dbminter

You said you've been using Sony for years, so apparently you had no problem before? Even though they're Ritek, Sony has been using Ritek on their DVD-R's (NOT CD's. ) for as long as I can remember. So, it doesn't seem Sony changed manufacturers. That can't be your issue. If you've been using Sony DVD-R for years, does that mean you've actually been using that same DRIVE for years? If so, then your drive probably definitely needs replacing. Optical drives aren't generally meant to last for years. The longest I've had lasting, and it still works, is 2 years old. And that's twice as long as I usually get out of a drive. If this is a new drive you're using that you haven't used before, then it could definitely be a case of your drive not liking Ritek media. About the only way you can tell, especially if it's the drive that needs replacing is to try another maker of discs. Try to get your hands on some Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD-R. At least in the United States from Amazon.com, Verbatim DVD-R is MKM, made by Mitsubishi, probably the best manufacturer out there now that Taiyo Yuden has ceased production.

I use BD media for backups even if they fit on double layer DVD. They've gotten to the point where they're cheap and they last longer. Plus, as single layer BD's, there's no second layer problems to worry about. No worry that in some years time, the 2nd layer can't be read. The thing to worry about when it says it plays VIDEO_TS, that might mean natively. Meaning, it will read a DVD with VIDEO_TS on it. It doesn't say it reads IFO or VOB files. VIDEO_TS MIGHT mean IFO and VOB. However, if I had to make a guess, that just means it will play a VIDEO_TS if it's on a DVD media. However, it does say it plays ISO files, so supporting IFO and VOB is not entirely out of the question.

The only issues I've ever encountered with inkjet media were double layer media. For whatever reason, the inkjet Verbatim DataLifePlus DVD+R DL would fail to verify at the layer break on my Pioneer BD burner. The branded ones, with the SAME Disc ID, would work, but not the inkjet ones. A firmware update fixed that issue, though. Now, my LG burner does have the same issue with Verbatim inkjet BD-RE DL that Verbatim makes. They fail at the 2nd layer to verify. Now, the same Disc ID on Verbatim's branded BD-RE DL don't fail, and neither do the inkjet Verbatim BD-RE DL that TDK made for them. However, the ones Verbatim makes themselves came out AFTER the last firmware update to the LG BD drive 2 years ago. Since it seems LG will never update the firmware for this drive again, it seems unlikely this issue will ever get resolved. The only failures I've ever had with the BD-R branded were drive related. The drives needed replacing. The last Pioneer I got of the same kind failed to write to these BD-R right out of the box. I did have one weird case where a Verify failed because it said the next sector it was expecting to read simply wasn't there. I burned the same image again without problem.

There are two kinds I've gotten, branded and inkjet. The difference is simply the branded surface has Verbatim's logo on it, and other identifying information about the media, and the inkjet media can be printed to on its label surface. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GSQ4DBM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-DataLifePlus-White-Inkjet-Printable/dp/B004477BQQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484853459&sr=8-1&keywords=inkjet+verbatim+bd-r I've used more of the branded label surfaces versus the inkjet label surfaces. Oh, wait, those inkjet BD-R's do say DataLifePlus. I had forgotten. I thought there was no such designation for BD-R. I was wrong. Of course, I haven't used the inkjet ones in a long time.

I checked Amazon.co.uk for any DataLifePlus BD-R media. The only DataLifePlus BD media there is DL, but you seemed to already have a good BD-R DL source as that wasn't CMC. So, I guess there is no BD distinctly labeled DataLifePlus. I know on Amazon.com, there was no need to look for DataLife Plus Verbatim BD-R as all the BD-R's I ever got weren't made by CMC. My guess is CMC will probably never make a BD-R(E) DL because they can't be made cheaply. Verbatim used to farm out to TDK for its BD-RE DL before it started making its own. If they could be made cheaply, CMC would already be flooding the market with them. They do make DVD DL media and some of Verbatims BD-RE, and apparently their BD-R for the UK market.

No, there is no indication on any manufacturer's packaging that lists who the actual manufacturer is. They don't put that information on there because if you knew the source of who made it, you may not buy it because it's junk media. The only way you'll know relatively surely is to buy off of online stores with reviews that tell you the manufacturer. However, that's not always reliable because companies can change the manufacturer of their discs at a moment's notice. I used to use Optodisc about 15 years ago because they used to make their own quality blank DVD. Then, they switched to CMC, and that's how I learned about them. I posted somewhere else about my issues and they eventually revealed to me I was using CMC media. And, some people don't mind using CMC. Some people never have burning or verify issues with CMC on their particular model of burner. However, the disc quality is generally so low that the discs probably won't be readable after a few years. Anyway, issues on this board deal with CMC media all the time. In like 75% of the cases, their problems go away when they don't use CMC. So, we God posters tend to immediately lay the blame on CMC media when we see it used and recommend getting rid of it as the first step. As I said, it doesn't ALWAYS solve the issue. But, since it generally happens a lot, it tends to fix a lot of the issues.

Verbatim is known to farm out to CMC for its BD-RE. Never have known Verbatim to farm out to CMC for BD-R. Verbatim also farms out all of its CD and DVD to CMC if you buy the Life series from brick and mortar stores. Only the DataLife Plus CD and DVD media found online are any good from Verbatim. What country are you posting from? Verbatim might be using CMC when selling in other countries. I know some other manufacturers in other countries farm out to other manufacturers for their outside the US sales. I know the BD-R Verbatim makes that are sold in Office Depot are not CMC. If you're in the United States, I can give you a link to the Amazon.com BD-R SL I've used for 5 years.

I was going to suggest the same thing. Even if the first 2 worked fine, CMC is known to have a failure rate on DVD, SL and DL. My experience with a few cakestacks before I knew about them were that they failed to burn 50% of the time. Of the 50 that passed burning, 50% of them failed Verify. You could try checking the Disc ID on the 2 discs that passed and see if they're CMC as well. If they're not, that's probably why they worked before.

A Blu-Ray player not playing a LTH disc is probably understandable. Compatibility with those discs is notoriously bad. Now, why a PC software player doesn't the recognize the disc as playable is another thing. Yet, you say a player software does play the file from the disc? Does your Blu-Ray physical dedicated standalone player support the playback of m2t files? You didn't convert this file to a playable Blu-Ray with reauthoring software, did you? The first test I'd try is to see if you can access the contents in Windows/File Explorer. Make sure you can navigate to the contents on the disc that way. That way, the disc is readable, just not playing in a player. If it's not playing in a player, it's most likely not a region issue. I don't think you can set regions on recordable DVD, so I don't know if it matters on BD or not. You mention region being a factor, so it sounds like you're trying to convert a m2t file to a Blu-Ray movie disc? Sorry, I know very little about Blu-Ray movie discs.

Yeah, what you're describing more and more indicates CloneDVD to me. The cow you're thinking of, I think, is a sheep. I believe Elby uses a sheep, maybe it's a lamb, as its mascot. And I believe Elby Software makes both CloneDVD and Virtual CloneDrive.

ImgBurn has nothing directly to do with Virtual CloneDrive. However, many use VCD, like myself, in conjunction with ImgBurn, to load and test images it makes. I believe you must have used CloneDVD instead, made by the same people who make VCD. Virtual CloneDrive does not make copies of DVD's, movie discs or otherwise. You cannot use it to select just chapters out of movie DVD's. VCD just mounts images as virtual drives. CloneDVD does allow copying of DVD movies, which would be more along the lines of what you talked about. Though I don't use the software, I believe CloneDVD does allow you to skip to the main menu on DVD's, which you talked about. So, I believe you were using CloneDVD instead of VCD. I don't see why VCD wouldn't be available to you, anymore. It's still freely available from Elby's website, as far as I know. Plus, VCD is free software. CloneDVD, though, does require you purchase a license.

So, does that mean you chose Mirror 7?

This is not possible with ImgBurn. ImgBurn just makes copies of discs and burns those images. If you want to select contents to remove, you'll need either DVDShrink, depending on what you want to remove and where, something like DVDReMake, or some kind of reauthoring software, like ConvertXToDVD, to choose the contents you want to pull from a DVD. Those are the only software options I have direct experience with that can do what you describe.

I was thinking the same thing when I saw this. Why was it posted here? And that I also didn't think it was opencandy, but had no idea what it was. I also think one of the download mirrors was missed and some kind of advert was selected. Or one of the mirrors is serving up something it shouldn't be.

Ah, you did say software player. Hm, I read your post twice and both times failed to see that. I still think it was a poor decision not to enable DVD-5 or DVD-9 sized VIDEO_TS content to playback if you put it on a BD disc. And I think it would have been easier from a programming stance to just make players detect what folder contents are on a disc. Except for CD's, I'd guess, as I don't think there is an actual physical folder structure on audio CD's.

I know that doesn't work on the Playstation 3. I tried that, both putting VIDEO_TS in the root directory and trying to play a BD with a VIDEO_TS on it and also putting the VIDEO_TS in a subfolder structure. Trying to load the contents that way doesn't play on the PS3 either. It seems the PS3 actually checks for the physical type of media inserted and tries to play the contents based on the appropriate folder that should be on it. So, it seems the player has to be specifically programmed to open VIDEO_TS.IFO files in order to play them as the PS3 apparently doesn't. Well, I am talking about physical, stand alone, dedicated Blu-Ray players. If he uses PC software, he can play the VIDEO_TS.IFO contents from the Blu-Ray if the player supports opening .IFO files, like Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

There is no software I know of that does this for Blu-Ray. DVDReMake supposedly let you put 2 DVD's on 1, but I don't know how it did that. And that's only for DVD's. The closest you'll get is to use reauthoring software to remake the DVD contents into new streams for Blu-Ray content. However, you will lose all of the original DVD menus from the source DVD's.

The best test is a real world test. Pop the disc into a DVD player and test play every single option through to the end. If it plays fine, it should last fine. Granted, this isn't a fool proof test. However, I find all those fancy graphs to be highly overrated. I've rarely read one and even those I've read, I still don't understand what they really mean. I know high values aren't good, but WHY are high values not good? What exactly does a high jitter mean in terms of how well a disc will last? So, I don't follow the graphs at all. As for any testing, you can't say something will last for 1,000 years until a thousand years have passed. And since it's not practical to wait a thousand years, all those fancy tests merely simulate X amount of time of various conditions. Real world is the real deal, and they don't perform real world tests because, as I said, you can't wait 1,000 years to find the results because the item won't be "profitable" by that amount of time. And that's all they care about.

Well, they've been tested, but obviously not for a thousand years as 1,000 years haven't even passed since the development on the compact disc. What they've done is simulate the conditions of X amount of time before a failure and then multiplied it by the factor they experimented for. DOESN'T mean they'll last that long. They rarely do. Recordable DVD media was initially rated to last 100 years, but actual experience was some were failing at 10. So, whatever they say it will last for will most likely NOT last for that long. I'm pretty sure at 4x. I set my writes to Max, but what write rate you get is down to various factors beyond your control. I don't bother with jitter, etc. As long as it burns and passes Verify, I've rarely had a disc that wasn't readable afterwards. If they were unreadable, it was because they were junk media before I learned they were junk media. I use Verbatim DataLife Plus media so it does fairly well and I don't have to worry about all those confusing graphs. For instance, I only had 1 MKM Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD+R DL that had 1 unreadable sector years later after it passed burn and verify. The other DVD+R DL's that failed were because they were Ritek media and no good, as I later learned.

This is going beyond the scope of intent here, but a closed system in thermodynamics is any physical system that does not allow the transfer of energy or mass into or out of the system. I've always been a little confused on the subject because humans are closed systems, yet, if you ask me, we're constantly allowing heat out of our bodies. So, I don't see why we're closed systems. As for the mDisc since it doesn't allow mass or energy into or out of it that it retains, it's a closed system. Basically, the whole thermodynamics thing I was just using to say mDiscs do deteriorate because, in essence, "all" matter deteriorates because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It's why living organisms die. Every closed system in the universe is heading towards a state of chaos, and you cannot stop it. The best you can do is slow down the rate of decay. So, yes, mDiscs deteriorate. However, they deteriorate at a much less rate than organic dye based recordable discs. Dyes decay much faster because they're organic compounds. mDisc is, essentially, like using the laser to burn pits into stone. Stone will last much longer than organic dye, but even stone eventually decays. You can trust Milenniata as far as you can trust anyone. It hasn't been hundreds of years since the introduction of mDisc, so there's no way to verify their claims. I do know that the metallic oxide on BD-R's has been good for at least 5 years, since discs I burned 5 years ago are still readable. And BD-R will last longer than organic dye discs. So, mDisc should last longer than that. If you're really worried, then, just burn at 2x. It will take longer, but the burn should be "better" off in terms of being able to get a good read out of them. I've had no problems with 4x mDisc burns, but I've only burned like less than 5 of them. And I haven't had a need to restore data from them yet to test how good they are at being read.

Everything deteriorates. 2nd law of thermodynamics. However, mDisc is rated to last like 500 years, so it will outlive you. IF its estimated lifespan holds up. EDIT: Well, I shouldn't have said everything deteriorates according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Only every closed system deteriorates. Not every system is closed. For instance, people are a closed system, but the planet isn't.

The only way you'll tell if it's the inkjet DL media causing the problem is to get a Verbatim DataLife Plus branded surface disc online and see if the problem repeats. If it repeats, then there's either something wrong with the drive or that drive does not like MKM Disc ID discs.

Sometimes, a drive write can completely destroy the disc so much it CAN'T even be recognized as being inserted. So, a full format isn't even possible. That's the issue with the ASUS. The current EBK firmware does have a bork in it. Pioneer borked the writing to Ritek 8x DVD+RW. They always fail at the Verify stage. Even writing to the discs in other drives always fails on Verify or on playback UNLESS you fully format them in another drive. This may be the case with any DVD+RW or rewritable DVD in general. Maybe even rewritable media in general. Haven't tested it thoroughly yet. There hasn't been a firmware update to the Pioneer SATA drives since May. And they may have simply stopped support on new firmwares altogther.

Oh, don't worry, I won't be rough with you! We were all newbies once, and I try to remember that. As for bowing to my superior knowledge don't. I've only been using BD media for like 5 years now, so I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable in that field as I am with DVD media, which I've been using for 15 now. I only relate my experience and I always got what I think is that error. May not have always been the same error, though. I just know that all of the formats on my BD-RE in any drive have always produced an "error," and I believe it's the same one you got. (It's not technically an error. More like a notification.) There's always the chance that formatting in that first drive you used didn't do it right. That maybe it's dying/bad and isn't formatting correctly. Because of that, that "error" is carrying over to the other drive. I know some drives can completely bork a rewritable disc from being used at all after writing to them. ASUS's latest internal BD model totally destroyed the DVD+RW and BD-RE I threw at it. And it did this on 2 models I tested, so it's an inherent design flaw in the drive.

That unsupported format command, I would think, shouldn't have any bearing on the issue. It's unsupported on that drive so it was never executed. Therefore, it never did anything to the disc. If I remember correctly, that error means a "verify" of the format isn't performed on the disc. All of my Blu-Ray burners, LG, ASUS, Pioneer, and the one LiteOn that I had all didn't support that command. I've actually never seen a drive that performed it.