hopefully they don't point us to the DVDA forum ...it's pretty dead

I have as much faith in disk and drive speed ratings as I do in consumer two-way radio advertising "50 mile distance"

These numbers that are listed are absolute MAX'es under the most pristine moments in human and planetary existence. The truth however is that there are so many variables that can't be controlled for even a second by those who publish such numbers.... so you might as well call them BLIND GUESSES

For the record, I don't think I have ever seen a disk (dvd or bluray) burn at the rated max speed (at least not for the duration). I think the BEST thing you can say about those numbers is that they *PROBABLY* represent a particular level of quality.... and that's about it.

Now that's not to say that DVDa is a fast burner... because it's not. I find image burn faster.... but even with image burn, I still don't see max speeds attained.

I too only see 2x for BD writing with DVDA, no matter the rated speed on the media.

And yes, the DVDA forum here is layers deep in dust. I'd buy Encore if I didn't have to buy Premiere to get it.

While I use Img Burn for burning all the masters I author in DVDA, what does it say about the drive's capabilities under the Advanced Burn Parameters / Drive Info tab. Maybe DVDA is incorrectly reading the drive's speed capacity.

John

For "max write speed with current disc" it states 8X...in the drop down it has 2x (listed 4 times)

If the BD/DVD burner doesn't recognize the Media ID on the media, then the program will revert to fail-safe parameters - in this case 2X.

Can you update the burner firmware?

Steve Mann

For "max write speed with current disc" it states 8X...in the drop down it has 2x (listed 4 times)
=======================
OK. That absolutely sounds like a limitation imposed by the software (DVDA).

Does anyone know if there a hidden Internal tab for DVDA.?

Vegas has one that can be accessed by holding down the Shift key when you click Preferences, but I am unaware of one for DVDA. I tried it in DVDA and it didn't produce a hidden tab.

John

John

What media are you using ?

CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray media varies in quality quite a bit, with only the best media being able to burn at the maximum rated speed of your burner.

Often the rated speed on the disc packaging is wishful thinking, so the only way to ensure the fastest burn is to test the media with a tool like NERO DiscSpeed.

Using NERO DiscSpeed I was able to determine that the only DVD media brands that will reliably burn a perfect DVD at 16 - 20x speed with my burner are Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden.

I currently don't own a Blu-ray burner, but plan on buying the Pioneer 12x burner within the next month. The first thing I will do with my new burner is to test different Blu-ray media with NERO DiscSpeed, to get an idea of what media is any good.

"What media are you using ?"

Qptical Quantum 4x (thought I might as well start with cheap....haven't had any coasters yet)
The "LG toolkit" shows it's up to date.

It's not the media Randy. What you are describing has to be a DVDA built-in limitation, and my guess is that there isn't anyone on these forums that has been able to use DVDA to burn a BD any faster.

That said, try downloading Img Burn and burning with that.

John

Thanks John, I'll try it

Last weekend I bought the Pioneer BDR-206BKS Blu-ray burner which can burn BD-R at up to 12x speed with the right media. ( I'm going to have to research different media to see how the brands stack up )

I ran a quick test using cheapo 4x Memorex media ( the only brand I could find at the time ), which turns out to be re-branded RITEK 4x media.

Using NERO DiscSpeed to perform a disc-creation burn test, the speed started out as 1.88x and finished as 3.06x, with an average burn speed of 2.55x. Here are a couple of screen-shots from NERO DiscSpeed showing the media ID info and the burn-test. Click on the GoogleDocs graphic to view it full size:

http://tinyurl.com/4ddgh98

http://tinyurl.com/4fvxg95

BTW, generating "coasters" is not a good test of disc quality. Running disc burn analysis software like the NERO DiscSpeed will give you an accurate idea of the quality of the burn relative to the media used and the speed it was burned at. Unfortunately my new Pioneer BDR-206BKS drive doesn't support disc analysis, so I need to do some research to see which if any of the consumer Blu-ray burners support this feature. ( from my past DVD burning experience Plextor drives usually support this )

"Unfortunately my new Pioneer BDR-206BKS drive doesn't support disc analysis"

LG DVD burners support such analysis. Kprobe2 was writter for LG burners to do this. I always use it to test CDs and DVDs.

In another forum people were using an LG DVD writer/ BD player combo to analyse BD but there was no concensus that such readings were meaningful. If you find something that works, please report.

Update on Burning Blu-Ray Discs

...In trying to get a handle on how to burn Blu-Ray discs at 10x or faster, I stumbled across a small feature in NERO Burning ROM software that has a huge effect on how fast a Blu-Ray disc actually burns.

Using my cheapo Memorex 4x media ( which is rebranded RITEK media ), I can safely burn a full Blu-Ray disc in about 11 minutes if I turn OFF the "BD Defect Management " feature.

With the "BD Defect Management " enabled the burn speed drops down to about 2.5x average, and takes about 42 minutes to burn a full disc.

With the "BD Defect Management" feature turned ON, if the drive detects a defective cluster on a disk, it may maps these defective clusters to a spare area which represent about 5% of total storage capacity on a disc. The spare area are at inner and outer side of each layer of a disc.

So the slow burn speed might be caused by DVDA 5.2 performing BD defect management, so the finished burn might be much higher quality, but it takes 4-5 times longer to burn a disc.

Until I can find a way to test the burn quality of the BD discs I make, I plan on switching BD defect management ON for any important archival discs.

Three words that should never be used together for optical media...

>>>Three words that should never be used together for optical media... "important archival discs"

At the moment archival tape is rated only for 30 years of storage, and most of the brand name BD-R manufacturers are claiming about the same length of time for BD-R archives.

...And Delkin sells a BD-R that they rate for 200 years of archival storage:

http://www.delkin.com/products/archivalgold/archival-blue-ray-delkin.html

As cynical as I might sound, I'm hopeful that Blu-ray media lasts longer than other optical media. I will continue to save my important archival data on two or more hard disks and keep them in two or more locations. With the price of hard drives and the profound difference in the speed to write, I don’t think of that as a burden. Example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145475&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL020111&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL020111-_-EMC-020111-Index-_-InternalHardDrives-_-22145475-L01C

I have captured audio files that have been on one disk or another since 1997. I started with a 1 GB Fast SCSI drive and am currently using 2 TB drives. I burn BD-Rs but I think of the discs themselves as expendable. If I really care about what’s on the disc or the work that went into creating it, I save the image on a hard drive pair.

Now here is my real cynical side. No matter how much I feel that my life sucks, I've got better things to do than worry about temporary or permanent errors on a two dollar optical disc. I or my extended family can find other ways to consume my time.