LIGHTNING UK!

You probably need to look for an updated SATA controller driver for your motherboard. That command should not cause the drive to be removed from the OS.

The 'insert next disc' box also displays which copy you're on. I don't know where else you could want/need it?!

There's only 1 way of doing it. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=6380

The purpose of Verify is to discover if the disc is actually fully readable and that all the data on it is present and correct. A successful burn means nothing on its own. The drive can think it's been burning ok and yet you end up with a totally unreadable disc at the end of it - as was the case here.

No, they aren't copied if the OS reports they're 'In use' and won't let me open them for reading. If you want to backup your computer's entire hard disk, use a proper hard disk backup tool (Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect, Norton Ghost etc.)... not ImgBurn.

All you can do is keep trying different DVD+RW's until you find one that the drive actually works with properly. Make sure you do 1 full erase on them with ImgBurn before using them.

The main buffer level shouldn't be affected by which bit of the disc is being burnt, it's filled by a different thread. If it dropped off to the point where buffer recovery came into play, it's probably just that something happened on your machine and it stopped the flow of data for a while - or you've modified the buffer recovery settings and it's now kicking in when it shouldn't do. Sorry, there are no nice eeprom type settings for Optiarc drives. They're just plug 'n' play and you have to rely on the write strategies in the firmware. The point is though, things aren't supposed to go wrong I've got some FalconMedia DL's on order. They're meant to use the RICOH MID (and be the best version of it). So if the strats were built around those, I might see some better results. As mentioned at MyCE, MCSE doesn't support these firmwares yet.

You should re-enable the 'Verify' operation, especially if you're having problems... which you are. It sounds very much like the drive is reporting that is/has successfully burnt the disc, but the disc still looks like it's blank when it's reinserted or tried in another drive. Not a good sign To figure out exactly what's broken you'd test the drive with some known good/decent quality media - so something from Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim. If it still creates a useless burn on those, your drive is toast - or at least needs a serious clean. You shouldn't really ever have to drop the write speed below 8x for DVD+R / DVD-R discs. btw, there's a D500 firmware available for the drive. http://www.firmwarehq.com/Samsung/TS-L633J/files.html

I can only assume it's in a format that the filter can't convert to 44khz, 16 bit, stereo. If it's 24bit or something, AC3Filter can sometimes help out to do the 24bit -> 16 bit conversion.

I'm talking about when reading the source (TAO) disc. ...and when I say reading, I mean in Read mode.

Unfortunatly, the log can't show what the drive is reporting sub-channel wise, but I guess there must be happening at/around LBA 27647 that the program doesn't want to happen. From the log below, I can see in trying to locate the true start of the 2nd track (i.e. where Index 0 start), it's read the subchannel info from LBA 27732 (the reported start of the 2nd track - i.e. Index 1) and then jumped backwards 32 sectors to check that one. It's done that until it reached a sector that wasn't part of track 2 - LBA 27636. Once it's found a sector that isn't part of track 2 it starts incrementing the LBA until it find the first one that's part of track 2. For whatever reason, it's not really able to progress pass checking LBA 27647. You can use the Sector Viewer to examine the subchannel info reported when reading LBA 27647 (and maybe a few before / after it). You just need to enable the 'Sub-Channel' checkbox and then scroll to the bottom of the window. If you go to 27640 and just click the up arrow a few times you should notice a couple of the values change from 01 01 to 02 00. That's the switch from track 1, index 1 to track 2, index 0. If the formatting of the subchannel info changes or one of the other numbers that normally increments by 1 suddenly doesn't do that, that'll be the cause of it getting stuck.

What have you got the 'PreGap Detection Method' option in the Settings set to? It's on the 'Read' tab. Please make sure it's set to 1-2-3 and then try and capture me another log. Make sure you press F8 before you click the 'Read' button or I may miss important debug info - and of course, don't cut anything out. Many thanks btw, the reason I ask this is that the program is using a non default method of getting the sub channel info - and your drive is returning loads of bogus/incomplete info.

The device buffer you mean? The drive performs some sort of walking opc to adjust the laser power every now any then (especially when starting out, switching speeds / layers etc.). For some reason, when they do that, they make the buffer look like it's empty. You can notice it more looking at the IBG data in DVDInfoPro - focus on the white 'Write Buffer %' line. I did ask if 2.4x could be made available for the RICOH/MKM-003 discs and 4x for the MKM-001 disc, but nothing has come of it. Perhaps in a future release.

The disc stopped spinning?! That doesn't sound right - unless of course it was (weirdly) working from cached data. You can press the F8 key whilst it's analysing to see what ImgBurn is sending to the drive and what it's getting back. The Log window should basically just be streaming with tons of I/O data - probably the same few commands repeating over and over again as it's stuck in its little loop trying to get one specific bit of info.

Yup, the 2nd layer on them isn't great. The start of the 1st isn't as good as I'd hope for either if I'm honest! Stick with MKM-003-00 I don't think the firmware has many changes, a (semi cosmetic) bug I reported was fixed and they added the full bitsetting support I asked for. I don't really know why I even bothered to do more tests/scans with 1.Z8. I'm afraid I was asked not to make the download public, it's just available via their (Primera/Vinpower) support teams. Sorry

Which track is it actually stuck analysing - 'Session 1, Track 2' ? Sometimes there's just no way to get past these issues. The program wants certain information from a specific place on the disc and the drive fails to return it - or returns bogus info that confuses things even more.

Buy a new drive or buy some DL discs that have been on the market for longer... like the Verbatim 2.4x ones (MKM-001-00 MID rather than MKM-003-00).

The quick fix for you right now is to edit the cue created by 2.5.7.0 and remove the last 2 lines. It'll then burn and verify with both versions just fine. If you look at the read operation from 2.5.6.0, you'll see it also says it's reading sectors 0 - 83896... so that's 83897 in total. The difference between them is that it didn't include info about the unreadable 2 sector TAO gaps at the end of the disc in the CUE file and 2.5.7.0 does. I must have found something that made 2.5.6.0 fail, because that's the only reason why I would have changed it in 2.5.7.0. TAO is Track At Once DAO/SAO are Disc/Session at Once. They're different writing methods supported by drives. TAO is, I guess, the original method of burning but it's not flexible and so hardly used these days. Each track on a TAO recorded disc has 2 seconds (150 sectors) between them. Aside from those 150 sectors between tracks, drives also appear to add 2 seconds of unreadable data at the end of each track - that's my TAOGAP entry in the CUE file. With DAO/SAO you can have any length gap you want (or no gap at all) making it much better for Audio discs etc. where you might want one track to flow directly into the next. I'm currently trying to go through every possible combination of TAO image burning in TAO or DAO/SAO write modes, and SAO image burning in TAO or DAO/SAO write modes to make sure everything is now working as it should do.

A 'Lite-On iHASx24 B' with modified firmware is currently the only(*) way of overburning (extending the capacity of) a DVD+R DL disc.... and as your image size exceeds that of a normal capacity DVD+R DL disc, what you've been told is indeed correct. (*) Optiarc AD-5280S-CB-PLUS / AD-5280S-CB-ROBOT drives can also overburn (extended the capacity of) a DVD+R DL disc.

Right, I've had a look and I'm 99% sure it's waiting at the end of the write operation because the image you're trying to burn came from a disc recorded in TAO mode (rather than SAO/DAO). It's waiting for some extra data to arrive that just isn't ever going to. This is the same issue that causes the buffer to never finish filling up - thus preventing the burn from starting. Only, because your image is larger than the buffer, you aren't hitting that problem. I've already fixed the buffer not filling up issue and therefore the one you're seeing with the write not finishing should be fixed too. I'm still looking into any issues that may occur after that.

Your drive is too old and doesn't support the media you've got. A newer firmware may help... but no promises. http://www.firmwarehq.com/NEC/ND-2500A/files.html

Your drive is probably too old to support MKM-003-00 media.

ok and could you also please attach the cue that 2.5.7.0 created from your source disc, thanks.

What I need to see is the read operation from your source disc to the image file and then the write+verify operation of the image file to a blank disc. All with 2.5.7.0 of course. Thanks

You need to convert your youtube videos into a DVD Video format if you want the final/burnt disc to be playable on a standard DVD player. ImgBurn is just a plain old optical disc burning tool, it doesn't convert stuff. Add all 4 videos into a DVD Video conversion/encoding type program (such as DVD Flick or ConvertXtoDVD), have it make a pretty menu so you can select the one you want and then get it to output a nice set of DVD Video compliant files. Burn those with ImgBurn - follow one of the DVD Video guides in the Guides section.