DVD Durability?

[proton]

Does anybody have any idea how durable a DVD disc is to wear and tear as compared to a CD?

What I mean is a CD can have a degree of scratching without affecting playback since the laser can focus through it. I am wondering how DVD’s compare if anyone knows.

Now I am not intending to kick any of my discs around the floor but it is almost impossible not to get some small scratches over time even when the discs are handled carefully.

It might be nice to know how they compare with CD’s to give some idea if more than one stored Backup would be wise.

[hewtra]

It would be interesting to know something about this topic.

Recently I have tried to play an old (3 months!!) DVDrip of
a movie but...surprise: the disk skips or is not readble!!
The same movie was perfect at the first play 3 months ago, on
the same standalone dvd-player!!
The dvd is readable on the dvd of my pc, fortunatly.
Analyzing the surface of the media it's possible to see some
dark irregular spots that were not present 3 months ago.
I found the same problems on other disks.
I have see that these spots grows with time. In the new media
there are not imperfections but after the burning the spots begin
to appear.
This happens only with bulk media. I've tried with Verbatim (-R)
and Pioneer without aging problems.
This are the details:
DVD-R, bulk purchased from Meritline, burned with Pioneer A04.

Any suggestions?

Hewtra

[discutter]

Use Traxdata RITEK discs, I have some 4 month old rips now and they still are in perfect working order! everyone swears by them for video

[atreides93]

Hewtra didn't you post this exact same post in another thread?

By the way, is it very humid where you live? I wonder if the environment is different where you live.

[hewtra]

Are you joking???

I live in north Italy. It's humind in winter but....I see
movies at home and not outside :))
If the DVD media are so sensible to humidity I think that
I will throw the dvd burner out of the windows....wainting
for Blue-ray ;)

[atreides93]

Look, I'm sure you don't intend to piss me off, but that comment of yours did piss me off. But I'll ignore it for now and continue to try to assist you.

read this paragraph down at the bottom about cd-r's and how humidity CAN affect them, as well as temperature. since cd-r's are similar to dvd-r's i figure high humidity could be a factor...
also do you smoke in the home?? maybe your house is full of smoke or some shit..who really knows.
but a bunch of people have been using RITEK's on here for more than 3 months, and if they were degrading like you say for us, then I'm sure there would be a whole lot of complaining in this forum by now.

>>>
CD-R ageing processes can be accelerated by high temperature and humidity environments. Media manufacturers may estimate longevity by evaluating discs aged at elevated temperatures and humidities. Extrapolation to ambient conditions, typically 21 C-23 C and 15%-60% RH, then provide a lifetime for the product. Such methods are valid only when a proper end-of-life criteria is applied. BLER is commonly used for this purpose, although supporting evidence has not been published. Some vendors have used a maximum BLER of 50 per sec. to determine end-of-life. Standards ISO/IEC 10149, ANSI/NAPM IT9.21-1996, and others use a BLER limit of 220 per sec. Draft Standard ISO/DIS 12024 required zero E22 and E32 errors in addition to BLER limits.
>>>>

[atreides93]

This is from the yamaha web site:

Does Sunlight and climatic changes effect the longevity of my CD-R? [top]

Exposing the disc to excessive heat, humidity, or to direct sunlight will greatly reduce the longevity of a CD-R. CD-R discs, unlike pressed CDs, are more sensitive to environmental conditions and should be treated with greater care especially in respect to climatic changes.

[hewtra]

Dear atreides93, I'm sorry for the misundertanding but
I REALLY don't want to piss you off.
I give you my apolgies.

Please help me!
I know that humidity is a real factor of aging in optical media
but I'm am surprised about the speed of aging!
I preserve my DVDs (and CDs) in a standard case because in most
of them I keep my personal important data too.
I don't smoke and I think my house is a quite healthy place (I have
a little child...), I never had problems with CD-R in the last 8 year.
You are right when you say that the forum should be full of complain
about Ritek, in fact I begin to think that it is a my problem.
But, what kind of problem? I'm not a rookie about pc (I'm an engineer).
The problem with the media is about playing of the movie near
the end of it.
But, surprise, if I try to play again (for example the next day) the movie
from the chapters where I had the problem (the day before) it plays
fine!!!

Why more expensive media have not the problem (until now)?
Could be a problem of my burner (Pioneer A04, purchased 6 month ago)?
Could be the standalone player? (MagnexDVP900, it really works fine
with many other kind of media and standard)

TIA

Hewtra.

[atreides93]

Wow that is strange. So one day the chapter plays just fine but the next day it doesn't? I wonder, is it possible your player is defective? (the standalone) ??

well at least you can still read them in your dvd-r drive !

[gooki]

Hewtra, have you applied lables to your discs?

[atreides93]

Hey some more good news for Ritek users!!

I found an even older disk I burned back in January 18, 2002. That's nearly a YEAR ago. Its a Ritek G01 disk, and it is still working great. I just ripped it using dvd decryptor and it had ZERO errors. It had 4,430,000 bytes on it.

[hewtra]

Thanks to all you guys for the help, but this
problem is driving me insane!!

I've tried to rip the dvd with DVDDecrypter and
a Toshiba DVD-rom and I got errors!!
If I try to do the same with the DVD-burner (P.A04)
all is fine. No errors.
I have examined 5 DVD-R (all movies) until now and
the result is the same. Sigh...
The standalone player is ok. All my original DVDs play
fine, so the VCD, SVCD and the MP3.
Until now, my personal movies burned on more expensive
media (verbatim and pioneer) play fine.
I never use labels on the media.

I know, you begin to think I'm crazy....

In the next days I'll try to burn an other DVD with
another burner (Sony DRU500) to see if the black spots
appears in the same way.

Could the burner have some problems? If so, why with more
expensive media I have no problem?

TIA.

[gooki]

If you are getting black spots it is generally one of two things.

1) The disc had dust on it before burning.

or

2) You have cdr eating fungus in your cases.

If you buy the ritek DVD-R's by the spindle load and the verbatims etc plastic wraped in cases, there is less oportunit for dust to get onto the surface of the seald discs.

How to fix.

1) Vacum and dust your room/office regulary, and keep protective shell on splindle.

or

2) If you are keeping your DVD-R's in a cd wallet that is all black destroy it and all infected media, and then go out and buy the cd wallets that are partially transparent. Additionally store discs away from moist areas.

These recomendations are from my personal experiences only, and have worked for me. (I had to throw out 200 CDR's because of that nasty fungus).

[atreides93]

gookie, why does the cd wallet have to be partially transparent? do you mean the sleeve or the pages?

i have a 96-cd wallet that i'm storing all my dvd-r's in.

[ux-3]

Interesting reading...

This CD Fungus is no joke by any chance? How would you see first signs? Is it that ink absorbing surface that gets eaten? I just bought such a case for my SVCDs. I suppose light is to enter, cause fungus doesn't like sun. Or have you ever seen a slime mold craw out in daylight? As a Lemma, it won't help to have a transparent case in a dark cabinet. As a second thought, if you bathe it in UV, you can be sure that slime won't have a chance... you won't be happy that way either though.

I have just checked through my entire CD-R collection, because I bought a charge of defective ones about three years ago. At some point of the rim, the dye has faded completely and just leaves the golden reflective. So they have golden areas "munching" inwards. As to salvation of content, murphys law applied. The stuff I could easily get back could be rescued, the few valuable disks could not. I just like to mention the great service the latest plextools provided to the task of reading in _unplayable_ disks on the CD-standalone. I couldn't believe it, but they cut their way through the errors, rereading many times, till they were done. The resulting disks were all without c2 errors or crackling noises. Needless to say, I backed up all disks of that manufacturer and threw the old ones away. Brand media from now on! I suppuse that the rim sealing of the CDs had a gap which allowed oxygen to destroy the dye.

Reports of DVD surviving an astonishing time of ONE year are not really making me feel any better...

[atreides93]

Originally posted by ux-3

Reports of DVD surviving an astonishing time of ONE year are not really making me feel any better...

Ok, first of all I haven't had my dvd burner for more than a year and a few weeks, so I don't have any disks that are older than that for testing. Second, he was complaining that his disks wore out after only 3 months...so I was showing him that mine lasted 4 times that. that is amazing compared to the lifetime he's seeing

[DVD__GR]

If we take it mathematically a DVD is 7,34 times bigger than a CD so a same scratch maybe could affect 7,34 times more the easiness of reading it???
thats my thought.;)

[hewtra]

I've checked the firmware version of my DVR-A04.
It's 1.21 revision, quite old.
Could this the origin of my trouble? I never updated it.
If I want to update, there is some particular issue to pay
attention to?
TIA
Hewtra

[atreides93]

interesting..so you never updated the firmware??? go update it!!

[hewtra]

Updated to 1.40!
The problem is the same, the same black spots
after the burning.
Using DVDDecrypter the DVD-R seems ok but I'm
worried about these spots....
Bye.

Hewtra