LIGHTNING UK!

Yup, the plex has a 2 year warranty so I just filled out the online RMA and 3 days later I had a new drive Really can't fault plextors return policy! Good point about the BenQ firmware... it probably wont even see these Ricoh as being 8x! Guess it'll just be the plex that gets tested then.

I haven't tried any yet but I did buy a couple of the Ricoh ones a while back. I'll test them this weekend in the Plextor (now I have a nice new one back from Plextor... mine died ) and in the BenQ 1655 too.

Probably exactly what you showed in your pic earlier - that the scan gets worse at the end. So if you cut the burn short, you don't get to see all tha bad bits. Pretty obvious stuff really!

I'd imagine he means the entire disc - as in wiping everything (filesystem included) off it.

Now one could say that about some of your posts! I can't speak for corny, but lfc and I got ours from SVP. The spindles I've got certainly look official, they even have a nice bit of paper on top of the first disc giving warnings about only using them in drives that comply with the new dvd-r specs for burning 16x media. It then goes on to say that they're made in Japan.

Ok cheers, I found the file format via google and have added support for it.

You can email the first 5 meg of it and I'll see what I can do.

So no chance of you just emailing me the 2kb .gi file then?!

Did it the other day about 10 times to a hdd I need to RMA with Maxtor. Using my own little HDD Tools program of course Didn't take anywhere near as long as your one though - my transfer rate was about 70mb/s

Yeah you can't ever really trust the brand name, you have to go by the dye type. Checkout our media & drives forum for some help.

Please provide us with the log or something so we can actually see what's happening.

It's cool, I realised English wasn't your first language, that's why I tried to explain it again You probably can find the layer break position using PgcEdit, yes. It is not something I've tried so I cannot say for sure either way. Assuming you want to know the title/chapter/cell of the layer break, I'd probably use IFOEdit. Just get it to open up the largest IFO file (this will probably be the main VTS set) and see where it marks the layer break flag. If you want to know it in terms of LBA, load up ImgBurn and switch to verify mode. Down the bottom of the info on the right side of the window you'll see some information about layers.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying... You posted 2 screenshots. One where you loaded the MDS file, the other, just the ISO. What I was trying to say was the loading/not loading the MDS file is irrelevant to the 'Display IFO Layer Break Information...' feature because it does not use the info in the MDS file, it uses the IFO data. If you want to manually set your own layerbreak, it will not be done through ImgBurn. You authoring program / image building program will do it. So far is ImgBurn is concerned, it simply displays a list of options already available to you. You select the one you want (often there IS only 1), click ok, and then it burns.

Doesn't matter if the MDS is present or not... that window will always only show the IFO layerbreak. To view the MDS one, load the image as if you were going to burn it and then hover the mouse over the 'sectors' information. A yellow tooltip will appear with the layer data in it.

You should have the original layerbreak. ImgBurn will read this info from the IFO files. If you're worried about something, get a screenshot of that 'Layer Break Information' window and post it here on the forum.

Maybe the drive doesn't report that it can burn DL media. They're not FORCED to. Anyway, ImgBurn doesn't rely on that info. If it can burn them it'll still work.

That's just the way DVD-R DL was designed. You can't do anything about it. The DVD- (minus) format doesn't support booktype setting, that's one of the major advantages of DVD+ (plus). Same goes for moving the layerbreak. You're much better off with DVD+R DL and changing the booktype to DVDROM.

Noooo, just the small / tiny .gi file. It should be no larger / bigger than 2KB in size (2048 bytes).

Click Tools -> ISO -> Display IFO Layer Break Information... Point it to your ISO file and see what it finds. No, that value cannot (and wouldn't need to be) put in as the layerbreak position.

Can you please email me the *.gi file? Just the small one.

Nah this is just loading in the image file. The sequence of numbers (the signature) i look for in the .gi file must have changed - or at least is different for this image. Without that sequence, it's not classed as a supported .gi file and then defaults to opening via normal means - i.e. as if it were an ISO image. As an ISO must at least have 1 sectors worth of data in it, it's failing because it doesn't. (1 sector being 2048 bytes).

Were you just burning the exact same ISO and not the raw VIDEO_TS files? If you were burning the files, recordnow could just pad the filesystem so 23 could have been correct. If it was dealing with the ISO directly, ImgBurn should have also picked up cell 23 as being valid if indeed it was (and you'd have been presented with a nice little selection box). You can't really manipulate the ISO once it's been built, so recordnow max should also have gone for 25 as it was the only valid one. The only way to tell for sure if RecordNow was ok to use cell 23 is to look at the disc it burnt, find the offset for the VTS set (in terms of LBA of VTS_xx_1.VOB - use IsoBuster or something) containing the layerbreak and then the offset of cell 23 within that VTS. This can be found using IfoEdit. From the original IFO files, Cell 23 starts at LBA 1637074 (offset from sector 0 in VTS_xx_1.VOB). 1637074 (mod) 16 = 2 So, if my calculations are correct VTS_xx_1.VOB start LBA (mod) 16 must equal 14. Only then will Cell 23 fall on an LBA where it (mod) 16 = 0. The rule for layerbreaks is in the DVD Video specs - or at least the double layer recording version of them. I don't have them. The info was passed onto me by someone and backed up by what I'd read elsewhere (mainly on the gear mastering site) However, a quick search on google finds the following: http://www.gearsoftware.com/support/docume...mbreakpoint.cfm http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/Helppro/layerbreak.htm

BENQ DVD LS DW1655 BCDB (ATA) - WOPC Disabled Media Information: BENQ DVD LS DW1655 BCDB (ATA) Current Profile: DVD-R Disc Information: Status: Empty Erasable: No Free Sectors: 2,298,496 Free Space: 4,707,319,808 bytes Free Time: 510:48:46 (MM:SS:FF) Supported Write Speeds: 2.4x, 4x, 8x Pre-recorded Information: Manufacturer ID: TYG02 Physical Format Information (Last Recorded): Book Type: DVD-R Part Version: 5 Disc Size: 120mm Maximum Read Rate: Not Specified Number of Layers: 1 Track Path: Parallel Track Path (PTP) Linear Density: 0.267 um/bit Track Density: 0.74 um/track First Physical Sector of Data Area: 196,608 Last Physical Sector of Data Area: 0 Last Physical Sector in Layer 0: 0 Results: I 17:20:34 ImgBurn Version 1.1.0.6 Beta started! I 17:20:34 Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (5.2, Build 3790 : Service Pack 1) I 17:20:35 Initialising SPTI... I 17:20:35 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... I 17:20:35 Found 3 DVD-ROMs, 2 DVD?RWs and 2 DVD?RW/RAMs! I 17:20:44 Operation Started! I 17:20:44 Source File: -==/\/[DISCOVERY IMAGE]\/\==- I 17:20:44 Source File Sectors: 2,298,496 (MODE1/2048) I 17:20:44 Source File Size: 4,707,319,808 bytes I 17:20:44 Destination Device: [2:0:0] BENQ DVD LS DW1655 BCDB (J:) (ATA) I 17:20:44 Destination Media Type: DVD-R (Disc ID: TYG02) (Speeds: 2.4x, 4x, 8x) I 17:20:44 Destination Media Sectors: 2,298,496 I 17:20:44 Write Mode: DVD I 17:20:44 Write Type: DAO I 17:20:44 Write Speed: MAX I 17:20:45 Link Size: Auto I 17:20:45 Test Mode: No I 17:20:45 BURN-Proof: Enabled I 17:20:45 Filling Buffer... I 17:20:45 Writing LeadIn... I 17:21:05 Writing Image... I 17:28:21 Synchronising Cache... I 17:28:46 Exporting Graph Data... I 17:28:46 Graph Data File: C:\IBG\BENQ_DVD_LS_DW1655_BCDB_14-FEBRUARY-2006_17-20_TYG02_MAX.ibg I 17:28:46 Export Successfully Completed! I 17:28:46 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:08:01 I 17:28:46 Average Write Rate: 10,543 KB/s (7.6x) - Maximum Write Rate: 11,177 KB/s (8.1x) I 17:28:46 Cycling Tray before Verify... W 17:28:56 Waiting for device to become ready... I 17:29:08 Device Ready! I 17:29:08 Operation Started! I 17:29:08 Source Device: [2:0:0] BENQ DVD LS DW1655 BCDB (J:) (ATA) I 17:29:08 Source Media Type: DVD-R (Book Type: DVD-R) (Disc ID: TYG02) (Speeds: 2.4x, 4x, 8x) I 17:29:08 Image File: -==/\/[DISCOVERY IMAGE]\/\==- I 17:29:08 Image File Sectors: 2,298,496 (MODE1/2048) I 17:29:08 Image File Size: 4,707,319,808 bytes I 17:29:08 Verifying Sectors... I 17:34:13 Exporting Graph Data... I 17:34:13 Graph Data File: C:\IBG\BENQ_DVD_LS_DW1655_BCDB_14-FEBRUARY-2006_17-20_TYG02_MAX.ibg I 17:34:13 Export Successfully Completed! I 17:34:13 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:05:04 I 17:34:13 Average Verify Rate: 15,121 KB/s (10.9x) - Maximum Verify Rate: 22,355 KB/s (16.1x)

You should take a look at what upper/lower filters are installed. You can get a util to do that from this website: http://www.bustrace.com/downloads/free_utilities.htm (It's called 'Filter Driver Load Order v1.0.005') The upper/lower filters are drivers that all I/O passes through in order to actually reach your DVD drive. As such, I guess something between SPTI and DVD Drive is messing things up and VSO doesn't pass through it.

Any chance you could attach the little tiny .gi file you're trying to load? Oh and this is just a simple data disc type image yeah? It cant handle multi session / track images.