dbminter

I think the years part is the factor. I believe LG, like Pioneer, have been gradually declining in quality. For instance, years ago, I had 2 LG BD's and they lasted a year before they needed replacing. Then, I got one last year that needed replacing after 5 months. And now this one after a month. With Pioneer, my first Pioneer actually still works, except for an issue where the Eject button doesn't always work the first time you press it. It does work on the second. That one is like 3 years old, but hasn't seen much use after its first year. My 2nd one of the same model is still going after almost 2 years, just the same issue with the eject button. The 3rd one I got stopped writing BD-R's after 7 months. The fourth one I got was rotten right out of the box, failing to write to its first 2 BD-R's.

I think it just has to be accepted that LG drives may be crap. I just replaced my LG BD burner on April 21st. Already needs replacing. Failing to properly write to BD-R SL, failing at Verify. Last one stopped writing to DVD+R DL after 5 months. And this one stopped writing BD-R SL after a little over a month.

I think it may be a good idea to try an LG external USB burner. You won't be wasting as much time opening the case and swapping out drives. Plus, it would test if the problem is your SATA cable or SATA connection on the mobo. While it may not be a hardware issue, it could be a software issue involving your SATA. The USB would help to see if that's the case. If you get one, be sure to try and see if you can get a full height drive and not a slim model. They're junk. If necessary, get an internal full height one and buy an enclosure for it. I can't say how well LG DVD burners are because the last time I had one was over 10 years ago and it turned me off to their units. I had a rebadged LG unit from IOMega and it's burns randomly played back with skips and pauses on DVD-R's on the Playstation 2. The only reason I get LG BD burners as they're the only ones that write to Ritek 8x DVD+RW media correctly. And Ritek is the only manufacturer of 8x media that is not crappy CMC Magentics.

Nope, in this case, it does appear to matter. Anyway, that was my initial indication of the problem when I saw the Disc ID in the log. I thought that ID was for M-Disc discs, since I don't think Millennia makes anything other than M-Disc media. And M-Disc is not universally supported by all drives because of how it adds to the cost of the unit. Like, for me, even though I've had M-Disc drives for a while now, I've never bought any M-Disc media myself. I've only used the free sample BD-R that came with my drives. They're nice to have for long term storage, but they do have a higher premium on the cost. For instance, I believe M-Disc DVD+R are like $5 a piece. You can get quality DataLife Plus Verbatim DVD+R for like 50 cents each. They're nice to have, but cost a pretty penny. However, if you're really concerned about long term archival storage, they're the way to go. And since you can write DVD Video to M-Disc, as long as your DVD player supports DVD+R media, and most new players should, your movie discs will last much longer than they would on organic dye DVD+R. I've only had like 5 M-Disc BD-R burns in the last 4 years or so, but I stored long term system backups to them because of their archival rating.

Wait, is it even possible to set up an optical drive in a RAID array? I thought RAID was only for hard drives. What would be the benefit of a RAID set up for optical drives? Plus, we'll need a full log for this apparently BD-R DL (?) to get the error codes. If they're same or not.

M-Disc is a variation of the DVD+R standard. While any device that can read DVD+R discs will read M-Disc DVD+R, they can only be written by a drive capable of writing to M-Disc media. Certain models of Pioneer and LG Blu-Ray burners support writing to M-Disc. Both of my Pioneer and LG models do. You will need to buy a drive that says it expressly writes to M-Disc. Or get different DVD+R discs that are not M-Disc. M-Disc is designed to last for like a thousand years. It basically burns pits into metal oxide. Normal DVD+R are organic dye discs and are said to last for a hundred years, but probably won't last that long. The comparison is like writing something in ink on paper to chiseling it in stone. The stone will obviously last longer than the ink on paper. I don't buy DVD burners anymore, just Blu-Ray ones. So, I don't know of any DVD only burners that support M-Disc. For instance, these are the 2 burners I have that support M-Disc: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E7B08MS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Electronics-Internal-Blu-Ray-BDR-2209/dp/B00GD792US/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1496357909&sr=1-1&keywords=Pioneer+BDR-209M It will be easier to just get different DVD+R discs. However, M-Disc are about 5 times the price of regular DVD+R, so you have already invested some money in those. But, getting a disc that supports them will mean you're out more expenditure. Plus, there's the time and necessary expertise to install an internal burner, if you can't find an external one that supports M-Disc. Or you can get an internal one that does and put it in an external enclosure. But, you're out more money for the enclosure, too. If you want different Verbatim DVD+R, don't get the ones you find in brick and mortar stores. They will be the Life Series made by CMC Magnetics, the worst optical manufacturer out there. What you'll want are the DataLife Plus series you can only find at places like Amazon.com. And even they will offer Life Series. Even if they don't say Life Series, if they don't say DataLife Plus, they will be CMC, most likely. CMC causes about 50 percent of the issues we see on these boards.

Oh, wait. Never mind. I was remembering wrong. The write speeds might drop to 0, but the buffers shouldn't, I don't think.

According to the Disc ID, you might be using Millenia M-Disc DVD+R. This may sound like I'm talking down to you, but I'm not. It's just something I wanted to check. Are you sure the drives you tried burning in both support M-Disc media?

I think most drives behave this way. My experience has been that most drives when they get to the layer change "stop" writing. The buffers will empty and then writing resumes. I'm guessing the laser has to change power to access the 2nd layer. I think Optiarc and LiteOn drives might have kept on writing at the layer change, but I think my experience has been that most of my drives "stop" writing at the layer change.

I'd look at the Ritek media being the problem. Ritek DVD+R DL was usually problematic, so I don't see why BD-R DL wouldn't be from Ritek, as well.

Yeah, usually the semaphore timeout error on USB drives is caused by a conflict between the ATA to USB bridge in the enclosure and your motherboard. Generally, the only fix is to change motherboards or enclosures. And it's significantly easier and cheaper to change enclosures. Plus, you've no idea if a replacement mobo won't do the same thing when swapped in. So, it's easier to swap out enclosures than entire mobos. However, sometimes, you can get a fix by trying a different port or USB cable. It's rare, but it sometimes works. Although, my experience and from past posts has been that device removals don't generally occur after closing the track. Usually, the semaphore time out error will occur trying to write the first 32 sectors? In other words, right at the start of the burn.

The last LG BD burner I had to replace died after 5 months. Yes, you guessed, it stopped Verifying correctly at the layer change on DVD+R DL's. Normally, you get about 9 to 12 months on an LG, but everyone's quality has gone to over the years because they don't care anymore.

My experience with ASUS was iffy. The first drive I had was a USB BD that I had no issues with. I really liked it, so I had high hopes for their internal BD drive. Absolute junk. Supports writing to rewritable media, but utterly destroyed the DVD+RW and BD-RE SL and DL I threw at it. After writing to them, the discs were trash, unusable. So, you may have dodged a bullet by not going with ASUS.

Yeah, generally with the kind of issues you described, it points to a drive that needs replacing. My issue with LG BD drives is they're not as good a reader drive as I've seen in, say, Pioneer BD's. And though it doesn't matter in your case, LG BD drives are rotten BD DL writers. They support them but I don't use them for that because they tend to fail at the layer change, even brand new ones.

Well, about the only way you'll know for sure if the drives needs replacing is to take both and test them in an enclosure or put them in someone else's computer and test them out. As I said, when drives die at writing DVD DL media, they will generally work for all other functions. Reading is not as problematic as writing is, so the laser doesn't have to do as much work. The fact that the drives still read fine does not surprise me. As for suggestions of a new drive, I've only bought Blu-Ray burners since 2012. I don't know anything about the DVD burner market anymore. I would make a general suggestion to avoid LiteOns. They randomly add pauses into DVD Video play back on DVD DL discs that are not layer breaks or layer changes. They don't do them a lot but they will do it randomly. Their BD burner did it more often: 2 out of 3 times. And now LiteOn no longer makes BD burners.

Generally age. A drive has a limited life span that range anywhere from 5 months to 2 years. It depends on the general quality of the manufacturer, the model in question, and how much it's used before it gives up the ghost. When a drive is dying, it will generally fail to either burn or Verify at the layer change. Dual layer burning is generally the first to go. All other types of media will generally still burn, even on Blu-Ray burners, where BD will continue burning, but DVD DL media won't.

If you really don't care about having a DVD menu, just having the movie play the moment you load it in a DVD player, here's what I would do. I'd go find an ancient but still viable program called DVDShrink. It's free and freely available online. You'd have to get the VIDEO_TS from the ISO so you'd need some kind of mounting program like Virtual CloneDrive or something similar or something that can extract folders from an ISO like UltraISO. Then, load that VIDEO_TS in DVDShrink, select Re-author mode, choose the largest size main menu movie, and make sure to choose no compression for output. It will write a new VIDEO_TS with no menu. DVDStyler may have an option to create its VIDEO_TS in a folder on HDD. If you do this and don't choose ISO, you don't have to worry about extracting the VIDEO_TS from the ISO. IF DVDStyler has such an option, I don't know.

Split point? Are they talking about the layer break? ImgBurn will return the same type of error if it cannot find a place to put the layer break. As your VIDEO_TS gets near the upper boundary of file size for a DVD+/-R DL, it will become more difficult to put in a layer break.

What was the problem why it wouldn't play, if you don't mind my asking? You've got me curious, now.

PC DVD player software is more forgiving than a standalone DVD player. The software player just looks for the VIDEO_TS.IFO file to play. You can pretty much put it anywhere and it would still play. Although to load it as a DVD player would, the player would probably look for VIDEO_TS.IFO in VIDEO_TS in the root directory. Why the standalone DVD player wouldn't play it would be down to the settings in the ImgBurn job. If they're not set for DVD Video, the disc probably won't play. The other possibility is your DVD player doesn't like the recordable DVD's you're using and won't recognize them for playing. If you're using the same DVD+R DL you used before with Roxio, that wouldn't be the problem.

One of the reason I never used I think it was DVDFlicker. It said it would take hours to do what ConvertXToDVD can do in 30 minutes. When you said the disc doesn't play on a DVD player, what exactly happens? You put the disc in and the player doesn't recognize anything to play? Make sure that VIDEO_TS is in the root directory. Check the contents of VIDEO_TS. Make sure there's a file called VIDEO_TS.IFO. When you dragged and dropped VIDEO_TS into the root directory and exited the Build mode interface for actual building, did ImgBurn tell you about changing some of the settings to default for DVD? It should have. If it didn't, then there's probably something wrong with the contents in VIDEO_TS. Actually, I just got to thinking, you probably know a lot of that already, having made DVD's before.

What you do is in Build mode, drag and drop the VIDEO_TS folder, if you created one. You can add AUDIO_TS if you want, but it will generally be an empty folder. Then, drag and drop the .MPG file into the root directory of the project. You can create a folder and subfolder like I do to name the contents, but you can always rename the MPG file to something descriptive, too. As long as it says the target fits on a DVD+-R/W or DVD+-R DL, you can play the DVD as a movie disc with the MPG contained on the disc. If it says BD-R/E or anything with BD, what you will have is an archive of the MPG and VIDEO_TS on a Blu-Ray. It will only be a data disc as no player will recognize VIDEO_TS contents (That I am aware of.) when placed on a BD.

Actually, with ConvertXToDVD it varies, depending on the codec and compression used in the source file. Sometimes, you get a DVD when converted that won't fit on a DVD-5 even though the contents are under an hour. And sometimes you can get over 2 hours of footage on a DVD-5. Just had one recently where I got 2 hours and 19 minutes of footage on a DVD-5. However, that video was mostly just an audio stream and 2 hours and 19 minutes of a still image in the video. So, that wouldn't take too much space to begin with. It's not the time length that matters, it's the video compression that matters. For instance, I have a zombie movie collection where they put 4 movies on each DVD-9. They compressed the hell out of them but managed to get just under 8 hours of footage on the disc. Unless you are really that concerned about the video quality, I wouldn't worry that your source file converted contents fit on a DVD-5. MPEG 2 DVD Video is generally compressed anyway. However, you rarely see the results of the compression. And if you have an upscaling DVD player, you won't notice it at all, generally. You can do what I do. I often times get a VIDEO_TS that fits on a DVD-5 but I put the source file in the root directory of the DVD as a backup. This can result in a DVD-9, but not always. I like to have a backup of the file on the disc, just in case.

Yes, there's a setting in ConvertXToDVD where you can choose to use a DVD-9, but it will only prompt you if you need it. Otherwise, it will make the biggest file sizes it needs. It often fits DVD-9 material to DVD-5 with conversion to MPEG DVD Video. Even if you choose DVD-9 as a target size, it will only affect the size of the output if you want it to fit without compression to DVD-5. The best bet is to just import the file and choose DVD-9 if you're prompted. Otherwise, ConvertXToDVD will use only the maximum file size it needs. Freemake Video Converter lets you choose DVD-9 or DVD-5 from its conversion menu. So, you could just choose DVD-9 from there. However, if the contents will fit on a DVD-5, the target size won't matter.

Are you talking about how to do it in ConvertXToDVD? It's been a while since I used version 5 as I'm now using version 7, but there should be a Plus button on the left side of the main interface when you open ConvertXToDVD. That will let you load the file, as long as it's a supported container file. What's the file extension? You say MPEG 2, but is it an .MPG file? Depending on the age of the codec, version 5 may not import it or convert it incorrectly. As for converting to VIDEO_TS, I think all conversion of container files uses some kind of compression to get it down to MPEG 2 VIDEO_TS. Though I generally see no artifacts when converting so it shouldn't be noticeable.