VSO database

VSO-Software keeps a database with information about the burns that people do with their wide spread software. Users can enable the functionality to allow VSO-Software to gather these statistics anonymously. A part of this data is send to CDFreaks.com and is used to provide users with quantitative and qualitative information about media and burners.

Reported data

The VSO-software is sending the following data:

• The VSO software that has submitted this information, and it's version number (e.g. "C3 3.0.48.94" for CopyToDVD)
• The burning device manufacturer and model string (e.g. "PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-108")
• The firmware revision of the burning device (e.g. "1.18")
• The inserted media identification string (e.g. "RICOHJPN-W01-01", a Ricoh DVD+RW media)
• A unique identifier for the media (a hash string, which differ for each series of media. this help to find out if media is fake of good quality brand)
• Media Format (a numeric code representing the type of media DVD-R, DVD+R, etc.)
• Logical Write Speed (The information returned by the drive)
• Burn Size (size in sectors of the data to be burned)
• Written Size (size in sectors of the data effectively burned)
• Burn Date (When it's been burned)
• Completion Time (Time to burn, from start of lead-in to start of lead- out, with Written Size will give us the real writing speed)
• Status (a code indicating everything went ok, or in case of error, what kind of error occurred)

Displayed statistics

From the reported data we can derive the following statistics:

• Success rate - Calculated by dividing the amount of burns with the status confirming the burn went OK with the total amount of burns. This can be calculated for several criteria, e.g. firmware, media code, media format etc.
• Usage - Total amount of usage by counting the amount of times a burner or media has send back information to our database. With this information we can calculate the most used burner, media, manufacturer etc. and its market share.
• Best media codes - For each drive we can determine the most successful media codes. Media codes are stored on a recordable disc and used by the burner to determine the best (laser) settings for the disc. These codes are manufacturer (not brand) specific. Many (specialized) internet shops show Media codes so users are able to purchase the discs that contain these codes.
• Firmware performance - Firmware is a piece of software embedded in a burner, which can be updated by the user. We can determine the performance of each firmware, provided that enough data is available for that particular firmware.

Performance indication

The statistics provide an indication of the performance of the device, compared to all other devices. The indications:

• Excellent - The best performing devices
• Good - Performance is above average
• Mediocre - Performance is below average
• Poor - Performance is worse than what might be expected from a device
• Very poor - Performance is unacceptable

Drawbacks

Unfortunately, the generated statistics cannot be considered perfect. There are some drawbacks to the data:

• The software is only reporting if the burn was successful or not, it doesn’t give any information about the burn quality. A burn might be successful while the disc turns out to be unreadable.
• Statistics are based on usage by VSO-Software. It is possible that a burn fails due to software failure.
• There are fake media identification strings on the markets. Some smaller manufacturers do this to ensure compatibility of their discs with certain burners.