Hi All

New to this forum, have read forum for an answer to my question. But only half answered, so here goes.
Have just bought DVDInfo Pro, but been using the freebie for a while and part of it I do not understand. PIE/PO what do the results mean, in ref to the quality of a burnt disk, what is good or bad or what is unuseable, and what readings result in a coaster.
Thanks in advance for answer!

Welcome to CDRinfo's Forum!

PIE: Parity Inner Errors (number of inner parity errors) and should be lower than 280.

As for PO probably uncorrectable errors and must be 0.

(in reply to CockneyMackem)

Is there a technical description somewhere? You say that the number should be lower than 280 for PI. Is that peak or average? With regards to PO it's my understanding that it is not the same thing as PIF (it would seem as if these two are sometimes used interchangably when they shouldn't be) thus a number of 0 is not required? I have both an NEC3520A and a Pioneer A06 (I do the PI/PO tests on the Pioneer since the NEC doesn't seem to support those tests) and I've NEVER seen a PO of 0 with any burn, even at 1x. As such it would seem as if that's an unrealistic goal to attain. FWIW I've used Taiyo Yuden 8x, Memorex 8x (the best scans so far come from this media), Memorex 4x, Verbatim Datalife plus 8x, and Sony 4x media.

Cheers, Joe

(in reply to Iggy)

To clarify... I've never seen a burn with a PO peak of 0, I have seen an average of 0. The best I've seen so far is a PI Peak of 37, PI average of 7, PO Peak of 31, and a PO "average" (we're missing a little precision here because anything > 0 can't average to 0) of 0. This was with 8x Memorex media burned on my NEC 3520A at 4x. Interestingly enough the first time I scanned it, DIP gave me a PI Peak of 697, PI avg of 6, PO Peak of 693 and PO avg of 0. I makes me wonder what the standard deviation would be if I were to run 100 scans? I wouldn't suppose that data exists does it (I doubt it because it would probably differ from drive to drive)?

Cheers, Joe

(in reply to shewhorn)

The peak, maximum, value should not be over 280. As for PO normally should not exists, that's why the zero.

(in reply to shewhorn)

Thanks for clarification. WRT PO have you ever seen a burn that actually has NO PO errors? I'm still running a bunch of tests and here a few of the better results:

Memorex 8x burned at 4x on the 3520A
PO total = 719
PO Peak = 31
PO Average = 0

Memorex 8x burned at 2x on the 3520A
PO total = 2161
PO Peak = 39
PO Average = 1

Memorex 8x burned at 1x on the Pioneer A06
PO Total = 1069
PO Peak = 40
PO Average = 1

Memorex 8x burned at 8x on the 3520A
PO Total = 242
PO Peak = 693 **** (I have to try a rescan on this one, I suspect this may be erroneous)
PO Average = 0

**** I'm noticing a trend. The peaks often seem to be in the same exact spot. I suspect they don't really exist but may be some sort of erroneous reproting from the drive. I'm using the Pioneer A06 to read the disks since the NEC doesn't support PI/PO. I have noticed that the drive really kind of needs to be "warmed up" in a sense (I could be imagining this as I haven't done enough tests to say this conclusively yet), that is if I start the test, let it go for 30 seconds, stop it, and then start again I often won't have as many peaks in the beginning. Regardless of that though I'm often (but not always, sometimes if I do a rescan it doesn't appear) seeing big spikes at 1.35 gigs or so.

The tests were done from a smapling of the following -R media:
Verbatim DataLife Plus 8x w/printable hub
Verbatim DataLife Plus 2x (had an old one lying around)
Taiyo Yuden (TYG02) 8x w/printable Hub
Memorex 8x (CMCAG-AE1)
Sony 4x

The Memorex media has consistently performed better than all of the others. I've had a very long standing hunch that Memorex media was quite good but I'd never objectively tested that hunch until now.

Cheers, Joe

(in reply to Iggy)

If there a single peek for PO this might be a bug of the drive's chipset.

(in reply to shewhorn)

It's strange, sometimes I get the peaks, sometimes I don't. I don't think the Pioneer A06 is the most stable of drives for this sort of thing but I'm pretty sure that it's the Pioneer and not the NEC because even on disks that are burned on the Pioneer the peaks often show up in similar places. Unfortunately I checked and it would appear that I already have the latest firmware update. Too bad the NEC doesn't support any kind of useful tests. It's tempting just to buy a Plextor for that ability alone. LOL! All kidding aside that might not be a bad idea. I'm a professional photographer who used to be a software engineer and I know that media quality varies greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer and sometimes even from batch to batch. I want the best quality burns I can possibly get so I know that if I need to go back to my images 5 years from now they'll still be there. With those kind of requirements I think it's important to test a disk out of each package that you get. I also plan on logging certain tests so I can see over time if a disc is starting to go on me.

Cheers, Joe

(in reply to Iggy)