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Professional CD-R and DVD-R Burners/Duplicators?
burnWell asks: "I work for a software publisher, and when preparing CD media for final distribution to the manufacturer (the Gold Master if you will), we often find that our CD and DVD burns are not very good quality. Are there any recommendations for professional grade, highest quality CD-R and DVD-R writers? Are there any tools or metrics we should use to verify how 'good' a particular burn happens to be, and to that end, how well behaved some brands of media are versus another? Are there recommendations for the very highest quality CD-R and DVD-R duplicators?"
I always had great luck with Plextor's old (in the 2-4x) readers and writers.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If you must use a CDR, find a few different kinds of media, burn slow, and compare. But have you considered just delivering the original as an ISO?
Publishers will almost always take the data in a different format (iso) or on tape. Why do you assume that just because you are giving them the data on CD they are copying all the bit errors on the disc? They probably just stick it in a drive and read the data track with error correction (and make test disc or two to be sure) before feeding it to the presses for mass production.
Please, one call to your publisher would have had this explained to you.
Make sure you are using Taiyo Yuden blanks for burning CDs. Usually, media quality causes the most problems. I compared TY to Verbatim with kprobe -- BIG difference. Verbatim has an average of 8 errors per sector, while Taiyo Yuden had 0.2. Look for CD-Rs made in Japan -- they are Taiyo Yuden (often, they are sold as "music" CD-Rs).
You actually have a couple of major problems. There have been some fairly exhaustive tests done in the audio realm, and they have found a couple of things.
The first is that the specific brand that works best will vary from one CD burner to another. The only thing that you can do is buy a lot of samples and try burns at different speeds and with different brands until you know what gives you the best results.
As noted, slower burns usually are better, but the optimal speed will vary too.
The other problem is that manufacturers change their formulations from time to time. You of course have no way to know this, but may find that the media that worked great last month suddenly has problems.
Another test can be found here.
Three Squirrels
Can you give them your software on a DLT? Whenever we master DVDs, they always end up on DLT at some point. I don't know anything about cds, i come from a video production background... but just my 2 cents.
Since it seems like no other posts have been that great, i'd add my non-useful expertise into the mix.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Plextor is about as good as it gets. Currently I've got the PX-712A and I couldn't be more pleased. There is one newer model, the PX-716 that supports dual layer discs. It is as we say "teh hotness". Also, their newer drives have serial ata versions, which few others can claim.
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Qualifications: I am no longer at Microsoft, but when I was at Microsoft, I burned the gold masters for eight seperate titles, including seven that used SafeDisc.
For our CD's, we used Mitsui primarily. They were a decent balance between cost and reliability. We'd also always submit to our release labs at least five copies of each CD.
Finally, we'd use a tool (CRC 3.05, available to MSDN subscribers in Subscriber Downloads) which would calculate the CRC value of each CD. Once we finished burning a CD, we'd do a binary compare with the source bits, and if everything matched up, we'd add the CD to our "good" pile.
For the first several (spread out over three years), we used a PlexWriter 2x writing at 1x to burn. We also used Goldenhawk CDR-WIN to burn the masters, but had to switch to Prassi once Goldenhawk stopped putting in the proper postgap on the CD's.
For our final disks, we went with a PlexWriter 48x writing at 16x.
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One of my favorite places to shop for such goodies is Markertek. It doesn't cost you anything to have them send you a catalog.
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Why not use SFTP/SCP or somthing to transfer the .ISO (or equivalent image) to a secure site? Or why not send them on protable 2.5" hard disk or something more reliable than CD's if you are having these issues? Heck, even compact flash is cheap these days, 1GB shouldn't set you back too much and it is quite easy to determine if the file exists properly. Let the manufacturers worry about getting the image right, it is their butt on the line after all.
Another thing would be to simply burn it, then use a tool to verify that the disc was burned correctly and reliably. Heck you could even do your own sample test and do other interesting metrics like how long it takes to complete the verification - possibly an indicator of how many errors were encountered in the read process.
Better yet, just offer the files up on your web site and let customers burn their own CD's if they feel they really need them.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/
Has some very detailed reviews, including detailed quality analysis tests with many combinations of drives and media.
I think the answer to this depends a lot on if your a small development group creating some small or niche application, or a big developer. It's probably shouldn't, but I think it does. If you are working for a large developer, or creating expensive software, then I second the comments stating that your best bet is probably to deliver the program to the publisher on a drive or flash memory, and let them burn it. For small development houses producing low cost software, then you have some ohter options. I was working with a few other people about a year ago on an application that we intended to sell (it never got to release unfortunately, due to some legal problems involving one of the other developers and a non-compete agreement that he'd signed with a company he'd worked for several years ago, that we didn't have to money to fight in court) but the plan we worked out was basically this:
We would burn out copies of the program on standard CD-R or DVD-R media, and send the program out with the disks, manuals, and a few extra CD cover stickers. When a user would register the software online, then they were able to go into a section of the website and download an ISO of the software if they needed to burn another copy of the software. Since the disks to the application would be copy protected, this allowed users to create a backup copy if they needed it. Each iso would be given a unique MD5 sum, so that if someone tried to put the ISO on a p2p service, we would be able to track it down to the user who first distributed it. Unfortunately, we never got close enough to distribution to get this system implemented, but it was the idea we were going with.
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Corporate Systems Center; they offer a couple of CD duplicators. I've bought SCSI stuff from them in the past and have been very satisfied.
Also check out this list of CD/DVD duplicators from Pricegrabber.
"Are there recommendations for the very highest quality CD-R and DVD-R duplicators?"
Ask the pirates what they use?
Instead, make an image, call it a golden image, checksum the image (MD5sum for example), compress it and send it on any media you like or over the net.
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I cannot answer this question, on the grounds that it would make me immediatly liable for a violation of the DMCA.
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I worked in a mastering house for two years, and now provide off and on technical consultation on qc issues..
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We've always used Taiyo Uden's. Big surprise.
Making a hash/md5sum is pretty silly and is one layer above what you need to be checking.
What you need to check are the block errors/specifically c1/c2 errors.
When a cd is authored, it is authored to cd with subcode that can not be changed in the slightest.
Q-bit subcode is the term for the information on a compact disc that holds the track number, track length, and time in track.
Any change results in bad crossfades, blips and other ugliness.. Some plants have been known to extract the audio and redo it, and generate crap.
Most masterhouses know which ones these are and stay away from them.
Whats important are c1/c2 errors.
Check http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.
for a technical description.
C1 is error correction for the block error rate (BLER), which consists of bit errors at the lowest level. BLER is normally given in errors per second. The typical maximum BLER for quality recording is 220 errors per second.
C2 error correction applies to bytes in a frame (24 bytes per frame, 98 frames per block) and is an indication of the drive's attempt to use extended error correction to recover the data. Even a few C2 errors can be an indication of poor media quality or a drive's inability to write or read correctly.
CU error correction applies to uncorrectable errors, or errors that are present after C2 level correction. No CU errors are allowed in a recorded disc. CU errors are usually a result of damage to a disc and represent unrecoverable data. Discs with CU errors quite often cannot be read.
The acceptable number of c2 errors is zero for a disc sent to the plant.
A simple check with kprobe or plextools pro will validate your disc, your burn, your burner, and whether or not you really should be smoking in the computer room..
Once it hits the plant, the disc is reread, all samples, subcode intact and a glass master is made to create the pits in the substrate..
Some manufactured discs, have more c1's than a typical burn, this could lead to early death due to scratches.. HMMM..
At work we have a Primera Bravo II. It works fine for what we use it for, unattended bulk copies and authoring data to multiple discs. Our model has a Pioneer A05 DVD drive. The Bravo II is probably not industrial strength or the best choice for master discs but I've burned about 2000 discs with it in the last year and other then some DVD+R media issues (which we've stopped using), it works great. Just my .02
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I have to agree with the sentiments about Plextor going downhill. I recently took apart a Plextor USB drive, only to discover that it was really a Lite-On inside. Lite-On = cheap junk.