Primera Bravo II Disc Duplicator

What media are you using? The internal Plexstore 716A is what mine had which is the same drive Discmakers sells in their Elite line and is tuned for their "ultra" media (which is what I"m using). I've tried setting the speed to "max speed" and "16x"; same result. Note that the Bravo burns at the same low speed even using Toast.

I tried the sample "Tuff Coat" media which came with the unit, but I don't remember the burn time. But the resulting disk starting skipping and otherwise misbehaving on my set top DVD player at about 1/2 way through. It occurred on BOTH sample disks, so I abandoned that media.

Ed

One final inquiry: are you using Describe to format the video_ts folder to the drive or using a .img file created by DVD SP (or iDVD for that matter)? I using disc images and 10.4 and Describe 5.3.8 have a problem when trying to use video_ts folders.

Ed

Thanks. Video_TS folders don't work with Describe 5.3.8 and Tiger anyway; I just got the update to 5.3.10 where they do work, but the speed problem remains. Unless there is something strange about my G5 2.5DP, I suspect the Plextor 716A drive is not working correctly. My USB 2 port checks out with other USB2 devices and works fast, my internal 8X drive burns 8x media at its rated speed using Toast (Toast burns slowly on the Bravo II Plexstor drive, too, so it is not the Describe software). The Bravo even "burns" slow in "test" mode.

We'll see how Primera handles this as a warranty claim.

Ed

I am in email communications with Primera tech support: they are pretty responsive with their tech guy suggesting many things to try out. So far, no go, but he did overnight me 5.3.10 when he suggested video_ts burning rather than .img burning and I told him that it didn't work and that I was using Tiger (I had told him that initially when I specified my configuration, but it didn't click until I emphasized it again).

I also updated the Plexstor 716A with the v1.09 firmware directly from the Plexstor site.

At this point, I think it is the Plextor 716a just not working correctly.

Ed

Sounds like you are getting 16x on your media. The Plextor web site lists several 8x media (including your Verbatum and Taiyo Yuden) which will successfully burn at 16x. If you are burning at "max", the drive / Describe software are supposed to "test" the media, and burn at the best speed it can. My 16x media (two types now, Taiyo Yuden 16x and Memorex 16x, both burn in about 12 minutes on my G5 2.5 (similar to yours), my wife's iMac G5 2.0, and a friends Shuttle XPC PC (3.0 Pentium, Windoze XP SP2);

Sure seems to me like a USB 2 issue; I've never seen a DVD-R drive which won't burn at its rated speed as a failure mode: they mostly just don't work at all if they fail. I've burned 25 disks now (at the slow speed ;-( ) and they all play just fine on regular set top boxes, or so my customers tell me.

Ed

Ahhh: it seems as though you are getting similar performance to mine. Are you running TIger for real? The Primera support people just reported to me that they tested the latest Plexstor drive with an iMac G5 and Tiger, and got 11 minutes of burn time for a 16x 4.3GB burn: somewhere between a 4 and 8x burn (6x?). Since these things really don't burn at the full rated speed all the time (start out slow, finish fast), a 4.3GB DVD-R should burn in about 5 minutes on a 16x burner.

They are thinking that there is some problem with the combination of USB 2, Plexstor, and Tiger. But I also got a slower than 16x burn (about 9 minutes) on a Shuttle XPC (Pentium 3.0) on Windoze XP SP2. (boy was it painful to run windoze: took twice as long to install the Primera software, and the PrimoDVD is about 100 times more difficult to navigate. Sigh...

Ed

Don't burn up a bunch if DVD-Rs just to check this. You can just put one of the type you want to test in the input bin, select the image or other files you want to burn, UNCHECK the print box, and CHECK the "test write" box. It will still analyze the media and just turn the laser on to read power so as to not write on the DVD-R, but otherwise simulate a real burn.

My last communications with Primera indicated that they had finally gotten a iMac G5 set up with Tiger and Viola! they experienced the same slow burn: 11 minutes for 4.3GB on 16x Taiyo-Yuden media, the preferred brand for Plextor drives. Since that burn should complete in about 5 minutes (they don't really burn the whole disk at 16x), that's more than double the time. The Primera Tech believes that they have some USB 2 / ATAPI Bridge / Plextor problem, maybe with just Tiger, maybe with G5's, or maybe in general.

imho, it's too bad Primera dropped Firewire for the data transfer; it is so much more reliable (especially on Macs) and the speed is more consistent across Firewire implementations. Even the cheesy $39 Firewire disc box I bought works just fine with both a hard drive I tried, and the DVD-RAM I took out of my old G4/500DP. Oh, well.

Ed