Test Procedure: Reading, Ripping, Grabbing, Burning And Playback
Because we were interested in an in-depth, solid buyer's guide for DVD burners rather than a simple beauty contest, a comprehensive range of tests and benchmarks was necessary.
That's why we did not restrict ourselves merely to writing tests and performance measurements. Instead, we wanted to cover as wide a range of common applications as possible. This includes the extraction of video and audio data from original and self-burned discs (even from scratched discs), writing to all supported disc types (CD and DVD), timing from the point at which the tray is closed to actual access in Windows Explorer, and a whole pile of common benchmarks and performance measurements. The following chart explains the individual tests in detail:
| DVD Tests |
|---|
| Reading three different DVD movies (3 tests):- DVD-5- DVD-9- scratched DVD-5 |
| Reading a total of nine DVD blank discs recorded by us (9 tests):- Verbatim DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW- Memorex DVD+R- Imation DVD+R, DVD-R- Imation Business Select DVD+R, Business Select DVD-RWe burned a DVD image from a movie onto all discs that we had previously recorded from the "Premiere Digital" digital TV channel (MPEG-2 stream recording using a digital TV card) and then made DVD-compatible with authoring software. |
| Time to access all available DVD types and an original DVD (DVD-5) in Windows, including DVD-RAM with LG GSA-4040B (11 tests) |
| Writing of all supported DVD formats of the respective devices (4 tests):DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM (only LG GSA-4040B) |
| Usual DVD benchmarks: random seek, full seek, data transfer diagram, CPU usage (21 individual tests) |
| Test of DVDs recorded by the burners in nine different DVD players (9 or 18 individual tests with multi-mode burners). |
| CD tests |
| Reading of an SVCD in Nero 6.0.0.11 (1 test). This usually represents the generation of an image from the copy of the CD. |
| Reading (so-called grabbing) an audio CD (1 test) |
| Reading the copy of an audio CD in order to detect differences between burned discs and original CDs (1 test) |
| Time to access all available CD types in Windows (3 tests) |
| Writing of all supported CD formats of the respective devices (2 tests):CD-R and CD-RW |
| Usual CD benchmarks: random seek, full seek, data transfer diagram, CPU usage (21 individual tests) |
You will find an exact listing of devices and blank discs used in the "Test Configuration" section.
