| Additional Information |
Additional information regarding program's status, the drive and the disc is available in three extra tabs.
The 'Status'-tab contains general information such as whether a new version is available, which method of drive communication is used, how the pre-recorded information on the disc is retrieved, details about the manufacturer database that has been loaded, etc. Any errors that may have occurred are also reported here. Most of the information displayed here is very much self-explanatory.
When the 'Check for updates each time on start-up' has been enabled 'DVD Identifier' will check the server and inform you if a new version is available. It will also look for the presence of an updated manufacturer database on the server. If a new database is present it will be downloaded automatically and saved locally. This database is very small so the download process will not result in a slow-down. Alternatively, if you decide to disable the automatic check, you can still manually check for updates from time to time.
As mentioned earlier the recording speeds shown in the 'DVD+R/+RW and DVD-R/-RW'-tabs are regardless of the drive's capabilities and are thus solely related to the capabilities of the disc. However, the 'Drive capabilities'-tab will provide you with the information regarding the capabilites of your drive in relation to that disc : i.e. it shows the speeds at which the drive is capable of writing on the disc.
The Write speed descriptors are retrieved via 2 methods. The first one, GET PERFORMANCE, is the method that is most commonly used by DVD Mastering applications and is also the preferred choice. The other method, MODE SENSE, is a legacy command (i.e. drives are not required anymore to support this command). Depending on your drive, it may or may not support both methods.
Also note that in order to obtain accurate results the use of an empty writable disc is recommended. But again, this differs from drive to drive : some drive are still able to report the write speeds of already written discs, while others do not report any write speeds at all once the disc has been closed.
If the drive reports write speed descriptors that are not consistent with the disc type then these descriptors will be marked as invalid entries :
| ** INFO : GET
PERFORMANCE Write Speed Descriptor(s) Descriptor #1 = 3380 KBPS (2.40x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV] Descriptor #2 = 2704 KBPS (1.95x) - [CLV/Non-Pure CAV] - [Invalid Entry] ** WARNING : Drive May Have Returned Incorrect Descriptors |
The third tab will show the entire 'Media code'-block that is present on the disc. This block is 256 bytes in size, even though most of the block is reserved for future use (e.g. faster write speeds) and thus contains zeros. This functionality is intended for advanced users.
This tab will also show which method (out of the 3 available) has been used for retrieving the pre-recorded information from the disc :
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** INFO : Format 11h (Method 1) - ADIP Information |
The content of some of these tabs can also be added to the clipboard. Enabling these options will result in more information being copied to the clipboard each time you press the 'Clipboard'-button.
Below an example of how data that has been copied to the clipboard looks like when you have enabled all 'Clipboard'-options :
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** INFO : GET PERFORMANCE Write Speed
Descriptor(s) ** INFO : MODE SENSE Write Speed
Descriptor(s) [Legacy Command] |