Tech Flashback: DiscT@2 & Labelflash (Pt. 2) – Labelflash Media & More Fun

Posted on June 18, 2020 by lui_gough

A little more than a week ago, I posted about the Yamaha DiscT@2 and Fujifilm Labelflash system of creating visible images on recordable discs using the laser of a CD/DVD recorder, and made a comparison with the HP LightScribe system which was a direct competitor.

To be honest, while the post seemed to attract some interest, I was never fully satisfied with it as there were a few questions I felt were left unanswered. The biggest one was to do with Labelflash media itself and what a proper Labelflash result looks like. I couldn’t help myself and plonked down some cash to find out. In addition to that, I also explore some rather random questions that nobody asked … but perhaps could be of interest.

I also found this original brochure from Fujifilm – very Japanese in its presentation style!

Labelflash Media & Visual Result

For the sum of about AU$30 posted, I managed to obtain a spindle of ten Ritek 16x DVD+R Labelflash discs. They’re not exactly common media, so there’s not much of a choice.

The spindle has a barcode number of 4719303534834 and a product code of 70670BRTK0016 and claims to be Made in Taiwan.

The top surface of the disc is a bright reflective blue, sandwiched 0.6mm below the clear polycarbonate top layer. The central hub area is printed a solid blue with white logo and text clearly noting this to be the printing side. Inserting the disc with the printing side down into an ordinary non-Labelflash drive does not result in any media detected, so it seems that there must be some extra detection strategy used by Labelflash firmware to detect and track on the printing side of the disc.

Once again, a familiar image is used with the maximum contrast level of 100, as Labelflash does not enforce rotational alignment so cannot be “burned again”.

The result is actually slightly underwhelming. The burned areas were not as clear as I had expected, still remaining a translucent light blue. This actually makes the result rather similar to Lightscribe, just with a different colour palette …

… and a shiny, protected printing surface. The radial and ring patterns are also visible, suggesting the burn strategy is practically the same as the DiscT@2 mode.

When viewed at a particular angle, it almost looks like a “negative”. It definitely works and while I’d have to say I prefer this to LightScribe, both are inherently clumsy, slow and limited in capabilities.

But on the whole, viewing angle is much better especially when compared to the underside of the disc where I burned the same image (except, the burn got interrupted towards the end by an unexpected reboot).

In case you were wondering, the discs carry a RITEK-F16-01 MID which implies the use of Fuji Oxonol dyes. It’s quite likely then, that the Fuji branded products may well have the same discs inside.

Labelflash Index Maker Software

Another thing I wanted to try was the “official” Labelflash Index Maker software to see what it is like. While the site is long offline, the download can still be found thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, along with some of their goofy templates.

The software is very basic, featuring a drop-down menu of installed templates and fields where some text can be entered and overlaid into the template. This provides an extremely limited amount of customisability.

Templates also indicate the approximate burning time. Some of the templates very obviously try to capitalise on the fact that the burning speed is the same inside and out, but you get more area burned on the outside for the same amount of time, thus can fit more text that way. The burning radii are automatically adjusted by the application, but on the whole, the templates are somewhat underwhelming and some even turn the disc into more of a “retail top” disc, just minus the sharpie.

There’s not much to choose in the configuration window – the font and burning area (Disc Scan will configure this for a burned disc). The DiscT@2 mode is automatically selected too depending on the disc being burned.

Three burning quality levels are provided, with no further customisation. Burning a DiscT@2 to a blank disc will prompt a warning that the disc must not have data written to it afterwards.

A progress bar is shown during burning, and once completed, a message will appear indicating that the burn has finished.

Templates are defined by the lim.ini file included in the package, so if you bother, perhaps you can customise the images being burned however, it seems Nero is still much more capable and more convenient to use overall.

Can You DiscT@2 an Inorganic DVD+R?

The most notable complaint about DiscT@2 is the difficulty in seeing the printed image. This is because the majority of DVD-R/DVD+R discs are based on an organic dye compound which is purple/blue in colour. These dyes, especially in higher speed discs, are often quite pale already and only get slightly paler once affected by the laser.

But there’s one type of disc that isn’t organic. Can you guess what I’m thinking? Yes, the M-Disc Milleniata DVD+R. These rather expensive discs eschew the reflective layer and dye layer for a “stone-like” substance which does both. This results in a disc with a very silvery appearance from the underside, but can be burned by special (mostly LG) DVD writers.

If you’re wondering whether I wasted a M-Disc DVD+R on a DiscT@2 test, yes I did.

To make this work was more complicated than just throwing it in and hitting burn. My default contrast setting of 100 actually caused the burn to fail and the drive to hiss and click as it seemed to have difficulty tracking the disc.

It seems that the high laser exposure was enough to effectively burn through the recording layer resulting in a complete loss of reflectivity, causing tracking issues. If I hold the disc up to the light, there’s a hairline ring where light shines through the disc completely! Lowering the contrast level to about 60 allowed for the above result, which looks absolutely gorgeous compared to the organic discs.

There is still a concentric ring pattern, but the contrast between light and dark is very obvious and the disc is beautiful, although not functional. This does imply that if you use an M-Disc burner to write data first, you could still label the remaining area using a Labelflash drive in DiscT@2 mode, as long as you don’t overdo the contrast like I did.

Looking from the top side of the disc, the changes to the media recording layer are obvious, along with the “really burnt” central ring area. Luckily the original “failed” burn could be recovered as it failed practically at the beginning.

Can You DiscT@2 a DVD+RW?

You know what else uses an inorganic recording layer? DVD-RW/DVD+RW discs! These use exotic phase-change alloys which can be controlled to form a crystalline or amorphous structure depending on the temperature they are heated up to and the cool-down profile. These discs are quite sensitive to writing conditions to ensure rewriteability and good recording quality. It’s no great surprise that, by default, you’re not allowed to burn a DiscT@2 to a rewriteable disc, with the software throwing a “Not supported” message.

So no, you cannot DiscT@2 a DVD-RW/DVD+RW. But what would it take to make it happen? I actually asked this question early in the Labelflash era and people thought I was crazy for even wanting to draw a DiscT@2 to a rewriteable disc. I guess now, I get to find out!

Disclaimer – I do not recommend any reader attempt what they are about to see. If you choose to do this, you do so at your own risk and I cannot accept any responsibility for any harm, loss or damage that may come your way as a result!

First, open up the enclosure and extract the drive – yes, this is my DVR-111DBK which has been crossflashed to DVR-111L. Since I’ve burned one Labelflash disc, I feel it’s no longer a great risk to open it up … so out come the five bottom screws, front tray bezel and drive bezel.

Leaving the base on, as it acts as the heatsink for the laser and motor driver units, we can see the drive mechanism and the magnetic disc clamp assembly at the top.

Extract the disc clamp by cutting the label and spinning the retention plate on the top. This now allows us to mount discs onto the spindle by sliding them into place over the spindle and snapping the magnetic clamp on top. Why is this necessary? Because we need to trick the drive to make our experiment work!

For safety, and to avoid accidental exposure to the laser, a snug fitting cardboard box is pushed over the drive assembly. The drive is a Class 3B laser device, so it is hazardous to the eye. This also serves the important function of protecting the user in case the disc shatters during spin-up. Being inside an external USB case also allows us to remove power to render the drive inert at any time.

The idea is to start the drive with a DVD+R disc mounted inside first. Once the software is fully loaded and set-up for a burn, we can swap the disc with a DVD+RW and hit burn. If the drive doesn’t notice, we’ll be on our way. This might work since most drives only read the media information when the disc is first inserted and keep this inside the drive RAM until the tray is ejected.

But one complication is that the drive likes to keep the laser on and the disc spinning at a slow speed at all times. To control this, a software called CD Throttle (formerly CD Bremse) is used to set a short idle time-out so that the drive spins down and shuts off the laser. As long as no other applications attempt to access the drive, you can swap the disc (quickly!) or power down the drive in case things go wrong.

Did I succeed? In fact, I did, in what may be the world’s first example of a DiscT@2 write to a rewriteable DVD!

The above was burnt to a Sony Accucore DVD+RW 4x disc at a contrast setting of 30. Not as brilliant as the M-Disc, with a sort of “dark” central area, but that is somewhat expected since the reflectivity of rewriteable discs generally is lower.

If the light hits it just right, the image is quite visible along with some rings.

A second disc was burned at the full 100 contrast setting which resulted in a much more visible image.

Now, both radial and circular patterns are visible. Because these discs have been burnt with the full available radius, none of the drives I have will recognise these discs as DVD+RW discs anymore. Instead, they hiss and click as they try to read a table of contents that doesn’t exist, made up of laser marks which are not compliant with DVD standards.

The reason I mention this is because I also wondered what would happen if I attempted to erase the disc afterward and or perhaps try to use it as a rewriteable. I suspected the image quality would get poorer, as the default erasure strategy is to write a fixed pattern to the disc (resulting in a near-even darkness pattern across the whole media).

To try and pursue this further, I decided to burn another disc, this time a TDK DVD+RW 4x disc that was a CMC. The image this time was burned at a contrast of 30 but seemed duller than the Sony result.

Instead of using the full radius, I left 2mm extra in the centre so hopefully drives will read this area and decide the disc is blank. While good in theory, as it turns out, all of my drives except my LG GGW-H20L and the DVR-111DBK/L decided that the disc was somehow incompatible.

Trying with the DVR-111DBK, things didn’t get far – no actual format attempt was completed, as the drive complained.

However, the LG GGW-H20L was a little more successful …

… managing to format up to the image section before clicking, hissing and then deciding to abort the format entirely. It seems that the rewriteable discs have been permanently damaged by the DiscT@2 process, which is not surprising, as they may have been exposed to laser powers beyond their engineered expectations.

But there is one more thing I can try … a very uncommon type of rewriteable erasure known as a DC Erase. This resets the rewriteable media to the original factory colour and is only available on a very limited number of drives. This feature has mostly been “lost” to history – one of the only threads I know to mention it is this one from a Chinese forum (translated).

As it turns out, I did buy a Nu-Tech DDW-082 myself. It wasn’t a great burner – it had some funky behaviour with DVD-R and its recording quality at higher speeds was just downright poor. But it did have this DC Erase functionality, which is why I kept the drive in my arsenal.

Along with an old copy of DVDInfoPro which I kept archived, it is possible to request the drive do a DC Erase.

Only a “Quick” DC Erase was successful. Attempting the “Full” erase resulted in it failing rapidly after it started.

Attempting to erase it using the DDW-082 in the regular way resulted in a permanent hang at 5%. Ultimately, this proves that the DVD+RW discs have been permanently damaged and beyond recovery. But that’s okay – that was my expectation and it was all “in the name of science.”

In case you’re wondering, I tried the swap trick with a CD-R and CD-RW and report a burn failure every time, as the laser mechanism fails to focus on the surface (it’s expecting it at 0.6mm depth) and probably is looking for a DVD-type tracking signal. So no, it’s not possible to DiscT@2 a CD using such drives – only the original Yamaha can do that.

What Happens When You Burn Data to a DiscT@2 Disc

Users are constantly reminded that if they burn a DiscT@2 to an empty disc, that they must not write data to the disc afterward. This is no doubt because the image will cause corruption of the recorded data. However, I still felt this was an interesting experiment to try, as this could be a means of creating discs with a controlled amount of error which might be used for assessing drive’s error correction capabilities.

I started with an idea to burn a template that looks like the one above, with progressively increasing bars to see how far we can go before the errors start to cause problems. After designing this image, I loaded it into the software and burnt the image to a disc.

I chose to use contrast level 30 to minimise the amount of damage to the disc itself prior to the data burn, but also, to offer enough contrast for viewing.

Sadly, the result came out with the opposite polarity to that I had expected. All of the disc area except for the pips were burned. This would not be useful, but for fun, I decided to try a burn with my LG BH16NS55 (as it’s a star with the RITEK-F16 media) and as expected, this errored out with a PCA error.

For a second take, I inverted the image … and burned another disc.

The resulting disc had exactly the same polarity, so something strange is happening. Perhaps there is a contrast maximisation calculation somewhere that decides which polarity the image will be recorded.

To overcome this, I simplified the design and drew it inside Nero directly.

This time, the disc came out with the right polarity. Putting it into my LG BH16NS55, I was able to burn the full surface just fine.

The resulting media now looks like this, with the burned sections still visible despite the recorded data.

To understand how the blocks affected the data recording quality of the disc, I decided to do a PI/PO scan of the disc using two drives, a LiteOn LDW-851S @ 4x CLV and a iHBS312 2 @ 4x CAV. I usually trust the LDW-851S more, as the CLV scans are generally the “gold standard”.

First, a control burn of a clean RITEK-F16 on the LG BH16NS55:

In general, both drives agree that the LG does a great job on this particular disc, burned at 8x. The errors are well below the preferred limits – ideally, PI must be below 280 and PIFs should be below 4 and must be below 32 to ensure readability.

The effect of the blocks are clearly visible – the blocks cause a “controlled” nearly-constant elevation of error levels over the background. These elevations are not high enough to cause the disc to be unreadable, but are enough to be detectable by the drives and reduce the margin for coping with dirt, scratches and degradation. It’s not recommended to burn even a tiny label on the disc and then write data to it, however it seems the drive may be able to cope with a ~1.7mm wide block without creating too many errors as to cause the disc to fail. This is the “magic” of error correction.

Reading back on the LG BH16NS55, we can see that towards the outer edge, reading at higher speeds is “disrupted” by the increased errors, causing slower throughput, but perhaps not as bad as I had expected. After all, the more modern drives tend to be more capable than the older ones at handling imperfections.

For giggles, I decided to try burning a RITEK-F16 on the LDW-851S, a burner that was made well before the media even existed. It could not burn faster than 2.4x, using the default strategy, which results in a much worse quality burn, especially towards the outside edge. An outright failure in my book, but perhaps still readable except at the very end.

This is why it’s important to match the recorder to the media. Old media and new recorders don’t always work well since the firmware may only have the parameters to burn newer media. Likewise, new media and old recorders also have issues, as they may not have the right parameters. This often results in a “default” set of parameters being applied, and depending on the sophistication of the drive, some adaptive changes during the burn to try and maintain writing quality. The result is often slow, inconsistent burns with increased error rates (thus shorter lifetimes).

Conclusion

At last, I think I’ve explored the ins and outs of the Labelflash technology, answering all the questions that were never asked, but perhaps are interesting. On the whole, I prefer Labelflash to LightScribe, but it was the less popular one of the two. Both were very limited and flawed from the outset, but the protected nature of the Labelflash printing dye and the ability of the drives to also do DiscT@2 really made it my preference.

The Labelflash Index Maker software is very basic and doesn’t really make the most of the capabilities of Labelflash. There are very limiting templates with only a few fields for text and no easy way to customise graphics. It seems to be a very “low-cost effort” and I much prefer Nero as a result.

DiscT@2ing various discs went well – inorganic M-Disc media actually showed great contrast and required reduction of contrast setting to complete a burn successfully. Writing to DVD+RW is also possible with the drive disassembled and the disc-swap trick (at the risk of the user), although this destroys the disc permanently, as I have learned.

It also seems to be possible to burn very small “features” onto a disc and then write data to it, to introduce a “controlled” amount of error into the disc. Provided the burner writes well and the features are small, the error correction will mask the existence of the label and the disc will appear to function normally despite having a reduced margin to failure.

Posted in Computing, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Note: Fake PFC Inductor Found in a Generic ATX PSU

Posted on June 18, 2020 by lui_gough

A fair amount of random old junk passes through my hands, as I can rarely justify leaving a good salvage behind. This sometimes means bringing home an “unloved” box that is sitting on the side of the road for an unknown amount of time just to see what is inside.

In this case, I took a rather “anonymous” looking box which turns out to have had a good amount of water damage from rain, but also what appeared to be a power-supply related fault that took out the whole machine and caused some collateral damage to the motherboard. It’s not the most unusual thing to find, I suppose.

The power supply was junk, but I decided to take a look inside anyway. I wasn’t expecting to blog about it, so it had long been thrown out, but I remember being rather impressed that even generic power supplies seem to be coming with passive power factor correction (PFC) nowadays. I found a chunky PFC inductor mounted to the lid of the unit, unplugged it and kept it in my junk box.

Guess what? Today, I went through my junk box and rediscovered the inductor. I wondered what value it would have, so I got out my LCR meter but I couldn’t make sense of any reading. It looked like a nice PFC inductor until I started unwrapping it …

Marked ZLPFC-UU32, there’s no doubt this unit was masquerading as a PFC inductor. It’s even in the name. It has a laminated iron core, along with a plastic winding bobbin. The only thing it’s missing is the actual windings – but to make it “work”, an insulated wire loop is wrapped around a small bit of cardboard, itself wrapped around with a piece of cardboard to disguise its shape, then copious wraps of the yellow mylar insulating tape.

No wonder I couldn’t get a reading from it. It’s not a good inductor at all. It’s just a piece of wire attached to a paperweight. The sad thing is that there’s probably close to 80% of the material needed to make a proper PFC inductor which would reduce resistive losses in the power lines. Instead, they ship this just so it looks like it complies with the requirements and so the units “weigh” the same and are otherwise indistinguishable from properly operating units (except for their actual power factor performance).

This was not an expected find … but I guess this means my surprise at generic power supplies having PFC is warranted. After all, I just proved that this one didn’t!

Posted in Computing, Electronics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tech Flashback: HP LightScribe “Direct Disc Labelling”

Posted on June 14, 2020 by lui_gough

Last week, I wrote about DiscT@2 and Labelflash, labelling methods which utilised the laser inside a CD/DVD writer to create readable labels on the top and underside of discs. That particular system, pioneered by Yamaha and further improved by Fujifilm, was one that I had practical experience with even though it was arguably more obscure.

This post looks at the competing LightScribe system, invented by Hewlett Packard (HP) and released in 2004. This system uses an infrared laser on a specially coated media to create greyscale images on the top side of the disc. Initially only available in a “gold” colour, media was later available in a number of colours before becoming unsupported in around 2013. This process was marketed as “Burn, Flip, Burn”. I suppose as HP was a printer manufacturer, perhaps entering the optical disc printing market with this solution was seen as another way to ensure profits which wouldn’t be shared with other printer companies. Ultimately, this didn’t work out so well for them …

Getting a LightScribe Drive

I didn’t own any LightScribe capable drives during its heyday, but because I’ve had the chance to rummage and salvage from a number of HP desktops, I took home many of their optical drives which had LightScribe capability.

This particular unit is rather anonymous from the outside, as is the case for most OEM drives. It features the LightScribe logo in the centre of the tray.

This particular unit is labelled HP, but is an LG-produced drive, model GH60L produced 16th June 2010 which is only three years until LightScribe would become unsupported. It’s interesting to note that while some drives (e.g. older LiteOn units) could be crossflashed to LightScribe-capable firmware, such drives often could not burn a LightScribe label as they were missing the extra hardware that reads the optical code burned into the centre of the disc.

LightScribe Media

LightScribe media is relatively rare to find since it has been discontinued for many years, however, it is available at a significant premium on auction sites such as eBay. Instead, I’ve been lucky that in my occasional ferreting around the thrift stores, I’ve been able to pick up a few unused LightScribe blanks at anywhere from $0.50-$1.00 a disc. They’ve been a rare occasional find, but every time I come across them, I end up buying them.

The following images are taken from my “Optical Disc Corner“, where there are plenty of other retail optical discs on show.

The first one is an Imation branded CD-R. As I only have one sample of this type, I’m not going to be burning this, but the packaging is worth taking a look at just to see how it was marketed.

LightScribe’s logo is featured on the rear of the disc, although this seems to be the “one swoosh” version of the logo. This disc is made in India, with an ATIP that corresponds to Moser Baer Media.

The top surface is an ordinary dull-gold, with an ID and clocking track burned into the central area.

Instead, I will be burning one of these – a Verbatim LightScribe CD-R. This later type disc clearly notes it is a LightScribe Version 1.2 disc, as there is an upgrade to software necessary to optimise image burning to these discs. Apparently the ID code in the centre also tells the drive some parameters to use for the laser to achieve the best burn.

This disc seems to be a CMC Taiwan disc, which is a little sad. I would have rather an MCC-made Super AZO or similar, but by then, CD-Rs were beginning to decline in popularity.

I’ll also be burning one of these, which is a Verbatim LightScribe DVD+R, also of Version 1.2 type. This particular disc is an MCC-made disc from Taiwan. The top has a similar colour but the reflective nature is slightly different due to the reflective layer being behind 0.6mm of polycarbonate due to the construction of the DVD itself. The LightScribe coating is still on the top of the disc itself.

LightScribe Setup

Unlike Labelflash which was handled entirely by the end user application (in that case, Nero 6), LightScribe requires the installation of the LightScribe System Software.

The software appears to be a set of libraries which are used by end-user applications to access the LightScribe functionality. I suppose this may offer a clean way to extend the LightScribe standard and features without forcing all applications to have to be rewritten. After installation, a desktop icon is created.

Clicking on the icon launches your web browser pointing to a local FAQ about LightScribe and how to use it.

It also installs the LightScribe Control Panel, which allows you to modify the contrast setting to apply enhanced contrast at the cost of burning time.

There is also some system information on your System Software version and drives, and links to various LightScribe related resources which are all broken since the official LightScribe website went offline.

To actually burn a label requires some software which can design and burn labels. I looked for some modern, free software and found out that the free CDBurnerXP supports LightScribe.

To use it, one must install it and begin a project, then access the Print Cover option. If you meet the prerequisites, you should have a “LightScribe…” button available at the bottom.

Pressing on this brings up the print options dialogue, which allows you to choose the drive, contrast level (Draft, Normal, Best) and colour of disc (which only affects the preview). An estimate of burning time is also provided. You will need to configure the cover to your liking before hitting the print button. The burn time is automatically estimated based on the size of the annulus that needs to be burned.

If you’re interesting in burning an image, like I was, then you can load the image, clear the title and set Copies to 0, so as to remove the text over the image. The image above is of a stairwell in a tower at the Chinese Gardens in Singapore, from my holiday in 2017 – there’s not that many images which work well with the centre “cut out”.

To print, the disc needs to be inserted upside down – the feeling is a little odd the first time you do it.

CDBurnerXP seems to try and identify the disc in this state and will pop up an error, but this is not an issue. Printing of the disc can be started with the “Print” button.

During printing, a new animated dialogue appears with an animated LightScribe logo and a simulated visual progress which shows a laser dot circling the image and the greyscale image being progressively constructed on the screen. Progress is shown in the status bar, along with estimated time remaining (which was not always very accurate). I think this is a very nice touch – it’s very visual and cool to see happening. After the burn is complete, the disc is automatically ejected.

HP also provided some official free labelling tools, including the LightScribe Simple Labeler and LightScribe Template Labeler.

LightScribe Simple Labeler begins with a splash screen that tells the user to insert a LightScribe disc into the drive label-side down.

From there, the user can enter two lines of text (no, this is not a meme we’re making) and choose a “border” which fills the space between the text. The drive and number of copies can be selected.

The next step is to preview the label. This tool is rather limiting in the sense that this type of labelling only has a very limited amount of information and doesn’t make much use of most of the surface. Clicking on the “Burn Label” button progresses to the burning screen.

This reminds us to insert a disc for burning …

… but of course, I didn’t choose to burn this label. It’s just too simple and not what I wanted. Given the rarity of the media, I wasn’t going to burn a small ring of text and call it a day.

Luckily, there is also the LightScribe Template Labeler which is a bit more sophisticated, with designs that fill the disc surface.

The three-step creation process starts with choosing a template, of which there are a few to choose from.

Towards the bottom, there is even an option to choose a blank template that allows for customisation of image and text. This allows us to burn full images, assuming you clear the text with a “space” character.

In this case, I decided to use a picture of Kinkakuji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, from my 2017 holiday as the image to be burned.

The same print options dialogue as the one shown when using CDBurnerXP is seen. Above, I show the effect of choosing the disc colour on the preview.

Likewise, the printing dialogue is the same, although this has a longer estimated time since I chose to set the drive into “enhanced contrast” mode.

LightScribe Results

My first burn as onto the CD-R, with default contrast setting on the drive and using the “Best” quality on the print dialogue. The resulting image is noticeably light and somewhat faded – compare that to the ink-printed serial in the centre of the disc.

Because of this, I decided to re-burn the image again. Because LightScribe enforces rotational alignment between subsequent burns, images were well aligned. The camera had the same manual settings and the image was processed the same way in Lightroom. The resulting image is noticeably darker, but perhaps could still do with some improvement.

A third burn seems to have produced the level of contrast I would have considered the “right” level. Because of the multiple burns, ultimately getting a label up to this contrast takes almost an hour – an eternity compared to an inkjet print, but not that dissimilar to DiscT@2 at a contrast level of 100. Of interest is that by default, the “best” setting in DiscT@2 corresponds to a contrast level of 30, which takes about 20 minutes a pass.

For giggles, I decided to burn the image a fourth time, although this seemed to have less of a visible effect. On the whole, the image quality did not get any worse – some users report that rotational alignment is not always perfect so the image could become fuzzier after reburning, but with my HP/LG drive, this didn’t seem to affect image quality in any major adverse way.

Enhancing the contrast and looking closer at the first burn, there is a noticeable “noise” pattern to the image with radial differences in darkness which remind me of inkjet nozzles that aren’t all firing quite at the right volume or timing.

After four burns, the image is noticeably more “banded” which suggests something perhaps related to positioning or laser power. This seems quite similar to the result on DiscT@2 as well.

However, unlike the result of the DiscT@2 on the data side being difficult to read unless light is hitting it at just the right angle, the viewing angle of the LightScribe print is quite good.

However, if light hits the top surface at just the right angle, contrast can be quite heavily reduced. I then decided to try burning the LightScribe DVD, and the results are a little bit different.

From the top, the image looks soft at a glance – this is because the reflective coating is 0.6mm behind the surface which is burned, thus the translucent image hangs in front. This produces a “floating” fuzzy effect on the image. On a single pass using enhanced contrast mode, the image is not too bad but perhaps still a bit light for my liking, especially if the image were to fade over time.

A second burn of the same project improves the contrast noticeably, making the dark areas quite a bit darker.

Burning a third time improves the darkness further still, but now the details in the dark areas are being lost as the image saturates. In all, I prefer the result on the CD to the DVD and it’s rather sad to see that the coating is still on the top on the DVD, where it is vulnerable to handling damage, finger oils and chemicals. In fact, this disc had some residue that I tried to wipe off prior to burning, which caused the surface to have a streaked appearance. Further wiping only increased the streakiness, so I had to stop before I potentially ruined it.

Conclusion

During the heydays of LightScribe, I remember media being available in my local shops, although at a noticeable premium. As I didn’t have any LightScribe capable burners at the time and due to the higher price of the media, I ultimately did not end up trying it. Instead, I opted for the printable disc route where necessary – it was still the more universal and cheaper option.

Now that I have had a chance to try out LightScribe, it seems it isn’t that much different from Labelflash in a number of key ways. The default “High Quality” burn times are very similar, as are the greyscale imaging limitations. While LightScribe enforces rotational alignment allowing for “incremental re-labelling”, it requires specially coated media and cannot label to the underside (data side) of a disc as a Labelflash drive in DiscT@2 mode could. Both suffer from noticeable “rings” in darkness and slight jitters in rotational positional accuracy.

LightScribe’s coating is much better than labelling discs on the data side using DiscT@2 as it is much more angle-independent and high contrast. It is available for both CD and DVD, with the coating on the top side of the disc in both cases, however the DVD print always looks a bit fuzzier as the reflective layer is 0.6mm behind the LightScribe coating. In both cases, the printed coat is exposed to handling damage, chemicals and oils. In my case, the media even had a slight powdery coat which was easily disturbed. Some users have also reported fading – which is also related to the fact that the default and enhanced contrast rarely provide the best contrast in a single burn, requiring multiple passes to make a clean image. The specialised media had not only a top coat of the LightScribe layer but also have an ID and clocking track “laser cut” into the hub area. Ultimately, this made LightScribe expensive, slow and limited. Labelflash’s coating was underneath the top coat, thus protecting it from handling damage but also limiting its application to DVDs only.

That being said, it is still a rather cool use of a disc burner’s laser, even if it was not widely commercially successful.

—

Aside

Sorry guys – the site’s a little slow and had a bit of downtime from time to time. Unfortunately, this can’t be helped (at least, without spending a lot more money) because of the limitations in terms of resources at the web host and the voracious behaviour of a number of misbehaving bots that refuse to consistently identify (so as to be blocked by user agent, something I am already doing) and refuse to honour robots.txt (or its rate limit suggestions, which I am already using to try and tame them). They also have a habit of all “coming” in at once, throwing upwards of 50-requests-per-second almost mindlessly despite providing 503s which is absolutely impossible to sensibly deal with. Some others think that it’s fun to try scanning the site with “security” (ahem hacking) tools which also mindlessly throw out silly queries in hopes of snagging themselves a vulnerability. It frustrates me a little that I am devoting much in the way of time to dealing with this, but I really don’t want to have to set my CloudFlare reverse proxy to “I’m Under Attack” mode and force everyone to do a JS challenge along with a five-second wait to access the content.

If you do reach this site when it is down, I do apologise, however there isn’t too much I can do about it … you’ll just have to try again later, perhaps 10-30 minutes later.

However, a move to something more powerful (perhaps VPS hosting) is on the way in a few years at most – after all, with about 30GB of content and now approaching 200k inodes, my “unlimited” (but not really) shared hosting is reaching its limits!

Posted in Computing, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment