But thumb drives don't have menus.

Matroska (MKV) may have menu support.

http://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html

Yeah, but few, if any, TVs play MKV files.

"Yeah, but few, if any, TVs play MKV files."

The newer tv's are starting to come out with mkv support. The problem is that MKV is a rather brilliant container which supports just about anything you can throw at it. It supports menus, chapters, DD, DTS, DTS hd ma... yadda yadda. Meanwhile most tv's are pretty restrictive in the combinations of codecs it will play back (licensing issues I would imagine). So, even if you have a tv with mkv support, it doesn't necessarily mean it will play back the particular mkv you hand over to it.

As for usb sticks... I can playback full quality Blu ray rips in my mede8er streamer on usb stick. Now that's M2TS and MKV and not mp4 (mp4 is not a very good container IMO and I don't often use it)

If BTW, you want a truly universal playback system then forget the tv and get a streamer (wd tv, Mede8er, dune... etc)

There is no menu support in mkv yet, it's a pipe dream that no one seems interested in working on I .understand there is some interest on Mac.

PeterDuke:

We all have different experiences, but in my experience I have never had a DVD disk failure (return) since switching only to premium brands such as TY or Verbatim. I HAVE had failures from the use of other brands (-cough-Ritek-cough-).

My point is NOT about the quality, it concerns the COMPATIBILTY of the media with the reader. The media is NOT "really bad" and the error rate is NOT "astronomical". The errors reported by Nero DiscSpeed are typical of what you would get with so-called "good" media.Well, then keep doing what you are doing. However, as riredale correctly pointed out, better media WILL play on a wider variety of devices. This is due to the fact that the better dye used in these media reflects better. It is possible that you can get good error tests when you test on the drive which burned the media, but then when the disc is put into a more "finicky" DVD or CD player, it may fail.

Just out of curiosity, what software do you use for your error checking, and what error rate does it report?

"Just out of curiosity, what software do you use for your error checking, and what error rate does it report?"

The software is Nero DiscSpeed with the disc in a LiteON drive. (The drive must have the necessary chipset in order to do these tests.)

CD: Typical C1 max is 16. I burn again if higher than 20 (or 25 if not critical). C2 = 0.

DVD: Typical PIE max 20 (I read years ago that it should be less than 280. I never get anything like that.) Typical PIF max 3 or 4. I prefer 4 or less for critical work.

BD: I only have a few results recorded and I have no idea when it might become unacceptable. I always use Verbatim discs and have never had a failure on my equipment. I haven't played them on anything else. (Most of my BDs are as ISO files with menus. I play them from my Dune media player.)

Just a note about how to do adequate QA tests on burned media - per PeterDuke post above. As he points out you are required to use the software for the check on a particular chipset. I would add that you must at least average 3 tests rated from the drive spin-down. This is because of the nature of the media drive self-error-correcting which can produce a single skewed result. However over the average of three tests you can get a good idea of the expected performance of the media.

Every time I open a new batch of media, I always do tests, using the same software/hardware already mentioned. Usually I only test one disc, but if I am shipping out more than a few dozen discs, I will test a few more random samples.

The only time I have ever seen any variation worth mentioning was when my drive was starting to fail (something that happens about once every eighteen months, no matter what drive I get). So my own experience does not confirm the idea that you need to test multiple discs and then average the results.

One side note.

I've used HP, LiteOn, Pioneer, and Plextor drives. Plextor was better than any of them. I owned the last Plextor that they ever manufactured themselves, and it really was a cut above everything else. Unfortunately, they shut down their own manufacturing, and the products they OEM'd after that point in time were no better than anyone elses. Also, even though their own drives produced better burns than anything else, they turned out to be no more long-lived than their competition.

The Sony OEMs are cheap and last me a couple of years or more depending on my usage. I learned not to lament or thinking I had to buy a new computer when one goes out.

The Sony OEMs are cheap and last me a couple of years or more depending on my usage. I learned not to lament or thinking I had to buy a new computer when one goes out.I usually go through at least 2-3 DVD drives before I replace my computer. I think my record was four. I've never kept track, but my general sense is that they usually don't last for more than a few thousand burns. Actually, I don't know if it is the usage, or just simply the time spent sitting inside my computer box, even though the latest one has so many fans that it had a thrust specification in the literature :>

Hah. Good one.

I use NEC DVD burners in my box, have a couple bought on eBay as spares when the lasers start to go. Easy to spot end-of-life--burns start looking like doughnuts, with lighter and darker rings. Even the lighter ring areas will play, but at some point the players consider the burn too faint.

Had one burner taken out by a CD with a slight crack in the hub. Pretty impressive event.

Using Nero's tool to graph errors is great, but keep in mind that there are so many layers of error correction that even a burn showing 280 on the scale will still be bit-accurate in the output. With non-premium brands, over time, something must happen on a microscopic level. Perhaps the pits smear out at the edges, or become less distinct.

OK, does anybody have any comments on what are good, acceptable or bad values reported by DiscSpeed? Are my guidelines reasonable? Any results for BDs?

For a DVD, the PIE value of 280 is on the inner parity, which is corrected by the outer parity. It is only when the outer parity fails that you get a hard error. Presumably a very high value of PIE would indicate that the disc is unreliable.

Reply for PeterDuke - doing a universe for QA parameters for burn discs is tough -
1) The software for this testing has gotten progressively better over the years - check with the original author who has since left Nero years ago.
2) The software is specific to certain drive chipsets which have also changed over the years
3) Ahh? and of course the media itself - I still have some of the original CD gold discs for testing - and for the last 15 years my disc library has grown with stock from every conceivable source.
4) Disc media varies from batch to batch, and even from disc to disc in the cheaply made editions.

I would not look for a universe of parameters- but rather keep records in your own circumstances to self-reference what seems to work.

OK, does anybody have any comments on what are good, acceptable or bad values reported by DiscSpeed? Are my guidelines reasonable? Any results for BDs?Best place to get answers to what burn results are considered good is this site:

Club Myce

They provide guidelines for how to do use the testing software and what the results mean. The stickies on the page I linked to are a good starting point.

If you can get the PI Failures to nearly zero, then the burn is probably pretty darned good, as long as the PI Errors aren't too high. My drive doesn't provide jitter results, so I can't comment on that.

Yes, I am aware of MYCE and its predecessor CDFreaks.

I just wondered what you people here use as rules of thumb. Eyeball the figures and use your gut feeling? I guess that is really what I do.

Yes, I am aware of MYCE and its predecessor CDFreaks. I just wondered what you people here use as rules of thumb. Eyeball the figures and use your gut feeling? I guess that is really what I do. What I learned from those two sites, as well as from my own tests is that the real value is in the relativity of the results, rather than the absolute numbers. The reason for this is that the numbers depend on the specific drive model you are using: you can take the same burned disc, and test it on different drives and you will get different results.

Having said that, if you get a burn that has 1,000 PI errors, it is going to be a lousy burn, so the absolute numbers are still useful. But the real value is getting a sense for whether a Verbatim disc is better than a Taiyo-Yude / JVC disc, etc. You can also track degradation of discs over time. I haven't actually seen any deterioration with my Taiyo-Yuden discs. It has been reassuring to have these measurements whenever I read a post or a story that erroneously claims that DVDs and CDs are degrading at a rapid rate, and all of our data will be lost in just a few more years.

Finally, I have found it very useful to determine whether a bad disc that someone sends to me has a problem in authoring, or whether it is simply a media issue. I have seen some amazingly bad stuff, with nothing but red across all the graphs.

Discussion on longevity of optical discs is difficult because of the evolution of media and drives. Disc types I bought 5 or 10 years ago are no longer made, so their performance may not be indicative of today's products. Today's products might be worse for all I know, because of pressure to cut costs.

In any case, I did not do such tests as we have been discussing when I first started using optical discs. Discussion back then was what to do to to ensure a good burn, such as don't run any other process at the same time (I still follow that rule) and disconnect the internet while burning (I don't do that).

A wise collaborator once told me the true test of CD media is to leave it on the hot dashboard of your car for a couple of months. If it still plays, its a good brand.

PeterDuke, I don't think you need to be concerned about having no other processes in the mix while burning. I use an old version of Nero but presume that other burning programs are very similar. The Nero program shows that there is a "double-buffering" taking place during a burn, one inside the DVD burner and one inside Nero. My PC runs many dozens of processes all the time and is also a web server. I've never had a burn failure due to data starvation.

As for the "hot dashboard" test, yes, that would be a killer. Years ago I intentionally left a couple of burned CDs out in the sun, face-up. After a couple of days it was obvious that the burned area had been bleached out and the disk was unreadable.

As for some error rate threshold, I think as mentioned it's nice to be able to compare brands by looking at error rates. Beyond that, I'd have to say that, first, one does a verify after burning a data disk, which in Nero is easy to do automatically. After that, it requires a bit of faith that the disk remains stable. I've done some Nero retests over time with high-quality media and don't see any significant changes in the graph, ergo the data is still valid.