Alexnoe, has been developing an alternative to Plextools, called PX Scan/View, which offers, more or less, the same functions of Plextools, but with much more customization and interesting, at least visual, features. The homepage of the software is located here and below you can see what i mean:

Users can post here some of their requests for new versions, what we have so far requested are:

* To support the scanning accuracy settings of Plextools
* To support batch scan and the gathering of the results at a table, for easy exporting and presenting to our reviews
* To support C1/C2 scanning
* To support Plextools BURST scanning mode
* Maybe better GUI interface

(in reply to emperor)

I've actually already tried to implement the BURST test, but I have not yet found out where exactly the drive reports POE error results. Some stuff is easier to bushound than other stuff...

(in reply to emperor)

Alex thanks for your info about the BURST mode, i am sure Plextor won't share such information, i don't know if CDSpeed author knows where POE errors are reported, how about the rest requests?

(in reply to alexnoe)

Batch scan: should be possible
C1/C2: Not that soon
Better GUI: I certainly will do something about the config.ini file, which has to be changed using Notepad atm :P

Plextor doesn't share anything. More specifically, Plextor Japan thinks that even the Gigarec commands are secret, even though bushounding them takes less than 1 minute...

(in reply to emperor)

Also just found a visual bug, i have downloaded the PXView 1.9 and some of your test results...

First picture, i open a test result




Second picture, i un-tick the Jitter, a white space appears and when re-tick Jitter, the white space remains...




I this normal?

(in reply to emperor)

Oops, that white space is supposed to contain TA test results :P There is obviously a bug in handling the case that there is no TA data :) A quick any dirty workaround is to set taheight=0.0 in the config.ini file

(in reply to emperor)

> Batch scan: should be possible

Great, i can suggest that after each scan finishes, the tray is ejected, user insert disc, closes tray and a new scan continues, until user press esc or something else. Naming the test results either with a pattern (1, 2,3 ) or with something else (LG4163b_1, LG4163B_2, etc..), or something else you can think about, or user select

> C1/C2: Not that soon

Why not? Since PIE/PIF already done, shouldn't be so hard to make, or am i wrong here? Making a C1C2/JitterBeta Graph would be nice

> Better GUI: I certainly will do something about the config.ini file, which has to be changed using Notepad atm :P

Great

Still no answer about "scanning accuracy settings of Plextools", can this added too? From our test results, scanning at 5X CAV vs 2X CLV, gives some comparable error rates, compared of course with 8X/12X reading speeds

(in reply to emperor)

quote:

ORIGINAL: alexnoe
Oops, that white space is supposed to contain TA test results :P There is obviously a bug in handling the case that there is no TA data :) A quick any dirty workaround is to set taheight=0.0 in the config.ini file

Already played 5mins with PXView and a visual bug found, seems like i am a good beta tester after all , maybe add this to Do list for the next release

quote:


A quick any dirty workaround is to set taheight=0.0 in the config.ini file

Yeap it worked perfectly

(in reply to alexnoe)

I don't like at all the idea to allow scanning only some parts of a disc...

The problem with C1/C2/CU is that interpreting the drive's response to an error-retrieval-command is not as simple. Don't forget that all I am seeing is a bunch of numbers

(in reply to emperor)

More questions

1) Why you don't have Jitter statistics like for BETA?

quote:


I don't like at all the idea to allow scanning only some parts of a disc...

Well i don't agree with you, its useful for quick scanning, after all since Plextools supports it, you can enable it too...

quote:


The problem with C1/C2/CU is that interpreting the drive's response to an error-retrieval-command is not as simple. Don't forget that all I am seeing is a bunch of numbers

I see, i do remember there was a build of CDSpeed that supported Plextor C1/C2 scanning, but CDSpeed author pulled it off cause Plextor complained...Maybe CDSpeed author could give some hints too...

(in reply to alexnoe)

Pressing right click-> "Info uber pxview...", maybe should say at English enviroment, "Info about pxview..."? Also adding a link to your homepage at the about screen is a good idea, since the url is rather hard to remember

(in reply to emperor)

One thing i can promise: I won't care if Plextor complains or not about whatever...


There is no jitter stats because the drive doesn't output any useful info about jitter, it just reports some numbers where lower numbers mean higher jitter, and where the px716 and px712 don't even report similar numbers.

(in reply to emperor)

quote:


One thing i can promise: I won't care if Plextor complains or not about whatever...

quote:


because the drive doesn't output any useful info about jitter,

I see...

(in reply to alexnoe)

It's nice to see this software finally getting some recognition! I can't wait until I can get a PX-716a and get in on the new beta testing!

(in reply to emperor)

quote:

ORIGINAL: alexnoe
Plextor doesn't share anything. More specifically, Plextor Japan thinks that even the Gigarec commands are secret, even though bushounding them takes less than 1 minute...

OffTopic ... does GigaREC really basically work by setting a different linear velocity while maintaining pulse length ? (like Audio Master Quality with the old Yamaha recorders ?)

OnTopic ... Alex, you program is indeed great and a far better way to perform PI/PO analysis.

I would find it quite useful if I could write pictures in a widely recognized format like PNG ... at the moment, I am using HyperSnap for that task.

Another question ... would it be possible to create a picture that uses different colours for error numbers instead of colour shades ? I sometimes find it quite hard to spot the max. error value if these occur around rather isolated ECC blocks.

(in reply to alexnoe)