LIGHTNING UK!

Please don't tell me it's because of the new 'Ez-Mode Picker' screen! If that IS the reason, just change the setting so it doesn't come up. The changelog for 2.4 was huge so by sticking with 2.3 not only are you missing out on all the new stuff but you're missing out on all the fixes too.

Sorry, I've no idea... you'd need to ask someone at Nero, or at least someone that uses it properly. I expect the have their own set of filters/programs for decoding. I don't know if it's done on the fly or if they create a wav file first.

If there's nothing visibly burnt on the disc and test mode wasn't enabled, I wouldn't be blaming yourself, I'd be blaming the drive.

Maybe you had 'Test Mode' enabled... but in that case it wouldn't have verified anything. Test mode doesn't burn anything to the disc, the drive doesn't set up the laser to full power and so nothing gets burnt. (This is a drive function btw)

Reading the 'Hint' should have been a big enough clue.

Wait for blutach to chime in, this really isn't my area. All I know is that ImgBurn won't display anything but the first angle's cell in the LB list and it doesn't display any marked as 'interleaved'. Until someone with a better understanding of these things tells me how to improve upon that (whilst still keeping to what's legal in the dvd video specs), ImgBurn can't really help you create a nice LB point. I'm happy to tweak ImgBurn based on the findings of this thread so that it's easier the next time you or someone else does a similar thing.

Have you not got any cells in it that aren't part of a multi-angle bit? ImgBurn won't offer interleaved cells as 'Potential Layer Break Positions'.

Is that file actually on the disc you've just burnt? I hope you're using a DVD-RW/DVD+RW for all this testing, it would be a waste otherwise! Personally I'd be creating an image and trying it inside of a virtual machine via virtual drive of some kind.

Does the disc actually look burnt?

can you post a few screenshots showing the IBG data? or at least post up the IBG file so we can do it? The speeds you're getting don't look all that bad to me for an 8x burn. The dips in the buffer etc are normal with a lot of drives, it happens when the drive performs its quality checking routines.

No. If you have no plans on returning it, take it apart and mess around with it. You might see what's broken - I'm not sure if they use belts/cogs or anything to turn the spindle.

It spins it and tries to read it. I assume it won't read anything now yeah? CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW If it's new (which you say it is), send it back for a replacement.

If it's not spinning the disc then it sounds like the motor has gone. I can hear most of my drives spinning when I insert the tray - even when there's no disc in them.

If you read the guides that tell you how to burn a DL disc, all will become clear. DL = Double layer = a disc with 2 physical layers for the drive to write to (like a sandwich). The 'layer break' is where the drive switches from one layer to the other.

You might find those RW's are a bit rubbish to start with - that's kinda normal for Ritek discs! If it's not erasing then you should probably just bin it and get yourself some Verbatim DVD-RW's instead (or the DVD+RW ones). They're better, but still not as good a write once media (DVD-R, DVD+R) from the same company or Taiyo Yuden.

They're all close to 50/50 so just pick any of them... it really doesn't make THAT much of a difference! If you happen to have a scene change on one of them then I'd go for that one, but being a home movie, I doubt there will be.

Try for as near to a 50/50 split as possible with the least padding. Use the 'Preview' so you can actually see what you're looking at. Read the double layer burning guide if you need more help with the previewer - or search the forum, the questions have been answered before.

Look over by the clock in the system tray, you should see a little icon with lightning through it. Left click it and click the entry that says 'No Media' (or something like it). That's the virtual drive. You'll then get a browse box pop up, select your ISO and click ok. The virtual drive will be visible in 'My Computer' (and other programs) as a normal cd/dvd drive.

It's nothing do with the LB position, the LBA/Sector the drive can't read is Waaaaaay before the layer break.

It's important that you have the version from the ImgBurn.com mirror. It's the only one that can build XP install discs properly - as you need to use the DOS character set and not ASCII - and all the other versions change the setting to ASCII (it was fixed in a silent update).

It means you got a bad burn. It's much easier if you just copy + paste everything from the Log window.

It was a silent update on the original day of release (or the day after... something like that)

Try redownloading Imgburn from the Imgburn.com mirror. If that doesn't work, email or attach your MDS file and I'll look into it.

You need a program to author such a disc (or VIDEO_TS set) from the files. That's not something ImgBurn does. ImgBurn will burn the VIDEO_TS folder once you've gotten that far.

There's nothing to say Ashampoo is using the same methods to decode the files. Please just try playing the files in graphedit. I have a beta of ImgBurn that can actually output the decoded raw pcm data (but as a wav file) exactly as it would be written to the disc. Playing those files would soon tell you where the problem lies.