Disc Fade is REAL

I have to agree 100%.

As you know from the other thread, I have a Plextor 16x dual layer burner, but the emergency precipitating that purchase was that about 1/3 of my DVD collection was rotting, and bordering on unplayable on a lot of players.

Even my PC burner couldn't read/rip them to completion without halting on CRC errors. The Plextor burner is also a good reader, and with it I managed to salvage every disk, and re-burn them to a better quality using better media.

I also agree about the Made in Japan observation, MIJ generally equating to Taiyo Yuden or MCC/Verbatim. In other words, a goodly number of disks branded Sony/Fuji/TDK can be expected to be TY if the country of origin is Japan. Maxell is another brand testing well for me, also MIJ.

In my sampling, TY and MCC have tested about equal, followed very closely by Maxell. But suprisingly, I've observed some *very* good test numbers even with lowly 4x CMC Magnetics and Prodisc, keeping in mind however, that all other things being equal, burn quality can be expected to be more consistent at lower speeds. In other words, although I've had some CMC that burned with parity errors as low as TY, the CMCs were burned at 4x and the TY burned at 16x.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim that "disc fade" is real since it is too general a claim. The failure of any optical format is dependent on the integrity of the media at the point of manufacture and is not a general characteristic of the technology (as implied).

In the BeAll situation, there has been discussion on various boards indicating that BeAll 4X printables suffered from manufacturing defects, which included a somewhat quiet recall of certain batches from a specific manufacturing period. Sample banter about problematic BeAll media can be found here

Is disc fade real? NO, or else the world would be alive with billions of coasters.

Can manufacturers use defective materials during production? YES. The analysis should be limited to determining why certain BeAll and Vivistar discs experienced data failure. It is not however due to some lurking evil that will eventually destroy all of our media.

I'm not saying all discs will fade either, but 1/3 of mine did after 2 years.

I've got a bunch of (about 50) Ritek discs that I burned 2+ years ago. I recently tried them all to the extent of playing parts of them in a dvd player - just a few minutes from start, middle and end - and All of them played perfectly. Not a definitive test by any means but an indication.

They're the 4X matte finish. I burned some prodisc brand with the white tops at around the same time and about half of them no longer work at all, in anything, standalone or system. Nex

FWIW, the disks of mine that failed (about 50) *also* played fine in several players, a Pioneer, and two Panasonics, and would play randomly well in several others until....the picture would eventually freeze...skip...freeze....halt.

The good news, was that the testing software was an accurate indicator, and gave a grade, Excellent/Very Good/Good/Not Good/Bad. If a disk received a grade of Bad, it was a certainty to give playback problems in only some, but not all players. If it graded good, that also could be counted upon. The Plextools time-analysis test that rendered these grades took only seconds...but there are free tools available like the Nero CD scan.

Whole areas of the disk could be good, and chunks of it bad. Swapping them into a bunch of players is a very inefficient test, because unless you watch them all start to finish, you won't know.

Anyway...I didn't start this thread, but I will corroborate the premise of Spoffo, that it has been my experience that disk rot was real for me too.

Excellent point, Tom. That's why I'm considering the Plextor.

Yeah, I used to think the Riteks were great until I picked up a Denon 3910.

All the Ritek discs in my library would not play without freezing on the Denon, and further investigation showed they would fail on other players such as the Yamaha HD931(they play fine on my E80 & 85).

After much experimenting, I found that MCC/Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden discs get the job done.

If you think you're not having a problem with any of your older media because of successful random playback tests, try making a copy of one of the discs using Shrink or CloneDVD. You just may be unhappily surprised.

I've been using CD Check to check discs for errors. It seems to do a good
job of finding errors that will cause freezing, skipping, etc. during playback. The only problem is that it doesn't tell you where the error is (time-wise) and will stop checking a VOB file once it finds a single error in it.

I did try running DVD Shrink on a disc that had a error. Playback skips at a certain spot on the Panasonic that recorded it and freezes at the same spot when it is played on my computer with two different DVD programs. DVD Shrink however failed to find the error. I wish it could find the errors because the visual video display would let me quickly check the discs in other players.

I've also tried DVD Info, but find it too sensitive. I'm really only concerned about errors that will effect playback.

So I'm still looking for a good program to check DVDs for errors. I don't have the time to watch the recordings real-time, but would like to ensure that the discs are error free before I start getting rid of the original tapes.

Again, not to be trumpeting Plextor or anybody else...but you have to understand a distinguishing characteristic. The Plextor has special *hardware/firmware* for testing disk quality.

The problem with using Nero, CD Speed, DVD Shrink, DVD Decryptor etc. with a regular DVD drive..., is that the result they give is associated with the quality of the DVD drive used as the reader. In other words, if your PC reader is good, a bad disk reads as good. If your PC reader is bad, a good disk reads as bad. Thus, the PC reader becomes the benchmark, whether it's deserving of that role or not.

The only *sensitivity* DVD Info or DVD Decryptor has, is that you can specify the number of retries for a bad sector. Here's how that works:

If you want to rip a disk, you could specify 20 retries. If the read hardware encounters a problem reading a sector, it will try re-reading the area up to twenty times. If it succeeds in recovering the data before the 20th try, it moves on to the next block. If it fails, it halts on CRC read error. You can increase the number of retries to make more attempts, or you can tell it to skip data it can't read and move on to the next block, in which case the file is corrupted, and upon playback will have macro-blocking breakups.

But there is no inherent sensitivity to the software. It merely makes calls to the hardware driver.

A transfer rate test is usually a kind of OK test, as well. Granted, there are good readers and bad readers, but if you have a disc giving you problems on a DVD player, you could use that as a baseline "bad" disc and see how Nero CD/DVD Speed (or similar speed test) handles it on your PC...

After a few tests you start getting a good idea how to rank it.

The problem is none of these tests are infalliable-- the Plextor gives you a good overall picture AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME. No test can predict how well the dye will hold up, or the glue, or just general aging will affect the disc in a year or 10.

....I wouldnt throw out those precious VHS tapes.

I went down to the local BB and picked up a Plextor PX-716A. Shortly after getting it installed, I returned it for another because I felt the unit's poor performance was due to a defect.

The replacement unit performed the same, which really disappointed me.
Both units failed to read several DVD-R discs that I had made on my E-80 well over a year go. My Matsushita drive could read half of them, and my Memorex DLRWL16 (Pioneer Unit) read them all.

I also was quite annoyed after creating an image with Plextools Professional Software; The image was created successfuly according to the software, but I received an error when burning the image to a disc, which created a coaster. I NEVER had this happen in the past when burning from an image.

As of now, my initial feelings on the Memorex machine are reinforced. The machine is awesome. It even managed to copy DVD-Rs that I'd soaked in a solution of Woolite in order to remove paper labels. Yes, paper labels are an additional curse over time.

My advice is simple; keep an open mind and buy your unit at a store that has an amicable return policy.

Happy Salvaging!

Did you update the firmware (to 1.04) and use the latest software drivers and application updates?

Hrm, I've had no problems with E80 burned discs at all on my 716. The only thing that gives it problems are discs burned in my Sony DRU500a. I contacted Plextor and they basically said "Yeah, it does that.." (takes about 30-45 seconds to recognize the disk). :/

What sort of media are you using? The 716 can be VERY picky. If multuple drives are having problems, I would be concerned about the media, and the rapid deterioration of the discs. There's no reason a 1 year old burn should have ANY trouble on ANY drive. And what were you burning in PlexTools? I didn't know it could burn images...

The early generation 716s were pretty bad-- combination of bad firmware and some hardware glitches. Check the TLA # on the top of the box-- it's a code. The first 2 digits are hardware revision, the last 2 are firmware revision-- so TLA 0000 is hardware revision 0 (initial), firmware 0. Most Best Buys have at LEAST 0203, if not 0304. (0203 and up are considered good models).

Firmware 1.04 is really essential to a good Plextor 716 experience. Any model can be upgraded to 1.04, but it is thought that the TLA 0000 and/or 0001 models may have some hardware problems..

The Pioneer burners are awesome... it's just too bad they can't do quality scans. (I know, the DVDInfoPro software claims to do it but there's lots of controversy as to if it does a legitimate test or not)

What sort of media are you using? The 716 can be VERY picky. If multuple drives are having problems, I would be concerned about the media, and the rapid deterioration of the discs.

Reply: That's exactly the point; I'm going nuts trying to resurrect some problem DVD-Rs and the last thing I need is a "picky" burner.


The early generation 716s were pretty bad-- combination of bad firmware and some hardware glitches. Check the TLA # on the top of the box-- it's a code. The first 2 digits are hardware revision, the last 2 are firmware revision-- so TLA 0000 is hardware revision 0 (initial), firmware 0. Most Best Buys have at LEAST 0203, if not 0304. (0203 and up are considered good models).

Reply: TLA# on both units are 0203


The Pioneer burners are awesome... it's just too bad they can't do quality scans. (I know, the DVDInfoPro software claims to do it but there's lots of controversy as to if it does a legitimate test or not) [/b][/quote]

Reply: Yes, the new Memorex (Pioneer) is really helping me out with all of this mess. As far as scanning goes, I agree with the other poster that it's superfluous if the dye deteriorates over time. And I really don't have time to do an accurate scan of each disc that I burn.

Thanks for your input,
Peter M

Well, it should be a fairly decent reader once it can recognize the discs. Is it just not seeing them at all, or being very slow, or...? It's a picky writer in my experience... it has media it likes and doesn't (even some cheap media)... it seems to hate Maxell media, which is bizarre since in my experience that's some of the best media on the market...

I will say there are no problems having a ton of optical drives in one system. There is no one killer drive that does EVERYTHING well. I have a Toshiba M1712 DVD-ROM that reads pretty much anything you put in it, and VERY fast (with hacked firmware-- I usually hate hacked firmware but in this case it really unleashes the beast). It even blows the Plextor away in reading speed and ability to read anything. I've heard LG DVD-ROM drives are even better. You may want to check some of those out if you continue having reading issues...

Did you upgrade the firmware to 1.04? There is an "updated" 1.04 firmware that came out in February, it may fix some problems.

Webscout. I wouldn't think of throwing out my VHS or 8MM tapes of family events. I'm also thinking of saving the finished DVD transfer to an external HDD as well.

From time to time this issue creeps up in this forum. What a crapshoot this whole DVD Burning is. I just hope the HiDef system will establish tough manufacturer compatibility standards for hardware as well as media.

If the high failure rates claimed in this thread are any indication, then the entire range of optical media technology should be considered a write-off since data loss would seem inevitable. The new HiDef technolgy actually pushes the limits of optical media to require an integrity and performance level which appears impossible if we are to accept the claims made here about less complex media types.

I guess I should consider myself lucky. After archiving over 5000 discs in the last 4 years, periodic tests and checks have never turned up a single piece of media that has failed over time. This includes more marginal bargain-priced media as well. Heck, I can't even get a failure on my fake Maxells that I deliberately exposed to extreme conditions in an attempt to induce corrosion or shifts in the dye stability. I've tried to kill test discs...and failed.

JeffWild. After reading your depressing (and probably correct) statement I'm thinking of taking an extra Zoloft. I'm also thinking you made a pact with the devil.

You know Jeff, I've never had a reason to doubt you. 5000 disks in 4 years sounds like you've been working full time on it too. I mean honestly, you can't be watching in a single task every disk because that's about 250 full time work weeks if those disks were all DVDs. So would I be wrong in asking if a goodly number of those were CDs?

The real point being, is that you stated that periodic tests and checks have never turned up a single piece of media that failed over time. And you haven't acknowledged exactly what kind of checks you made or over what period. Lacking that, could I assume that if you made checks on 1x burns from 2 years ago, that what you would do is pop them into your favorite DVD player, and chapter skip from the first to the last, and then return it to its sleeve? Because if you use that method, then I have 50 failed disks that will pass muster and play perfectly for you.

One of the problems that people don't get, is that bad disks often play fine in the better players. That doesn't make them good disks, because bad disks may NOT play in players that are poor readers. That's what it took for me to find out I had a problem. I had 50 disks that played fine in several players. When I added my newest player, an I-O Data LinkPlayer2, I had 50 disks that could do anything from play through to the end without problem, or could freeze at chapter 19 with my guests wondering, WTF?

The whole point of measuring for parity errors, is to find an objective measurement about which you can form an accurate opinion about a disk. For the test to be meaningful, a result of good should be playable and a result of bad should be expected to have problems. If the test doesn't give that measure of dependability, then it's a waste of time.

What I found, is that the test DOES accurately predict what I can expect. If it reports good, it plays good, on anything. If it reports bad, it may still play good on some players, but not all.

Below is a scan of a 1x burned disk from two years ago that failed the current test. For all I know Jeff, the disk might have been a bad burn from day 1. It will STILL play fine in some players, but not all.

But because I was not testing my disks in this way 2 years ago, I cannot say that it was rot over time. And because it plays fine in some players now, I cannot say the burn is any worse now than two years ago. But what I can say, is all the bad burns were made on the same equipment that is still making good burns today, on newer media.

For an interpretation of the above scan, note that POF (parity outer fail) equals 116. POFs are considered severe, since even 1 can cause a disk to be unplayable. The POFs in the above scan are represented in a tiny red area at the base of the graph at the 1.5gb mark.

The PIEs (parity inner error) are errors for 8 consecutive blocks that are normally correctable by the drives EEC circuit, but can render a disk unplayable if too high and there are fingerprints/scratches/smudges etc. The limit on these is 280.

The above disk is a very bad burn overall. How does it play? Beginning to end, it plays without problem in a Panasonic RP82 and a Pioneer DV563A. But don't try and rip it with my PC burner! It halts on file read error! Don't play it on the LinkPlayer either. It may get you halfway through the movie or not, but assuredly at some point,
....pause....skip....skip...play....freeze....halt.

How true. Always get a kick outta folks pontificating about how the VCR is dead, just like 8-track, and you better get those tapes transferred to DVD....

Tom:

1. My 5000 disc total is strictly DVD media and not CD. Both my professional work and personal/hobby work involve the archiving of large libraries of reference material that has been transferred to DVD-R from tape and film sources.

2. My method of checking comes in 3 different forms:

(a) Users who need access to archived material for review and research. Archived discs are pulled daily for playback based on a client's reaseach needs. This means that discs from any of the 4 year archive history could be in use on any given day, providing an opportunity to get a fairly good sense of how discs burned across different years behave over time.

(b) Many clients require copies of discs (or re-authored segments from multiple discs). This allows for the opportunity to check the readability of discs across a variety of installed PC-based burners (mainly NEC and Pioneer models) to make duplicates.

(c) As you stated, diagnostic tools to check disc integrity weren't really available in the earlier days. However, now they are available and I frequently use such software to check the quality of fresh burns (to determine hardware/media compatibility, batch integrity from media manufacturers, possible firmware issues etc). In addition, I will use these diagnostic tools to examine the status of reported errors on discs burned in previous years.

In summary, discs are being required to "perform" on a daily basis in one setting or another, which I believe represents a broad test bed. At this point, no red flags have gone up that have me doubting the archival stability of optical media. I am in close contact with other colleagues who use DVD media in similar settings so that we can share any information that might point to pending media-related disaster.

Ultimately we have to trust some medium for storage, which also includes trusting that the theoretical/projected stabilty of optical media is correct. Yes, down the road it's possible that we all may discover that there is some fatal design flaw in optical media that makes it a ticking time bomb. I hope not.

It somewhat reminds me of the early days of magnetic recording technology when many industry professionals simply didn't trust it. They were positive that magnetic tape information would "fade away" after a few years and couldn't possibly maintain the required magnetic properties over the long haul. Fortunately they were wrong.

My greater concern is not the integrity of the science of optical media, but the cost-cutting compromises that manufacturers of optical media take to cheapen the product.

Jay:

Check your PM

Okay, I'm determined to give the Plextor Burner a fair shot, but I must say it's beginning to grow tiresome.

I picked up a third unit at another BB (I'd returned the first two mainly because they were making too many coasters). I felt a little more hopeful with this unit because it has a sticker on the box that reads: "New Firmware Upgrade," and the TLA# is 0304.

So far I'm getting no coasters, which is a good thing. But... yeah, here we go: Nine out of ten Verbatim discs that I'd burned on the previous Plextor all received an Excellent with Plextor's Professional TA test (One rated a "Very Good"). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about adding these discs to my library.

But now I'm not so sure? Now only two out of the ten discs rate "excellent" when testing with the new Plextor. And to add insult to injury, the other eight discs are a mix of good and bad ratings. These are the same ten discs that were fresh from a new spindle.

Is it possible these 8 Verbatim discs deteriorated over night?

Not likely, but how can I feel secure with tests that vary from burner to burner?

I'm really open for suggestions at this point. Londo, Vic, Tom, anyone...?

I'm not Londo, Vic, or Tom, but I will say that it's not possible the Verbatim discs deteriorated overnight. What is probable is that the quality of Verbatim discs have become very inconsistent. I had great praise for their media in the earlier days. Now, I have noticed that the quality from batch to batch (or even within a single batch) is all over the map. Due to their decision to contract out some of their production (to CMC Magnetics), they have lost the tight quality control they used to have during the years of Japanese production.

The old question applies: do you want 'em good, or do you want 'em cheap? Consumers spoke, and the answer was "I want 'em cheap". Verbatim has to compete.

True, and isn't the TA test just one measurement? I don't think it's an overall assessment of the media as a whole (I could be wrong). It's just a measure of how well the pits/lands have been burned.

You really need to run the whole suite of tests-- PI/PO (run SUM1 and SUM8; you need both PIF and PIE), beta/jitter, AND TA.

Of course, the biggest test is -- do the discs WORK and play back correctly in your player(s)? I've seen discs with VERY low PIE scores play back horribly; and discs with high PIEs look great.

(If I am totally wrong here, please correct me!)

The 716A TLA 0304 should be a very good burner. It's possible-- if your other 2 drivers WERE defective -- that the discs burned 'incorrectly' in such a way that the other 2 drives thought all was fine but now your new drive is having issues. (I.e., if you use a ruler with improper markings, it will be consistently 'correct' but if you use a ruler with 'standard' markings, all your measurements are off-- what is the problem, the ruler or the measurements?)

And, as horrible as THIS is, the numbers ARE variable. You're talking about measuring the size and jitter of marks on a rapidly spinning disc that are less than the size of a pinhead. It IS a common occurance-- and frustration-- that running the same test multiple times gives slightly different results. It's an unfortunate byproduct of having so much control over the process...(the ability to now get all this info)

I agree that Verbatim is not the "easy recommend" anymore... what are the media IDs?

"So far I'm getting no coasters, which is a good thing. But... yeah, here we go: Nine out of ten Verbatim discs that I'd burned on the previous Plextor all received an Excellent with Plextor's Professional TA test (One rated a "Very Good"). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about adding these discs to my library.

But now I'm not so sure? Now only two out of the ten discs rate "excellent" when testing with the new Plextor. And to add insult to injury, the other eight discs are a mix of good and bad ratings. These are the same ten discs that were fresh from a new spindle." Videonut


That would be a great question to ask Plextor Tech Support. You should email them and see what they have to say about it.


nx211