LIGHTNING UK!

Are you following a guide for this? If so, which one? If the files are system/hidden and you're in Build mode, you'll have to enable those options on the options tab.

It can't, no. That would be down to the authoring program, not the burning program.

You could try not burning at max speed too.

You should format without spare areas rather than enabling fast-write. It defeats the purpose of them and you're better off having full disc capacity if you want full write speed. For whatever reason, doing a full format on a disc didn't appear to actually empty/zero the sectors. That's why I added the 2nd stage of the full erase for BD-RE so the disc really is left in an 'empty' state. You can use Discovery mode to write made up data to every sector on the disc. Yes, that'll point out any problem sectors. Re-allocation will only occur if spare areas are present AND fast write is disabled. The reason the write is slower (i.e. 0.8x) is because the drive is verifying as it goes and reallocating where necessary.

Right, ok, so the polling part is still working, it's just the drive (or dodgy drivers) keeps reporting the format is still in progress. The program can only go by what's being reported to it. If you go the route of not formatting properly (i.e. Waiting for the drive to complete things properly), I'm sure it would be possible to proceed to the next stage. The way ImgBurn defaults to doing it is highlighting some issue with your setup/hardware/media.

It sounds like your drive or system is getting stuck. A 'proper' format of a BDRE DL disc is a 2 part process. ImgBurn starts by asking the drive to format the disc. The drive is then meant to go off and do that, ImgBurn just polls it every second or so to see if it has finished and get an updated % complete. Once it reports it has finished, ImgBurn will proceed to zero all the sectors on the disc. All in all, it's probably 3 - 4 hours. When yours is stuck on 99%, press the F8 key and see if it's still processing commands. You'll notice entries being written to the log window if it is. It might be worth booting up in safe mode to see if you have the same issue. Some drivers can mess around with the sense data returned by optical drives. Safe mode sometimes gets around that.

ImgBurn just reads from sector 0 to the last sector. It won't read anything before / beyond that.

It's on the device tab in the setting. Eject tray after...

It defaults to automatically saving the log each time the program is closed down. If there's no log file, you must have told it not to or something has wiped it out (deleted it).

I can assure you there's no difference between setting Build mode's 'output' to 'device' or 'image file'. The program just redirects the same data to either one of those. Mount the ISO in a virtual drive program and do a file comparison between those on the virtual drive and those on the directly burnt disc. You should find they're identical.

Can't say that I've ever come across that before. Does your internal drive burn at the correct speed? It sounds like a system issue as there's nothing in ImgBurn that would make it do what you're describing. The audio cable from the drive hasn't been used for years, take it out. It's all done digitally now.

That'll be an authoring issue. It makes no difference if you burn direct to disc or go via an image file (ISO), the contents on the disc will be the same.

It's usually makes one file and keeps adding to it. If you uninstall, it'll wipe out that file.

You can access the auto saved log via the help menu.

Ah sorry, I took it that you wanted the whole disc.

ImgBurn can create a giant wav when reading an audio cd image (it just adds a wav header to what's normally the bin file), just run that through an MP3 encoder.

If you had a filter installed that could handle that conversion, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

You should let the program verify the disc once it has burnt it. If there's a problem with it, that would detect it. If your drive won't burn those 'PHILIP-R04-000' discs, try some different ones.

Install mediainfo and have it display the details/properties of that wav file you've created. You must have your wav files in a weird format that's not suitable for burning as typical 44khz, 16 bit, stereo ones don't require any sort of conversion.

Every time this comes up I think the exact same thing There's already a tooltip set up for it though. Burning at 16x or 24x may help with the skipping - assuming max was used before and max is probably 48x or 52x.

Are you looking at the media usage bar? It's not a progress thing.

You can't move it and you're supposed to treat DL, TL and QL BD discs the same way you do SL ones, thus it's pointless. Also, the version of the MDS spec I have doesn't support beyond DVD media.

The MDS is generated, not taken from the disc. It therefore has no real baring on it being a 1:1... well, data wise anyway. ImgBurn only stores/uses a few bits from within the MDS file (layer break position on a DL disc etc) so the content isn't that important. It's also probably creating MDS files based on a previous version of the MDS spec. Alcohol may rely on more bits from within the MDS - especially when mounting the image in a virtual drive. They'll be using the most up-to-date MDS version as they're the ones that designed it in the first place.

Yes, the drive reported another 'write error'. Although it might sound illogical, have you tried burning at 4x? Sometimes the slowest supported write speed isn't always the best one!

You're totally ignoring what I'm telling you. You aren't willing to entertain (even for a second) the idea that different disc might produce different results. I can guarantee an old version isn't going to help. The software has nothing to do with success / failure of a burn, it simply sends data to the drive. If there's a problem with doing that in a particular version, it would always fail... for everyone. The drive (and its firmware) are in charge of the actual burning of the media. Hence why firmware updates are what add support for newer MID codes and improve burn quality on existing ones. You can't apply the 'it worked once, it'll work again' attitude to burning. Hardware gets dirty, deteriorates etc and the quality of discs can vary from spindle to spindle, disc to disc. If you're concerned something is messing with your burns, boot into safe mode and see if your drive still errors out burning those discs. The ImgBurn mirror on the download page has all the old versions, you'd just need to adjust the link for the version you require (a manual job).