I thought I'd break this into a separate thread so that people interested in this subject could locate it easily.
Nero makes a very cool free utility called "Nero CD-DVD Speed" which is available here. The latest version, just released, is 4.5 and there are lots of changes, including apparently the ability to work with some Pioneer DVD burners.
The idea is this:
(1) Start the Nero program
(2) Load a burned DVD
(3) Go to the "Disk Quality" tab and run a test. There are numerous options and settings, which you can play with later.
(4) You will eventually get two graphs. The upper one shows "PI errors" and the lower one shows "PI failures." There will also be a quality score shown at the lower right.
(5) As you can see, a DVD is chock full of lots of read errors. All that saves us is the multiple levels of error correction built into the format. You can go here for a fascinating education in how to interpret the data. Here's the short version:
--PI ERRORS (the top graph) are no big deal, as long as the whole disk is not full of many thousands of them. The software fixes them on-the-fly;
--PI FAILURES (the bottom graph) are much more serious, but again, the drive can miraculously fix these, too, as long as there aren't broad swaths of numerous failures. The number of these failures are reflected in that quality score down at the lower-right.
That's it. You can read the above-referenced board for hours of discussion with people who know what they are talking about (including Erik Deppe, the actual author of this amazing tool), but my conclusion is this--every DVD disk contains many thousands of read errors, and most DVD players can fix them all, BUT the more errors you have, the more time it takes to fix them. Eventually you reach the point where the player has to slow way down in order to fix them, and then you get video playback glitches. If there are too many errors, the player simply chokes and freezes.
Happy burning.
Nero makes a very cool free utility called "Nero CD-DVD Speed" which is available here. The latest version, just released, is 4.5 and there are lots of changes, including apparently the ability to work with some Pioneer DVD burners.
The idea is this:
(1) Start the Nero program
(2) Load a burned DVD
(3) Go to the "Disk Quality" tab and run a test. There are numerous options and settings, which you can play with later.
(4) You will eventually get two graphs. The upper one shows "PI errors" and the lower one shows "PI failures." There will also be a quality score shown at the lower right.
(5) As you can see, a DVD is chock full of lots of read errors. All that saves us is the multiple levels of error correction built into the format. You can go here for a fascinating education in how to interpret the data. Here's the short version:
--PI ERRORS (the top graph) are no big deal, as long as the whole disk is not full of many thousands of them. The software fixes them on-the-fly;
--PI FAILURES (the bottom graph) are much more serious, but again, the drive can miraculously fix these, too, as long as there aren't broad swaths of numerous failures. The number of these failures are reflected in that quality score down at the lower-right.
That's it. You can read the above-referenced board for hours of discussion with people who know what they are talking about (including Erik Deppe, the actual author of this amazing tool), but my conclusion is this--every DVD disk contains many thousands of read errors, and most DVD players can fix them all, BUT the more errors you have, the more time it takes to fix them. Eventually you reach the point where the player has to slow way down in order to fix them, and then you get video playback glitches. If there are too many errors, the player simply chokes and freezes.
Happy burning.