Hi, Guys & Girls,

I haven't been in this section for quite a while now (I've been hanging around the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray area), but I thought I'd better post this information.

I strongly urge anyone who has used Ritek GO4 DVD-R (4X) media to check their recordings. Many of mine are now failing after three years.

It seems my Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden discs are still holding up fine.

I also should mention that I do have a few hundred RAM discs that are now seven years old and still perfect.

I hope not too many are affected by this problem.

VN, thanks for the heads up. How do you store your discs? Just curious.

Did you test the error rates on your burns after you made them? It may be that they were marginal to begin with, and this can happen even with good media depending on the combination of media, burner, and firmware.

I've been checking the error rates on my RITEKG05 (Maxell 8X) DVD-R regularly and so far (at about 1 year and counting) it's holding up as well as if not better than my Taiyo Yuden burns.

Sean, I am glad to hear the RitekG05 is holding up well for you. I have a number of things backed up on that Media Code (Maxell and maybe Memorex) and I have read some horror stories about RitekG05 elsewhere. Mine all seem to playback well at this point.

I have read quite a few horror stories about older Ritek G04 failing pretty fast lately. I'd definitely be checking them. Thankfully I never really burned any Ritek media so I can't add personal opinions, other than this is NOT an isolated incident.

The important point is that if you don't actually test your media then you're flying blind. Simply playing a disc back is really no indication at all - the disc may be as pure as the driven snow or it may be riddled with errors that the DVD player is just barely able to correct using the built-in Error Correction Codes (ECC). Either way you see exactly the same thing, until that one extra "error that broke the DVD's back" takes out the table of contents on your disc...

Remember, it's not just a media issue. The burner in my Pioneer DVD recorder gives better results on the Ritek media than the much-vaunted Taiyo Yuden. Each media / burner / firmware combination seems to give different results, and without testing you have no idea whether it's a good combination or a lousy one.

Did you test the error rates on your burns after you made them? .

I am sure I am not the only clueless one out there. Just the only one fool enough to ask. Please teach us how to test the error rates on our burns. :o

Thanks!

I am sure I am not the only clueless one out there. Just the only one fool enough to ask. Please teach us how to test the error rates on our burns. :oYou need a PC with a DVD burner and software that's capable of displaying the correctable and uncorrectable errors on the disc. I use the "PlexTools" software that came with my Plextor PX-716A burner. It produces output similar to the attached picture. The horizontal axis represents the length of the track on the disc (measured in gigabytes), and the vertical axis represents the number of errors for every 8 ECC blocks.

All DVDs, even commercially pressed ones, have at least some correctable errors. They're normally fixed on the fly by the drive as it reads the data, but if the error rate gets too high then the ECC codes won't be able to save the day and you'll have (at best) a pixellated image or (at worst) a disk which can't be read because the table of contents is hosed.

In the attached picture the dark line at the "280" mark is the maximum allowable error rate as specified by the DVD standards association. Discs can often be read even with errors in excess of this rate, but as long as they're below this rate they're probably OK (the Plextools software shows red samples for uncorrecable errors, but there are none in the attached picture).

Since the organic dyes in DVD-R media degrade over time (supposedly decades rather than months), my preference is to start with the lowest error rates possible on the assumption that this will give better longevity.

Even the "good quality" 16X media that I've tried with my Pioneer DVD recorder has error rates can get well into the 200's rather than the 10's or so in the attached picture. This in spite of the fact that I've always bought "quality media". But those discs play perfectly and I would never have known that I had TWENTY times more errors on those 16X discs without testing. As a result I avoid 16X media as much as possible (but that doesn't mean they won't work well for you and your burner).

Sean, to clarify further..... Did/do you burn your 16x media at 16x, or at 8x, and if so do you see any difference in quality at the different burn speeds?

You need a PC with a DVD burner and software that's capable of displaying the correctable and uncorrectable errors on the disc. I use the "PlexTools" software that came with my Plextor PX-716A burner. It produces output similar to the attached picture. The horizontal axis represents the length of the track on the disc (measured in gigabytes), and the vertical axis represents the number of errors for every 8 ECC blocks.

All DVDs, even commercially pressed ones, have at least some correctable errors. They're normally fixed on the fly by the drive as it reads the data, but if the error rate gets too high then the ECC codes won't be able to save the day and you'll have (at best) a pixellated image or (at worst) a disk which can't be read because the table of contents is hosed.

In the attached picture the dark line at the "280" mark is the maximum allowable error rate as specified by the DVD standards association. Discs can often be read even with errors in excess of this rate, but as long as they're below this rate they're probably OK (the Plextools software shows red samples for uncorrecable errors, but there are none in the attached picture).

Since the organic dyes in DVD-R media degrade over time (supposedly decades rather than months), my preference is to start with the lowest error rates possible on the assumption that this will give better longevity.

Even the "good quality" 16X media that I've tried with my Pioneer DVD recorder has error rates can get well into the 200's rather than the 10's or so in the attached picture. This in spite of the fact that I've always bought "quality media". But those discs play perfectly and I would never have known that I had TWENTY times more errors on those 16X discs without testing. As a result I avoid 16X media as much as possible (but that doesn't mean they won't work well for you and your burner).

Do you check every disc or just random samplings?
This was very helpful.
Thanks

Sean,

This is some great information. Thanks.

Do you check every disc or just random samplings?I've been checking each disk every 3 months, but that's because I'm excessively paranoid with too much time on my hands. :D I'm slacking off to once a year for the stuff that's over a year old.

My recommendation for the less obsessive among you is to at least check a few discs from every cakebox or package you buy at least after the initial burns. My experience is there's more variation between different spindles than there is between the discs that were packaged together. From what I've seen with 8X Ritek (RITEKG05), MCC and Taiyo Yuden media, if the initial burn is OK then you shouldn't have anything to worry about for at least at year.

You should be aware that the error rates you'll see vary by 10, 20 or even 30%, even if you test the same disk several times in a row. This whole DVD reading thing is a lot precise than it would first appear, and it's pretty obvious that the without error correction the whole thing would fall apart. But the ECC codes are very good and have lots of redundancy, so there's a nice big safety margin as long as the burns are decent to start with.

Sean, to clarify further..... Did/do you burn your 16x media at 16x, or at 8x, and if so do you see any difference in quality at the different burn speeds?I use my Pioneer 633 DVD recorder to burn discs, and I have no direct control over the speed. Since I don't have any choice in this area I've not really paid a lot of attention to the burn speed, but I believe I've read elsewhere in this forum that the burner appears to run at 12X.

Even if I could tell you that, for example, 16X media burned better at 8X in my burner, you'd be wise to verify that for yourself rather than relying on my or someone else's results. Even the same burner and the same media can give different results with different firmware. My error rates went down substantially after upgrading my Plextor drive's firmware from V1.04 to V1.09 (these are the reported read errors and don't reflect a change in the discs burned on the Pioneer, just on the Plextor's ability to read them).

The important point is that if you don't actually test your media then you're flying blind. Simply playing a disc back is really no indication at all - the disc may be as pure as the driven snow or it may be riddled with errors that the DVD player is just barely able to correct using the built-in Error Correction Codes (ECC). Either way you see exactly the same thing, until that one extra "error that broke the DVD's back" takes out the table of contents on your disc...

Remember, it's not just a media issue. The burner in my Pioneer DVD recorder gives better results on the Ritek media than the much-vaunted Taiyo Yuden. Each media / burner / firmware combination seems to give different results, and without testing you have no idea whether it's a good combination or a lousy one.

I've had my new computer for almost 4 months now so I think it's time I start to test my discs even tho I only use Taiyo Yuden.. It's an HP computer and the burner is made by Toshiba/Samsung.. TSST corp. TS H652L.. Can anyone suggest a good free software scanning tool?

thanks

If I use a device like this (http://www.supermediastore.com/sony-dvd-duplicator-tower-dvd-duplicators-1-to-1.html) to copy my home-made DVDs, will it just make a bit-for-bit copy, errors and all, or will it apply the error correction and then make a error-corrected copy of the original?

I have a lot on Ritek DVDs, much of it not easily replaceable. With the cost of a replacement disk only a few cents, it seems like the prudent thing to do is to make new disks on T-Y blanks.

Can anyone suggest a good free software scanning tool?I understand a lot of folks use Nero...

If I use a device like this (http://www.supermediastore.com/sony-dvd-duplicator-tower-dvd-duplicators-1-to-1.html) to copy my home-made DVDs, will it just make a bit-for-bit copy, errors and all, or will it apply the error correction and then make a error-corrected copy of the original?It will read the source disc, correcting the errors (unless there are too many for the ECC codes to deal with), and then write the copy to the new disc with it's own, new set of errors. So logically speaking it would be like making a copy of a pristine disc. If the source disc has a lot of correctable errors then the copy could have fewer errors than the original.

I recently bought a Lite-On External DVD Burner that allows me to do Quality Scans. My Ritek G05's are HORRIBLE. They were Maxell so I thought I was buying quality - guess not. :mad: :eek: :(

"....This whole DVD reading thing is a lot precise than it would first appear...."
Did you mean to say "a lot LESS precise"?

Did you mean to say "a lot LESS precise"?Yup.

Looks like my ability to write clearly is also a lot less precise than I'd expect... :p

Sean
Your explamation in post #8 is very good.
You can also test for disk errors with Nero's DVD Speed. If you have Nero. click Start> Ahead Nero> Tool Kit> DVD Speed (or CD speed). You also need a DVD Burner than can check for the critical errors, not all do. Also you should test at 4x.
If you have a lite-on they have a lite-on only free tool, called K-probe.

Here are a bunch of links.
DVD Speed
http://www.cdspeed2000.com
How and why on testing burn quality of disks
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=61943
Here is the CDspeed discussion, tutorial thread. It starts out with the old program, but gets to the newer one.
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=96285
Here's the one about understanding the test results
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=80545
This describes DVD blank quality
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

Thanks Mike

Edit, updating links.
There used to be a supported drives list, but that link isn't working, if I can find one I'll post it.

I sure wish all drives supported the testing! I have what I thought was a great drive, an HP840i, but even with the Nero software, it doesn't seem to work. Some of the test options are grayed out when I try to use it for testing.

Theron

Theron,I have an NEC ND3500AG which is a good drive, but NEC doesn't enable scanning for whatever reason. The Lite-On (cheapo) External I bought does allow quality scans... Go figure....

Same here. I have Panasonic, Lite-On and LG burners. I use the LG for all my burns since it does the best job, but only the Lite-On works with Nero CD-Speed to do quality scans.

VN, thanks for the heads up. How do you store your discs? Just curious.


Reply: I store my discs within the hard suitcases sold by Meritline and SmartMedia. The discs hang vertically in plastic sleeves. The room is climate controlled.

Quote: Did you test the error rates on your burns after you made them?

Yes, Sean, and as a matter of fact I have the same model Plextor as you. But there was one peculiarity that should have raised a flag: If I burned the Ritek discs at more than 4X they would not play on my Denon 3910. Burning them at 4X solved that particular problem.

And I should add that a friend who also does many recordings has been discovering the same problem with his GO 4 Riteks. He also uses Plextor and Pioneer burners.

Quote: Remember, it's not just a media issue. The burner in my Pioneer DVD recorder gives better results on the Ritek media than the much-vaunted Taiyo Yuden. Each media / burner / firmware combination seems to give different results, and without testing you have no idea whether it's a good combination or a lousy one.

Reply: Yes, this is a fact that I've come to realize the hard way. I've always assumed I was safe with the Plextors, but now I'm conducting some further research.

There also is an older thread "Disc Fade is Real" that has some interesting information. (At the moment the search function is acting buggy so I can't find the link).