Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Am Montag, 20. August 2012, 23:12:14 schrieb Pandu Poluan: On Aug 20, 2012 10:12 PM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 8:51 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 7:47 PM, Andrea Conti a...@alyf.net wrote: +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) That said, the difference is much deeper than differing metadata. Among which : * +RW uses Phase Modulation, -RW uses amplitude modulation. This gives +RW much more robustness than -RW This is also wrong: DVD+RW use 817.4 kHz in the pregrove and periodically inverts the phase as sector start marker. This is cheaper to press (as the stamper will last for more press cycles) but it is not as accurate as DVD-RW and you get floating bader quality during the life cycle of the stamper. DVD-RW uses 140.6 kHz in the pregrove and in addition lans pits between the groves to mark the sector start, This is much more precise than what DVD+RW uses. Since aproc. 4 years, there is a new patented stamper method that uses dints in the pregrove instead of pits on top of the land. This is as precise as the pit on land method, compatoble to this method and allows stampers that are as cheap as the DVD+RW stampers. There is no degradaraion of the stamper accuracy as with DVD+RW, even with the new modified version. Thanks for the technical information, although honestly, most are beyond me :-P That said, care to refute the following page: http://www.myce.com/article/why-dvdrw-is-superior-to-dvd-rw-203/ because until someone publicly refute that article, I honestly will prefer +RW over -RW. (And, anecdotally, ever since I burn DVD's, I already had a stack of failing -RW discs, while having only two failing +RW discs. I might be just lucky, but since experience matches expectations (based on that article), luck seems to not have anything to do with it.) PS: I'm not trying to start a plus/minus war; I am sincerely interested, and will switch my preferred optical media if corrected. Rgds, hm, I also had much besser results with + media. +rw and +r. -- #163933
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: hm, I also had much besser results with + media. +rw and +r. I always get the + stuff too. No problems so far. knock on wood Dale :-) :-) P. S. I knocked to hard. Now my head hurts. LOL -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: hm, I also had much besser results with + media. +rw and +r. I always get the + stuff too. No problems so far. knock on wood If it's turning into a survey, these are what I use: Sony/NEC Optiarc drive with bitsetting firmware Taiyo-Yuden single-layer DVD-R Memorex dual-layer DVD+R Taiyo-Yuden CD-R Mitsui gold CD-R (in years past) I have never used a blu-ray disc or drive though the prices are coming down, still read many reviews of bad burns/incompatible discs and drives, etc. that scare me away from it for now. :)
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Paul Hartman wrote: On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: hm, I also had much besser results with + media. +rw and +r. I always get the + stuff too. No problems so far. knock on wood If it's turning into a survey, these are what I use: Sony/NEC Optiarc drive with bitsetting firmware Taiyo-Yuden single-layer DVD-R Memorex dual-layer DVD+R Taiyo-Yuden CD-R Mitsui gold CD-R (in years past) I have never used a blu-ray disc or drive though the prices are coming down, still read many reviews of bad burns/incompatible discs and drives, etc. that scare me away from it for now. :) I use Phillips and Memorex media. I think both of those came from Big Lots. I paid $5.00 for 20 of them. I bought a couple packs. I have used, and reused, them several times with no problems. I use a LG burner. This is from hdparm: Model=HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50 I have some older imation CD media to. Those I have used for years. Those are CD-RW. Basically, I have use both kinds with no problems. I credit the really well made burner myself but . . . . it could be just blind luck since I just buy whatever is on sale. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
[gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change (smile). In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer the CD drive from the existing box to the new one, but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives, so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive to start using DVDs. I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos. This looks like a good enough item : ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99 Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ? (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ? (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ? (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ? -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'. (4) anything else I sb aware of ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Monday 20 Aug 2012 11:21:39 Philip Webb wrote: Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change (smile). In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer the CD drive from the existing box to the new one, but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives, so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive to start using DVDs. I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos. This looks like a good enough item : ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99 Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ? I'll try. (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ? Yes. As a minimum have a look at BLK_DEV_SR and BLK_DEV_SR_VENDOR. You may also need SCSI_PROC_FS for legacy applications. The AHCI drivers would probably be enabled for your hard drive SATA controller anyway. (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ? From cdrecord man page (app-cdr/cdrtools): NAME cdrecord - record audio or data CD, DVD or BluRay and of course for a GUI front you can use k3b if you use KDE applications. If you're not using KDE consider xfburn. Not sure about Gnome applications like Brasero that is shipping with Mint/Ubuntu these days. (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ? -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'. Yes, +RW, -RW, but don't know much more on this other than older DVD writers would only do one format not another and if you didn't pay attention to the specification/limitations of your hardware you could end up buying the wrong type of DVDs. Someone more experienced on recording media could answer this better. (4) anything else I sb aware of ? Given your adoption rate of new technology I suggest you consider buying a BluRay player if not recorder, because I don't know how long it will be before DVDs become obsolete too. Unfortunately BluRay devices were out of my price range last time I bought hardware to justify paying the extra, so I can't recommend any. HTH. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:19:23 +0100, Mick wrote: Given your adoption rate of new technology I suggest you consider buying a BluRay player if not recorder, because I don't know how long it will be before DVDs become obsolete too. Unfortunately BluRay devices were out of my price range last time I bought hardware to justify paying the extra, so I can't recommend any. Bluray recorders are still expensive, as is the media. I have a Samsung drive that does BD-ROM and DVD+/-R* and it just works. -- Neil Bothwick What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:19:23 +0100, Mick wrote: Given your adoption rate of new technology I suggest you consider buying a BluRay player if not recorder, because I don't know how long it will be before DVDs become obsolete too. Unfortunately BluRay devices were out of my price range last time I bought hardware to justify paying the extra, so I can't recommend any. Bluray recorders are still expensive, as is the media. I have a Samsung drive that does BD-ROM and DVD+/-R* and it just works. the media is affordable nowthey (BD-R 25 GB) start at 1.5 Euro. So this is less than the equivalent price per GB on a DVD. Drives are still 2-3x as expensive than a DVD writer. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
(1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ? It's basically handled exactly the same as a CD drive, so you need the same configuration options you would use for that. Yes. As a minimum have a look at BLK_DEV_SR and BLK_DEV_SR_VENDOR. You may also need SCSI_PROC_FS for legacy applications. The AHCI drivers would probably be enabled for your hard drive SATA controller anyway. BLK_DEV_SR_VENDOR made sense when every drive manufacturer adopted their own standard in designing interface protocols... with every drive made on the planet in the last ten years being mmc-compliant, there is not much point in still using that. Not that it hurts even if it's not needed... (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ? -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'. Yes, +RW, -RW, but don't know much more on this other than older DVD writers would only do one format not another and if you didn't pay attention to the specification/limitations of your hardware you could end up buying the wrong type of DVDs. Someone more experienced on recording media could answer this better. Every modern recorder does both standards; depending on both the burner and the reader you might find that one standard works better than the other (i.e. has lower read error rates). Trial and error seems to be the only working approach... As for the standards, if you're just burning backups they're basically equivalent. The +RW standard is theoretically more flexible as media can be formatted in a packet mode which allows (almost) random r/w access, but in my experience software support and reliability have always been lousy, so forget about it. +RW media cannot be erased in the same way CD-RWs are erased, -- you can only overwrite it with new data. -RW behaves the same as CD-RWs in this regard. If you need rewritable DVD media with reliable random r/w access (but this doesn't seem to be your case), there is a third standard (DVD-RAM) which uses special disks with hardware sector marks. Drive support is not hard to find nowadays (the drive you cited actually supports it), but writing is slow, good media is expensive and the disks cannot be read in most normal dvd drives; I have no idea about the state of software support in Linux. (4) anything else I sb aware of ? DVDs (especially rewritable ones) are much less resilient than CDs. Don't rely on a recorded DVD to be still readable after more than 3-4 years, because it probably won't be. While good quality (i.e. expensive) brand media tends to be a little more durable, DVDs are not the right choice for long-term archival. Given your adoption rate of new technology I suggest you consider buying a BluRay player if not recorder, because I don't know how long it will be before DVDs become obsolete too. I doubt BD-R will ever supplant DVD-R the same way DVD-R did with CD-R. When DVD-R came out there were no practical and affordable alternatives for recording and transporting large quantities of data. Nowadays, on the other hand, flash storage is ubiquitous and cheap enough to satisfy the needs of most people. This slowed the adoption of BD-R a lot, to the point that I'm not sure it will ever become a widespread technology. IOW, I would only consider shelling out the cash for a BD-R drive if it made sense for my current storage needs, not as an investment for the future. my € 0.02, andrea
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 7:19 AM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday 20 Aug 2012 11:21:39 Philip Webb wrote: Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change (smile). In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer the CD drive from the existing box to the new one, but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives, so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive to start using DVDs. I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos. This looks like a good enough item : ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99 Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ? I'll try. (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ? Yes. As a minimum have a look at BLK_DEV_SR and BLK_DEV_SR_VENDOR. You may also need SCSI_PROC_FS for legacy applications. The AHCI drivers would probably be enabled for your hard drive SATA controller anyway. (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ? From cdrecord man page (app-cdr/cdrtools): NAME cdrecord - record audio or data CD, DVD or BluRay and of course for a GUI front you can use k3b if you use KDE applications. If you're not using KDE consider xfburn. Not sure about Gnome applications like Brasero that is shipping with Mint/Ubuntu these days. Brasero is a fine tool, and my tool of choice on Gentoo. (I don't use a full GNOME or KDE desktop; Brasero works great without either.) (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ? -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'. Yes, +RW, -RW, but don't know much more on this other than older DVD writers would only do one format not another and if you didn't pay attention to the specification/limitations of your hardware you could end up buying the wrong type of DVDs. Someone more experienced on recording media could answer this better. Almost all of this stuff settled a little under a decade ago, but in the beginning there was just the DVD. The DVD had a field in its metadata called book type, which was supposed to tell the DVD player what kind of DVD it was. Was it a manufacturer-pressed disc? Was it a burned disc? Was it something else? In order to master DVDs, you had to get specially-licensed and controlled master discs, drives and software which would allow you to write to that book type field. DVD-R came out, and pressures from Hollywood dictated that this DVD-R format hardcode a value into that Book Type field that declared the disc as a burnable disc. This way, people who tried copying or burning movies and the like would have these discs rejected by DVD players. Some DVD players wouldn't play back movies from DVD-R discs. Some DVD players wouldn't even acknowledge them; as far as these players were concerned, that particular value in the 'book type' field was still 'reserved', so any disc that used it was invalid. Along comes the DVD+R format. The DVD+R format has some variances in *how* data is represented on disc, but to the player that doesn't know any better, it looks just like any other DVD. The big difference DVD+R brought was that the 'book type' field was burnable on any drive which was capable of burning DVD+R media, and a disc appropriately burned would play in any home DVD player as though it were a pressed disc. (Yay, we can has home-recorded movies again!) Both DVD+R and DVD-R discs are sold, but I only ever buy DVD+R discs; as far as I can tell, playback works in everything, and just about any recorder will record to them. I have to think that the DVD-R discs are sold only because there are still some ancient burners out there. When in doubt, go with DVD+R. (4) anything else I sb aware of ? Given your adoption rate of new technology I suggest you consider buying a BluRay player if not recorder, because I don't know how long it will be before DVDs become obsolete too. Unfortunately BluRay devices were out of my price range last time I bought hardware to justify paying the extra, so I can't recommend any. There's something to this; a single-layer DVD only holds 4.7GB of data. I carry around more rewriteable storage capacity than that in my pants. (Literally; I have a pelican case full of SD and micro-SD cards, for photography purposes.) If this is a backup solution, it's probably better to look at blu-ray or (even better) modern tape drive solutions. DVDs are kinda small by modern storage standards. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Andrea Conti a...@alyf.net wrote: As for the standards, if you're just burning backups they're basically equivalent. The +RW standard is theoretically more flexible as media can be formatted in a packet mode which allows (almost) random r/w access, but in my experience software support and reliability have always been lousy, so forget about it. +RW media cannot be erased in the same way CD-RWs are erased, -- you can only overwrite it with new data. -RW behaves the same as CD-RWs in this regard. You are correct for DVD-RW and with all DVD- formats, there are frequent round robin tests with all writers vs. allr readers and all media. This kind of test does not exist for DVD+RW and I've seen a lot of problems with media interchange. I doubt BD-R will ever supplant DVD-R the same way DVD-R did with CD-R. When DVD-R came out there were no practical and affordable alternatives for recording and transporting large quantities of data. Nowadays, on the other hand, flash storage is ubiquitous and cheap enough to satisfy the needs of most people. This slowed the adoption of BD-R a lot, to the point that I'm not sure it will ever become a widespread technology. IOW, I would only consider shelling out the cash for a BD-R drive if it made sense for my current storage needs, not as an investment for the future. Just a note: When I got my first DVD writer in February 1998, the price of the writer was 15000 US$ and the price of a media was 80 US$. When I received my first BR writer, the price of the writer was 600 Euro and the price of a medium was ~ 20 Euro. Now the price for a medium is 1.5...3 Euro and the price for a writer is 60...200 Euro. It took 5 years for DVD to get into this price level and it took 5 years for BR to get into this price level. So where do you see a difference? There is another difference: the fact that flash memory has become cheap did change the interest of the people. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Along comes the DVD+R format. The DVD+R format has some variances in *how* data is represented on disc, but to the player that doesn't know any better, it looks just like any other DVD. The big difference DVD+R brought was that the 'book type' field was burnable on any drive which was capable of burning DVD+R media, and a disc appropriately burned would play in any home DVD player as though it were a pressed disc. (Yay, we can has home-recorded movies again!) Both DVD+R and DVD-R discs are sold, but I only ever buy DVD+R discs; as far as I can tell, playback works in everything, and just about any recorder will record to them. I have to think that the DVD-R discs are sold only because there are still some ancient burners out there. Not true: DVD- allows to write this too, but the media you can buy has been prerecorded to satisfy the film industry. When in doubt, go with DVD+R. This is a wrong advise: When In doubt go DVD- as this is the official format. There is one single exception: For Dual layer, the DVD+R/DL media gives better results. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 9:04 AM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Along comes the DVD+R format. The DVD+R format has some variances in *how* data is represented on disc, but to the player that doesn't know any better, it looks just like any other DVD. The big difference DVD+R brought was that the 'book type' field was burnable on any drive which was capable of burning DVD+R media, and a disc appropriately burned would play in any home DVD player as though it were a pressed disc. (Yay, we can has home-recorded movies again!) Both DVD+R and DVD-R discs are sold, but I only ever buy DVD+R discs; as far as I can tell, playback works in everything, and just about any recorder will record to them. I have to think that the DVD-R discs are sold only because there are still some ancient burners out there. Not true: DVD- allows to write this too, but the media you can buy has been prerecorded to satisfy the film industry. I alluded to this in my description of DVD-R. Thank you for correcting my description of implementation details, though. (Obviously, you don't need a special burner, but you do need to buy specially-licensed media.) When in doubt, go with DVD+R. This is a wrong advise: When In doubt go DVD- as this is the official format. I don't understand this position at all for this context. Unless you're doing work in particular fields for the recording industry, why touch DVD-R at all? Doing so because it's the official format doesn't really mean anything; the industry and market has been stable for years, and upstream isn't going to switch out everything out from under people using the format. (At least, not in a way that doesn't screw over DVD-R users as well.) I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in that perhaps DVD-R might be the more appropriate format, but you should give some better arguments than it's the official format. There is one single exception: For Dual layer, the DVD+R/DL media gives better results. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Aug 20, 2012 7:47 PM, Andrea Conti a...@alyf.net wrote: [snip] Yes, +RW, -RW, but don't know much more on this other than older DVD writers would only do one format not another and if you didn't pay attention to the specification/limitations of your hardware you could end up buying the wrong type of DVDs. Someone more experienced on recording media could answer this better. Every modern recorder does both standards; depending on both the burner and the reader you might find that one standard works better than the other (i.e. has lower read error rates). Trial and error seems to be the only working approach... As for the standards, if you're just burning backups they're basically equivalent. The +RW standard is theoretically more flexible as media can be formatted in a packet mode which allows (almost) random r/w access, but in my experience software support and reliability have always been lousy, so forget about it. +RW media cannot be erased in the same way CD-RWs are erased, -- you can only overwrite it with new data. -RW behaves the same as CD-RWs in this regard. If you need rewritable DVD media with reliable random r/w access (but this doesn't seem to be your case), there is a third standard (DVD-RAM) which uses special disks with hardware sector marks. Drive support is not hard to find nowadays (the drive you cited actually supports it), but writing is slow, good media is expensive and the disks cannot be read in most normal dvd drives; I have no idea about the state of software support in Linux. +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) That said, the difference is much deeper than differing metadata. Among which : * +RW uses Phase Modulation, -RW uses amplitude modulation. This gives +RW much more robustness than -RW * +RW blanks provide more info on the energy level required to burn, IIRC up to 4 energy levels each tuned to a certain burning speed (e.g., 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x). This *greatly* improves the success probability of burning. -RW only provides energy level info for the maximum burning speed; if your drive doesn't support that speed, it'll have to guess, and the results are usually ungood More history : The CD Standard was originally developed by Philips, then adapted to the data world requirements, including CD-R(W). The DVD-R standard was originally developed by Panasonic, but Philips had a spat with Panasonic because in Phillips' view, the CD-R standard has shortcomings they (Philips) want to fix; Panasonic was more interested in getting DVD-R out of the door asap. This resulted in Philips -- together with someone else, was it Sony? -- to independently released the DVD+R standard. CMIIW Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I alluded to this in my description of DVD-R. Thank you for correcting my description of implementation details, though. (Obviously, you don't need a special burner, but you do need to buy specially-licensed media.) Well, if you manage to get unwritten DVD- media, you need a drive with special firmware and you even can pretend a different manufacturer ;-) It is however hard to get this special firmware... When in doubt, go with DVD+R. This is a wrong advise: When In doubt go DVD- as this is the official format. I don't understand this position at all for this context. Unless you're doing work in particular fields for the recording industry, why touch DVD-R at all? Doing so because it's the official format doesn't really mean anything; the industry and market has been stable for years, and upstream isn't going to switch out everything out from under people using the format. (At least, not in a way that doesn't screw over DVD-R users as well.) You seem to be anti-DVD- because you uncorrectly believe that it is related to the film industry. You are wrong. Pioneer asked the fil industry to make a useful proposal before Summer 2001 and as this proposal was not made, Pioneer started to sell the A03 for 1000 US $ - together with the prerecorded media format. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in that perhaps DVD-R might be the more appropriate format, but you should give some better arguments than it's the official format. I did give these arguments: There are variouy problems media compatibility of you use DVD+ with different drives. NOTE: DVD+ does not have a round robin check!! Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Aug 20, 2012 8:51 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 7:47 PM, Andrea Conti a...@alyf.net wrote: [snip] Yes, +RW, -RW, but don't know much more on this other than older DVD writers would only do one format not another and if you didn't pay attention to the specification/limitations of your hardware you could end up buying the wrong type of DVDs. Someone more experienced on recording media could answer this better. Every modern recorder does both standards; depending on both the burner and the reader you might find that one standard works better than the other (i.e. has lower read error rates). Trial and error seems to be the only working approach... As for the standards, if you're just burning backups they're basically equivalent. The +RW standard is theoretically more flexible as media can be formatted in a packet mode which allows (almost) random r/w access, but in my experience software support and reliability have always been lousy, so forget about it. +RW media cannot be erased in the same way CD-RWs are erased, -- you can only overwrite it with new data. -RW behaves the same as CD-RWs in this regard. If you need rewritable DVD media with reliable random r/w access (but this doesn't seem to be your case), there is a third standard (DVD-RAM) which uses special disks with hardware sector marks. Drive support is not hard to find nowadays (the drive you cited actually supports it), but writing is slow, good media is expensive and the disks cannot be read in most normal dvd drives; I have no idea about the state of software support in Linux. +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) That said, the difference is much deeper than differing metadata. Among which : * +RW uses Phase Modulation, -RW uses amplitude modulation. This gives +RW much more robustness than -RW * +RW blanks provide more info on the energy level required to burn, IIRC up to 4 energy levels each tuned to a certain burning speed (e.g., 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x). This *greatly* improves the success probability of burning. -RW only provides energy level info for the maximum burning speed; if your drive doesn't support that speed, it'll have to guess, and the results are usually ungood More history : The CD Standard was originally developed by Philips, then adapted to the data world requirements, including CD-R(W). The DVD-R standard was originally developed by Panasonic, but Philips had a spat with Panasonic because in Phillips' view, the CD-R standard has shortcomings they (Philips) want to fix; Panasonic was more interested in getting DVD-R out of the door asap. This resulted in Philips -- together with someone else, was it Sony? -- to independently released the DVD+R standard. CMIIW Aha, found the page comparing +R(W) and -R(W) : http://www.myce.com/article/why-dvdrw-is-superior-to-dvd-rw-203/ tldr: DVD+R(W) is technically a better standard. Use it. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) Not it definitely can't. You just may overwrite it. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I alluded to this in my description of DVD-R. Thank you for correcting my description of implementation details, though. (Obviously, you don't need a special burner, but you do need to buy specially-licensed media.) Well, if you manage to get unwritten DVD- media, you need a drive with special firmware and you even can pretend a different manufacturer ;-) It is however hard to get this special firmware... When in doubt, go with DVD+R. This is a wrong advise: When In doubt go DVD- as this is the official format. I don't understand this position at all for this context. Unless you're doing work in particular fields for the recording industry, why touch DVD-R at all? Doing so because it's the official format doesn't really mean anything; the industry and market has been stable for years, and upstream isn't going to switch out everything out from under people using the format. (At least, not in a way that doesn't screw over DVD-R users as well.) You seem to be anti-DVD- because you uncorrectly believe that it is related to the film industry. You are wrong. Pioneer asked the fil industry to make a useful proposal before Summer 2001 and as this proposal was not made, Pioneer started to sell the A03 for 1000 US $ - together with the prerecorded media format. No, I'm not anti-DVD-, or even anti-film-industry. I recommend DVD+ over DVD- for the uninitiated, for compatibility and flexibility reasons. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in that perhaps DVD-R might be the more appropriate format, but you should give some better arguments than it's the official format. I did give these arguments: There are variouy problems media compatibility of you use DVD+ with different drives. Your description runs counter to my experience. But that's not terribly surprising; there will of course be players which won't handle DVD+ media, but I've found them to be few and far between. NOTE: DVD+ does not have a round robin check!! I don't know what that is, and searching isn't turning up anything but pages about a movie called 'round robin'. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) Not it definitely can't. You just may overwrite it. Communications issue: You guys are talking about different encoding layers. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
2012/8/20 Philip Webb purs...@ca.inter.net: Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change (smile). In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer the CD drive from the existing box to the new one, but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives, so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive to start using DVDs. I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos. This looks like a good enough item : ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99 Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ? (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ? NO. just enable packet write and SCSI_CDROM (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ? k3b is a good one (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ? sure -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'. (4) anything else I sb aware of ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 8:51 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 7:47 PM, Andrea Conti a...@alyf.net wrote: +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) That said, the difference is much deeper than differing metadata. Among which : * +RW uses Phase Modulation, -RW uses amplitude modulation. This gives +RW much more robustness than -RW This is also wrong: DVD+RW use 817.4 kHz in the pregrove and periodically inverts the phase as sector start marker. This is cheaper to press (as the stamper will last for more press cycles) but it is not as accurate as DVD-RW and you get floating bader quality during the life cycle of the stamper. DVD-RW uses 140.6 kHz in the pregrove and in addition lans pits between the groves to mark the sector start, This is much more precise than what DVD+RW uses. Since aproc. 4 years, there is a new patented stamper method that uses dints in the pregrove instead of pits on top of the land. This is as precise as the pit on land method, compatoble to this method and allows stampers that are as cheap as the DVD+RW stampers. There is no degradaraion of the stamper accuracy as with DVD+RW, even with the new modified version. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I did give these arguments: There are variouy problems media compatibility of you use DVD+ with different drives. Your description runs counter to my experience. But that's not terribly surprising; there will of course be players which won't handle DVD+ media, but I've found them to be few and far between. It happened with Sony vs. Ricoh, vs. Philips writers and I could rarely rewrite media that has been written before in another writer. NOTE: DVD+ does not have a round robin check!! I don't know what that is, and searching isn't turning up anything but pages about a movie called 'round robin'. Why don't you just read my explanation from my previous mail? Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 6:21 AM, Philip Webb purs...@ca.inter.net wrote: Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change (smile). In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer the CD drive from the existing box to the new one, but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives, so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive to start using DVDs. I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos. This looks like a good enough item : ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99 Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ? (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ? (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ? (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ? -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'. (4) anything else I sb aware of ? This thread has exploded into arcane info irrelevant to you. So here's what I recommend: Walk into any old store and buy a $15-$30 drive. Most burners these days support burning CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM. Writing dual-layer discs is slightly less common, but still cheap and easy to get. Long and short of it, just go out and get a drive; just about any of them will do what you need them to do. As for kernel support, once you get past the SATA/AHCI learning curve, it's a piece of cake. The standard for writing to SATA CD burners is essentially the same as it was for ATAPI burners, and both SATA and ATAPI are very similar (in that they borrow heavily from SCSI). Just about any software that can write to a CD burner should have no trouble writing to a DVD burner. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I did give these arguments: There are variouy problems media compatibility of you use DVD+ with different drives. Your description runs counter to my experience. But that's not terribly surprising; there will of course be players which won't handle DVD+ media, but I've found them to be few and far between. It happened with Sony vs. Ricoh, vs. Philips writers and I could rarely rewrite media that has been written before in another writer. Could be an issue unique to the RW space. I never hung out there. It always made more sense to burn+verify a disc and either file it away, or discard it when done. A spindle of discs is pretty cheap, and a spindle of 25-50 lasts me a year or two. NOTE: DVD+ does not have a round robin check!! I don't know what that is, and searching isn't turning up anything but pages about a movie called 'round robin'. Why don't you just read my explanation from my previous mail? Which one? There are nearly twenty messages here over the span of five hours, six of them are yours, and I can't hang on your every word. If you're going to reply to me, include context in your replies; don't count on my having read everything you might have said in response to someone else. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Walk into any old store and buy a $15-$30 drive. Most burners these days support burning CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM. Writing dual-layer discs is slightly less common, but still cheap and easy to get. Looking at the pile of writers I have at home, there are much more dual laywr writers than DVD-RAM aware ones. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Walk into any old store and buy a $15-$30 drive. Most burners these days support burning CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM. Writing dual-layer discs is slightly less common, but still cheap and easy to get. Looking at the pile of writers I have at home, there are much more dual laywr writers than DVD-RAM aware ones. Then the art has improved since I last went shopping. *shrug* -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Aug 20, 2012 10:12 PM, Joerg Schilling joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 8:51 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Aug 20, 2012 7:47 PM, Andrea Conti a...@alyf.net wrote: +RW *can* be erased, or else it won't be called RW :-) That said, the difference is much deeper than differing metadata. Among which : * +RW uses Phase Modulation, -RW uses amplitude modulation. This gives +RW much more robustness than -RW This is also wrong: DVD+RW use 817.4 kHz in the pregrove and periodically inverts the phase as sector start marker. This is cheaper to press (as the stamper will last for more press cycles) but it is not as accurate as DVD-RW and you get floating bader quality during the life cycle of the stamper. DVD-RW uses 140.6 kHz in the pregrove and in addition lans pits between the groves to mark the sector start, This is much more precise than what DVD+RW uses. Since aproc. 4 years, there is a new patented stamper method that uses dints in the pregrove instead of pits on top of the land. This is as precise as the pit on land method, compatoble to this method and allows stampers that are as cheap as the DVD+RW stampers. There is no degradaraion of the stamper accuracy as with DVD+RW, even with the new modified version. Thanks for the technical information, although honestly, most are beyond me :-P That said, care to refute the following page: http://www.myce.com/article/why-dvdrw-is-superior-to-dvd-rw-203/ because until someone publicly refute that article, I honestly will prefer +RW over -RW. (And, anecdotally, ever since I burn DVD's, I already had a stack of failing -RW discs, while having only two failing +RW discs. I might be just lucky, but since experience matches expectations (based on that article), luck seems to not have anything to do with it.) PS: I'm not trying to start a plus/minus war; I am sincerely interested, and will switch my preferred optical media if corrected. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
microcai wrote: 2012/8/20 Philip Webb purs...@ca.inter.net: (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ? k3b is a good one If you don't use KDE or Gnome, try this one: app-cdr/tkdvd It's simple but it worked last time I tried it. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 06:21:39AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive to start using DVDs. I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos. This looks like a good enough item : ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99 Some outside the box thinking... * You said CDs are going away, so let's use DVDs * Others said DVDs are going away, so let's use Bluerays * I say that exposed-platter media in general is going away So let's look at using USB keys instead... * My offsite backup is a couple of 16-gig USB keys in a safety deposit box at my bank. Ever tried to stash a CD/DVD/Blueray disk into a regular-size safety deposit box? It doesn't work. * Random access - check * All permissions and ownership UIDs - check (when formatted with any linux file system). I suggest formatting as ext2fs. It's simple, and it works. You won't be writing that often, and journaling filesystems can be murder on USB keys. FAT32 doesn't save linux ownership+permissions. Also, while the FAT32 partition can go up to 2 terabytes, individual files can only go up to 4 gigs. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
