above quotation...:

1. Ask yourself why members like DrageMester and Francksoy, who are both people constantly trying to explain to people like you that scanning is not the one-fits-all solution to media testing, and who are strong advocates of adding TRTs to media reports, were both successively made moderators of the blank media forum by the CDFreaks staff? Folly?

2. Why Dee-27, respected moderator, reviewer and author of modified NEC firmwares specifically asks members to always post TRTs when giving feedback about burning quality? Folly?

3. Why will you never see a professional review NOT using TRT for media testing? Folly? Meaning what exactly? That's the worst part of your input, this constant accusation that people who are interested in TRTs can only be because they use crap media. Please stop, it gets really annoying, and contributes in nothing to the topic.

I think we should just agree to disagree. I respect you and the mods you mention but i don't agree in everything that's said even if DM does a very very good job. (I'm actually impressed by my fellow dane )

Lite-On combo recorders up to SOHC-5235 and its DVD-ROM drives.

I'm actually afraid to make this post due to all the bickering I find in these three threads:
Quality Scan vs Transfer Rate Test,
Precision, accuracy, and reliability of disc quality (PI/PO/jitter) tests,
CD-DVD Speed Disc Quality (PI/PIF) Test

What the hell! Here goes.

I waded through all the posts, never found a simple answer, but developed my own sense of what one should do/look for to determine if a new media/drive combo is creating easily readable video DVDs.

Of course there are ALWAYS exceptions, finer points, and nuance but for a newbie like me, not knowlegeable about PIF, POF, PIE, QT TRT etc., it seems possible to write a straightforward procedure that validates that burned DVDs are fine to playback sometime down the road in a STB or drive.

Please no nitpicking, just comment if I am way off course and failing to accomplish the simple goal of confirming that a DVD I just burned will have a high probability of playing back in a DVD drive or standalone DVD player, assuming all IFO contents are valid.


"Will the DVD I just burned play back without problems?

1) Use quality media such as Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim; and a quality drive like Plextor, Benq, or Lite-On.

2) Run something like Nero Behchmark at the max rate or at least 8x and study the speed transfer curve. If it has a nice smooth curve and no bad dropouts or droops, you have confirmed that the physical disc is quite readable in this drive and probably won't have a problem in another drive or standalone player.

3) Every few DVD burns run something like Nero Disc Quality and take note ot the PIE, PIF, POF values. Compare these results against previous tests and determine if the results are fairly similar or trending worse/better. If it is similar, then your media/drive combination is still working fine. If not, you need to do more testing to determine if the media or the drive or something else is causing some degradation.

OK - three simple steps. Remember all I am trying to do is get a basic grasp of what and how I need to determine that I am making good(readable) copies. Please no flames.

thx

It's natural to seek simple answers, but there usually aren't any simple answers to complex questions - and you should be suspicious of anyone who claims to have such simple answers.

Your three points are very valid and will be enough most of the time, but not all of the time. There are some exceptions as you already know, and I will mention two of them:

1. All drives are not equally good readers, and some drives may have problems with discs that other drives have no problems with and vice versa.
So even though a disc may pass your tests in one drive, it's still possible that they may fail in another drive or player - but the chances are of course much better with a disc that passes the tests than with a disc that fails those tests!

2. Your explanation of testing for degradation only takes into account degradation of the drive and variation between blank media.
Degradation of already burned discs however, can only be discovered by re-testing those discs at a later date and comparing the results with the original tests.
There are no crystal balls available for this - only experience and hindsight.

Agreed. I knew this topic has no simple answer(s). Maybe I'm aiming for a "rule of thumb" or "guideline" on how to determine if the just burned disc is likely good (i.e. - will be read by most players and drives).

Agree. I tried to cover this by stating that, "If it has a nice smooth curve and no bad dropouts or droops, you have confirmed that the physical disc is quite readable in this drive and probably won't have a problem in another drive or standalone player.

Agree. I intentionally stayed away from trying to address degradation that occurs to burned media. There are too many variables that effect the readability after the initial burn and make later date re-tests have little value, at least to me.

The goal of such a test is to determine how much degradation occurs over time. Influencing factors include environmental, handling, player read performance, and physical media characteristics. How can you scientifically determine how much degradation occurs due to the ambient storage temperature, humidity, and light striking the discs? How much degradation occurs from the dust, fingerprints, scratches, and other such variables? Are you going to store away the actual burner so it can read the same disc after being stored for a year? Frankly, it seems really,really difficult to establish a control environment to conduct any later date re-tests that would deliver reliable results.

thx again for your comments and confirming I am in the ballpark on this.

This is true, but you can adress it statistically and with some practical judgment and physical examination. That's what I do. I have a database of all my scans, and for every "important" disc (or discs I want to incude in my survey for whatever reason) I re-scan after 6 months (3 months in some instances). If there is no significant difference, the disc is marked as "stable". If there is room for doubt, the disc stays marked as "suspect" and gets re-scanned after another 6 months, etc....

One can statistically determine this way if a brand/model/burning method is more prone to degradation than another, assuming all discs are stored in the same way and the same place. What you look for is a trend : is brand/model X showing more increase in errors than brand/model Y ? If discs model Y don't show any degradation in scans and disc model Y does, and the latter don't have scratches/fingerprints/dirt on them, you have interesting clues. Another way to put it: one has to look at the "big picture" and not "cry wolf" for one or two discs that show somewhat higher PIE/PIF figures after some time.

A prerequisite for this is to use testing drives that are reasonably consistent (insignificant differences between several passes of the same disc), which is easy to check. Some models are more consistent than others, but even between several units of the same model you can have differences in consistency (for example my two Benq 1650 units are consistent, though I've seen reports of inconsistent results with 1650 drives).

So you're right, the results are never entirely reliable, but it's better than nothing, and the method definitly reveals discs that show fast degradation (like many Ritek G04 and most Ritek G05).

Scratches: can be detected by visual examination under a halogen light. Shows as PIF clusters.
Dirt: same as above
Fingerprints: can be detected by simple visual examination, shows as an increase in both PIE/PIF + can easily be avoided by proper handling.
Drive: if you only have only one brand/model of discs and PIE/PIF scans show apparent degradation, of course it could be the drive. But if you have at least two brands/models of discs you can start to sort out things. And if you have two testing drives (or more), things get pretty clear.

Actually, I even consider that as long as the results are considered as a whole (not for each disc individually), with a fair amount of discs from different brands/models (at least 100 discs and 2 brands/models), even the impact of scratches, dirt, fingerprints etc... is relevant in testing results.
Scratches impact: also depends on the scratch resistance of the disc.
Dirt impact: also depends on the dirt-repellent performance of the disc.
Fingerprints impact: also depends on the quality (porosity) of the polycarbonate and/or the additional coating.

Happy testing

I just thought I'd throw my two cents into the fray.

The following scans are case in point why I wouldn't use just a transfer rate test. If I had used just transfer rate on this disk I could have easily thought it was fine and dandy. Well, the quality scan shows a totally different story...

165H6S_HV9N_RITEKG05_08x_HT-OHT-ON

Ohhh, very pretty transfer test!


Ohhh, very ugly quality scan!


Anyway, just my humble opinion on the matter.

Yeah, with fast degrading media like G05/G04 scanning is paramount, even more so since these discs stay pretty much readable despite high BLER, until they suddenly totally fail.

I'm with you about not performing only TRTs, but still convinced that using only scanning can be just as misleading.

BTW nice to meet you Ssseth.

Thanks, the pleasure is all mine. I've been hiding in the Quest for the longest thread for a couple years since my retirement. Nice to be out and the open a little bit lately.

These G05's will be going back in the closet after I'm done playing with them (testing out various FW and settings on my new drive).

Anywho, since I happened to have these scans and saw this thread recently I thought it was a good example to throw in a comment about it myself.

IMO it's certainly a totally relevant example

I think the example above also illustrates, that it's important to choose a drive that has a "useful" reading behaviour for Transfer Rate Tests. LiteOn DVD burners in general are so good readers that they can effortlessly read some discs that certain other drives cannot read at all.

Thus it's only possible for a LiteOn TRT to predict that a disc probably *cannot* be read in other drives (if it fails a TRT in a LiteOn drive), whereas it cannot predict that a disc probably *can* be read in other drives.

That behaviour is not useful for a TRT scanning drive, whereas the opposite behaviour (predicting high chance of readability) is actually useful. No drive will be able to predict both with any accuracy.

That's why I don't use my LiteOn drives for performing Transfer Rate Tests but rather one of my NEC drives or Optiarc drive, because they predict readability with almost 100% success rate - if a disc produces a smooth TRT in one of those drives, it's almost always readable in every other drive available to me - the exception being a certain re-linking point problem that shows itself in BenQ DW1655 drives.

So to get maximum likelihood of a disc being readable in other drives, I generally perform a TRT (or other reading test) in two different drives, one being a NEC/Optiarc drive and the other being my BenQ DW1655 drive.

I could also use a Pioneer DVR-111 or Plextor PX-712 drive for the TRT since those are also rather poor readers, but they can only read recordable DVD media at 12x instead of 16x.

In my own experience, this is true ...except with burns from my NECs themselves at higher burning speeds than 4X.
You are well aware of the re-linking points issue with NEC burners.. one of my standalone players chokes on them from time to time. I've come to use my 1650 for TRTs of discs burned in NEC because of this. (because as you know, the NEC themselves have no problem with the re-linking spikes).

Interesting scan Ssseth, as Mr. Drage said though, liteon writers are very nice readers.

My pioneer 111L is the opposite of liteon, being good at writing but not as good at reading.

Sometimes it won't even recognize G05 whereas the liteon will. This is why I'd prefer a TRT in the 111.

I had a 109 but gave it away. It's DVD reading ability had dropped off alot. Which now that I think of it was good! It would choke out doing TRT tests on some media and slow down whereas some good 8x burns with MCC004 had perfect TRT.

Nothing is 100% perfect, not our burns, or any of our methods for testing them

[OT]Strange, same exact thing happened with my own 109 unit...
[/OT]Nor us, for that matter, nor the way we interpret results and draw conclusions...