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Page 5 of 6
DVD Burning Tests
We're not CDFreaks.com here, nor do we pretend we're trying to be. Those guys deserve huge amounts of kudos, many pats on the back, and free beer for advancing the communities general knowledge of recording devices. With that caveat, we're going to keep things relatively simple here and focus on just a couple of media brands for simplicities sake. 
First off we're going to do some basic benchmarks and quality tests on some old Philips (CMC MAG E01) 8x +R media I had lying around. This particular batch of media was quite spotty and problematic on this systems Gigabyte GO-0804a drive (a relabeled Liteon 812s), so I don't have high expectations. I used Ashampoo Burning Studio, and made a DAO burn at 8x speed of 4.17GB of files. The burn took 8 minutes 13 seconds to complete, which is a little on the slow side in my experience but acceptable.  Well, the benchmark test shows an unsurprising smooth CAV
graph. Reads started at 5.11x speeds and ended with 12.09x speeds. Random,
1/3rd and full stroke access times are also expected and acceptable. The CPU
usage numbers are a tad on the high side, but not amazingly so considering the
CPU I'm using in this system. Interpreting PI/PIF scans is a complicated process, or at least it seems so at first. Testing quality takes into account two main issues. First, how well was the media burned by the burner in question. Secondly, how good is the media itself. The guys over at CDFreaks have come up with a relatively simple methodology to help you determine what a scan like this tells you. To quote...Use this as a guideline for good discs: * PI (Parity Inner): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 280 PI-8 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 280. * PIF (Parity Inner Failures): No larger areas on the disc should exceed 4 PIF-1 errors, do not worry too much about high single spikes that exceed 4. One other quality aspect you can somewhat infer from these scans relates to a discs readability on other devices. Though not a "given", a good PI/PIF scan does strongly indicate the likelihood that a disc can be read across different devices well.
Using this guideline, the quality test turned out relatively
ok, with no majorly excessive PI errors, and only 1 small excessive spike in
PIF near the 3.5GB mark. Far better looking than most scans I did of this media
on the aforementioned Gigabyte/Liteon drive.  For the next test, I'll be using some Imation 16x +R media (Optodisc R16). Again, I'll be using Ashampoo Burning Studio, and make a DAO burn at 16x speed of the same 4.17GB of files. The burn took 6 minutes 8 seconds. Again not the fastest speed I've seen, but not unacceptable. (Remember boys and girls, 16x isnt really twice as fast as 8x, because drives use CAV or Z-CLV methods to burn. speed ratings are the maximum speeds a drive supports, not the speed the drive burns at from beginning to end.) 
For the next test, I'll be using some Imation 16x +R
media (Optodisc R16). Again, I'll be using Ashampoo Burning Studio, and make a
DAO burn at 16x speed of the same 4.17GB of files. The burn took 6 minutes 8
seconds. Again not the fastest speed I've seen, but not unacceptable.  This is a pretty good graph for this media. Keep in mind that PI/PIF scans can fluctuate a good bit from disc to disc, since the quality of discs of even the same brand in the same spindle can vary. Nothing earthshatteringly off here, with Nero indicating a quality score of 95.For the next scenario, I used the same Imation media but deliberately created a bad situation. Burning a random selection of files (3.92 GB) in Ashampoo Burning Studio, at roughly the 1 GB mark I launched Open Office, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, XAMPP (my Apache/MySQL windows development server) in sequence, to attempt keeping the burning applications software buffer heavily strained. It's no secret that an old AthlonXP1500 isn’t a multitasking monster, and by nearly maxing out system memory and switching back and forth between applications, I kept the applications software buffer virtually eliminated during the remainder of the burn. Why? Well I wanted to see what would happen if you had to solely rely on the drives 2mb buffer and Smart Burn re-linking technology while the system was under a heavy memory and I/O load. Naturally very few people are going to do this and burn discs at the same time. Still, I wanted to see how well or poorly the drive coped with a deliberately bad scenario.   Well, despite my best efforts I really created no drama here. I won't bore you repeating all too similar numbers in the benchmark run compared to the last burn. The quality test PI error graph does show indication of "something" occurring at the 1GB mark along with more fluctuations in results from there on out, but no worrisome levels at all on either graph. Overall quality score is a good 93. Excellent considering what I was doing to the poor thing. |
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