cantankerous Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 Hi guys. Not really a problem, more of a concern based on previous drives not operating in this manner. So I just obtained a Pioneer BDR-206 drive which I immediately flashed to the latest 1.05 firmware. I am using the very latest release of IMGBurn 2.5.5.0. I usually only burn DVD-R, TYG03 mainly, as well as RW. I noticed upon my first DVD burn with this new drive that the device buffer fluctuated quite noticeably. It doesn't get dangerously low, but is constantly jumping between 84-100%, up and down, up and down. All my previous optical burners have the device buffer pegged at 100% without ever faltering. I found this strange as this drive contains a 4MB cache, not a 2MB like DVD-R optical burners. I am also running an SSD as a main drive, and a Velociraptor 10,000RPM drive along side the SSD. It does not matter which drive I burn from, the device buffer jumps between early 80's to 100% and back down, up and down, up and down. What is even stranger is this does not happen with CD-R or BD-R burns whatsoever. Burning CD-R and BD-R discs has the device buffer pegged at 100% solid. On any disc type the buffer (HDD) is pegged at 100% static. Can anyone explain why the device buffer seems to have issues maintaining 100% load while burning DVD-R on my BDR-206 drive, but CD-R and BD-R do not exhibit this issue? The burns complete without error, but am a little worried something may be up with my drive. Is it possible to have it burn CD-R and BD-R without issue, but perhaps have an issue when burning DVD-R only? Is this even an issue to be concerned over? Really stumped and really confused here. If anyone can shed some light on this matter I would be very grateful. Thanks for reading.
mmalves Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 It's probably due to Active OPC and, if it verifies fine, then you don't need to worry about it.
cantankerous Posted May 2, 2011 Author Posted May 2, 2011 Thank you kindly for the reply. I have no means of verifying the disc other than just 'using it' due to the Pioneer not being a reliable scanning drive. Is there a way to disable Active OPC on the Pioneer BDR-206 drive? Does Active OPC only occur on DVD's because remember, this issue does not take place on CD-R or BD-R which is what has me concerned. If Active OPC is only used for DVD burning then your theory could be a plausible one. None of my other Pioneer DVR drives did this with the buffer. DVR-A05, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112 or 116.
mmalves Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 By verify I mean having the Verify option enabled in ImgBurn: it cycles the tray to ensure the disc can be properly identified after removal and then checks data on the disc against the source image/files. This tells you if the disc is fully readable or not. Active OPC is part of the burner's strategy for writing the disc with the highest possible quality, so it can't be turned off, and even if you could, you would then get lower quality burns and very possibly unreadable discs. Your other Pioneer burners also perform active OPC, but maybe in a less frequent way, and that could be why you didn't notice before. Newer burners tend to do a lot of OPC "stop and check" operations, especially when burning at faster speeds. You can check all of this by looking at the burn graphs (in ImgBurn go to Help -> ImgBurn Graph Data) and also by looking at the myce/cdreaks forums.
cantankerous Posted May 2, 2011 Author Posted May 2, 2011 Thank you, you have been a great help. I will keep this information in mind for my next burn. Perhaps these newer drives are more aggressive than my previous offerings when it comes to Active OPC.
cantankerous Posted May 9, 2011 Author Posted May 9, 2011 My father just picked up the BDR-206 last week and he mentions his buffer works in the same manner. Not quite as drastic as mine but definitely not as 'tight' as his previous burners. I guess this really is just how these Blu Ray burners handle DVD recordable media.
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