dbminter

Hm, it is unusual you don't have a problem playing this disc on your stand alone player, but you do on your PC drive. Since your files play fine from the hard drive and the disc plays in a stand alone apparently fine, the problem must be in your PC drive.

Plus, IMO, structurally protected DVD's might cause more actual physical wear and tear on your standalone DVD players. Protected discs take longer to load because the player has to skip over all those protected sectors crap. This means it takes longer to read the disc. More time is spent spinning up the motor, wearing it out sooner, if you ask me. I know on the PS3, it takes longer to start playing a protected DVD than it does to start just a CSS protected one. At least, with DVD's dying, the only company that seems to insist on protecting its DVD's anymore is Lionsgate. And no one is wanting to copy their crappy movies, anyway. So, they're just wasting their money protecting discs no one wants, let alone anyone wants to copy. More power to them if they want to accelerate profit loss by licensing a protection that won't stop anyone.

I can verify from experience it can happen. I tried to copy a DVD of a protected disc in my collection to ISO with AnyDVD. I didn't know back then about the different results you get between the ISO ripper and the HD ripper. I burned that ISO to a DVD+R DL, but it wouldn't play properly on my PS3. I tried playing it in some PC software, I forget which, and it wouldn't play right. I tried playing the mounted ISO and it wouldn't play properly still. Once I used the HD ripper, it worked fine.

Yeah, I recommend always using AnyDVD to Rip to HD and then use the VIDEO_TS folder to create the DVD. Of course, you do have to remember to check the root directory of the disc you're copying to make sure there aren't any extra files that might be part of the DVD in the root directory. However, you won't have to worry about the ISO mode copying over the structural protection.

If you have a choice, use the MKM Verbatim DVD+R DL over the Ritek ones. The Ritek one is probably why it failed. Verbatim is the only quality maker of DVD+R DL. I tested 5 Ritek ones a few years ago and when I tried to read them back last year, over half weren't even recognized as discs for reading from.

Yeah, the only time I ever get that Windows Update driver update check to find anything, the updates fail to install. And it only ever found like 2 since I can remember going back to Windows 8.1 Update 1.

I would guess that depends on how you're live streaming it. I'd guess you'd need something first to download the stream.

Ah, so AUDIO_TS was basically only ever for DVD Audio. I never liked DVD Audio. The primary drawback, near as I can remember from trying to make a few, was the audio tracks were actually "menus" that were playing. They weren't actually "video objects," although the motion menus ARE contained in the VOB's. So, the big negative was you couldn't navigate through the audio. You could only skip back to the beginning or skip to the end and stop playback. Anyway, that's as near as I remember. You couldn't Forward, Rewind, or Pause the audio.

What I do with situations like this where certain MP3's don't import is I convert them to some other kind of format like FLAC and try again. Freemake makes a freeware audio converter that I use. However, you'll want to turn off your Internet connection before running the full installer, not the online installer. The installer will want to phone home and force other software on you you most likely would never want. Just turn your Internet connection back on after its installed.

I know there is something called layer/disc rot. It's apparently when, over time, the glue holding the readable layer to the physical disc rots and separates from the disc itself, rendering it unplayable. That could be caused by some kind of fungal infection, I suppose. Especially on DVD-R which uses organic dyes.

.SES would appear to be a proprietary file generated by Adobe/Sonic. The last time I created a Sonic disc, over 10 years ago, had noting other than AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. So, that OpenDVD appears to be stuff just added by Premiere Elements. However, why a .VOB is linking to a .SES and how it actually does that I couldn't say. So, the OpenDVD does appear to just be "notes" added by Premiere Elements to show what created the DVD. To apply the appropriate "copyright" legalese. Yes, the audio tracks of a DVD are contained in the VOB, the video object. All the VOB's are contained in VIDEO_TS. Then again, there's the supposedly useful yet useless AUDIO_TS that can contain audio tracks. My guess was this was created at the start of the DVD Video standard before it was discovered it was simply easier to contain the audio streams with the video streams in the VOB's.

AUDIO_TS will be added by ImgBurn if you add only a VIDEO_TS. According to the DVD Video standard, a disc must contain an AUDIO_TS and a VIDEO_TS folder. However, EVERY single DVD Video I've ever seen since 2002 has had an empty AUDIO_TS folder. Apparently, AUDIO_TS is for some weirdly authored types of discs where extra audio streams are placed there. Personally, I've NEVER seen a use for AUDIO_TS. I'd be curious to see what the ClickMe file loads in your web browser. The VOB file is a video object file, a container file that has both the audio and video streams to be played. You could try loading the .VOB file in something like Windows Media Player, if your version of Windows supports it, or something like Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Just to see if it's temporary work files left over that would be copies of what is in VIDEO_TS. .DVD is not a disc image, but it's used by programs to write disc image files or to load them as virtual drives. Or it could be OpenDVD is using its own .DVD file extension for something else. PVM is also probably some kind of proprietary file used by OpenDVD.

Really, is that the reason? I had kind of wondered why myself.

I would guess the OpenDVD one is probably just some kind of internal note about what created the VIDEO_TS folder. I know when I build VIDEO_TS DVD's, I generally put some kind of folder structure in the root directory that tells what its contents are. In case I can't tell the contents based on its Labels, or if the label fields aren't displayed, because of Windows/File Explorer, the folder structure offers a bit more insight.

I don't even know what you're saying no to!

If you really are worried, disconnect your Internet connection before running the ImgBurn installer. That way, it can't phone home to get 3rd party offers. That's what I started doing with ImgBurn and Freemake software when I learned it had OpenCandy in it. (There's not really a Freemake Virus. ZoneAlarm even flags it, somewhat contradictory, that it's "Not A Virus" in it's "Virus" dialogue.) Freemake now bundles something called Fusion.dll that is flagged as the not.a.virus Virus. Once the installer finishes, the DLL is deleted. I am guessing this DLL is what phone homes to the 3rd party software server. With my Internet connection disabled, Freemake software never offers 3rd party software. It may still install WinPCap, apparently, as I never noticed it before until you mentioned it. However, there could be any number of applications I installed that may require packet capturing. From Freemake Video Downloader to ZoneAlarm. If malware installs it, it generally doesn't add WinPCap to Add/Remove Programs. It purposefully obfuscates it because it doesn't want you to know it's there doing something you don't want.

Oh, that was the spare areas command that wasn't supported? I just know that supposedly there's a command that can double the amount of time it takes to format a BD-RE. And I've never seen that command ever successfully carried out on any BD drive I've ever owned. Yeah, my knowledge of Blu-Ray is nowhere near as extensive as DVD. I've only been using BD 5 years, anyway, versus 15 for DVD.

The 1.34 firmware is borked, so don't update to that. It doesn't write properly to Ritek 8x DVD+RW. If it does write to them, you must fully format the disc again in another drive before they can become useful again. 1.33 is safe as far as my use has shown. It's not a one way trip like Pioneer says. It's just not possible with anything Pioneer gives you. I used a tool designed to regress firmwares and it worked fine. That unsupported format command has appeared in all BD burners I've ever used. Apparently, all it does is a verify of each write command to the disc as it performs it. This effectively doubles the amount of time it takes to format the disc.

Well, the most logical conclusion is the LG stand alone doesn't support the playback of .M2t files. Unless you've gotten it do so before. Then, there is something odd going on somewhere.

Well, I don't know if the graph data will get worse as the years go on or just, one day, you find you can't read the disc at all. MDisc does not use DVD type organic dyes. BD-R uses metal oxide so it lasts longer. I don't know how MDisc works but the analogy is similar to using a laser to etch pits in stone.

While I doubt the Power Calibration Errors have anything to do with it, could the device buffer issue be down to the SPTD driver?

Don't get the Verbatim DVD-R you find in brick and mortar stores. They'll be the Life series, made by CMC, the worst manufacturer of optical media out there. CMC causes well over 50% of the problems we see on this board. You'll want the Verbatim DataLife Plus MKM/MCC media you can only find online. It is somewhat odd you had this issue at first, it went away, and then came back. You probably just lucked out in that your drive is iffy with that media. However, you seem to indicate you've been using this drive for a long time. Seems like years? I would be willing to be bet it's, most likely, just a case of a drive that's given up the ghost. However, it does seem equally odd that you haven't gone through 1 complete set of discs yet before it dies.

I just now realized. Yeah, you did say VOB and I failed to see it at first.

It does say VOB but not IFO. IFO is how a DVD is played. VOB is the video object being played. You can load a VOB, but a DVD movie is usually split into multiple 1 GB chunks. Without the IFO, the player has no idea how to navigate between the parts. So, you can put all your VIDEO_TS folders on the BD, but you won't get the menu you're looking for. You won't get any menus. You may only be able to load the individual VOB. It says it supports VIDEO_TS, but I still don't know for sure it supports IFO. VIDEO_TS IMPLIES it does, but I've learned to always look for the gotchas with what tech companies tell you and the actual fine print.

Yeah, that's a drive string name, right? It's returned by the drive itself. Is that what ImgBurn looks for? Something hard coded into the drive itself? I'm guessing this drive renamer only changes the identifying string, e.g. "name," in Windows/File Explorer. That would be a local system variable, and not what is contained within the drive.