dbminter

There's no difference between DataLife Plus and AZO. Just that some parts of the world label DataLife Plus media as AZO. AZO is actually the kind of organic recording dye used in DataLife Plus media. Verbatim releases some good DataLife Plus type media but labels it as AZO without the DataLife Plus name on it. "Genuine" Taiyo Yuden media is a good choice. BUT, CMC bought TY years ago. So, you'll want to find CMC Pro media, which is the good Taiyo Yuden media or find older TY media. There's no 100% guarantee of getting playable discs, I'm afraid, because it depends on how well your drive works with certain media and how well your DVD player works with certain media. However, you're better off maximizing your possible results by using good media like DataLife Plus.

Yep, just as I thought before even looking at the Log. Here's your problem: I 13:08:09 Destination Media Type: DVD-R (Disc ID: CMC MAG. AM3) You're using the cheap Verbatim Life Series junk DVD's. CMC MAG is CMC Magnetics, which makes some of the worst discs out there. They also ironically own Verbatim which makes some of the best when you use the RIGHT Verbatim. Avoid the Life Series you find in stores. You want the DataLife Plus/AZO series. (NOT Life Series.) Those are generally only found online like Amazon.com.

JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) is an interface designed to test printed circuit boards. It can also write certain flash memory like BIOS. It may have other uses, but I don't know what they are. For some more detailed context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JTAG

I've seen conflicting statements on the necessity for USB 3.x for external BD drives. Supposedly, you need USB 3.x speeds in order to keep the communication going with the drive because of the large amount of data it writes at a time. I've also seen elsewhere statements that you can get by with USB 2.x. So, I don't know what to say. Sorry.

So, you HAVE created Blu-Ray Video discs with these SAME BD discs you've been using that do play on your Blu-Ray player? If so, then it's not the discs and you can most likely pin the problem on DVDFab.

If you changed the DVDFab templates, then that could definitely be a problem, depending on what was changed. I wouldn't even let DVDFab call ImgBurn if it has the ability to write BDMV output folders. I would then add its output manually to a job in ImgBurn's build mode. ImgBurn is "smart" enough to detect you're trying to make a Blu-Ray Video disc and automatically make any necessary changes. That's what I do with the VIDEO_TS created by ConvertXToDVD when I make DVD Video discs. Another possibility to consider here is the BD discs you're burning. Your Blu-Ray player may not like them and simply can't read them. Your PC drive wouldn't have that problem.

Reserving tracks is different from what it sounds like you're talking about. What it sounds like you're talking about is setting the layer break, which you do NOT do on Blu-Ray as far as I am aware of. You have to let reserve tracks finish; otherwise, you don't have a readable disc. Padding is automatically selected, usually. However, that generally, again, as far as I know, only applies to DVD Video. Those settings DVDFab tech support told you to change would have no bearing on creating a disc that doesn't play in a Blu-Ray player. The Blu-Ray disc plays on your PC, so it's not authored incorrectly. What is going on is DVDFab does not appear to be passing the proper customizations for a playable Blu-Ray disc.

Okay, so you're writing Blu-Ray Video content to a Blu-Ray disc. Unfortunately, at this point, I can't say what the problem might be as it probably involves your Blu-Ray creation software doing something wrong.

Good. Now, I need the 2nd part of what I asked for.

Yeah, normally the updates are transparent, but this time the cookie problem slipped through. I figured it probably was a cookie issue given how the board was no longer "saving" log ins.

Did the forum software recently go through an update within the last week or so? For a few days a bit ago, I couldn't view new posts without first "logging in" each time. There would be a button on a page saying I wasn't allowed to view that content and needed to log in. When pressing it, I would already be "logged in." That has since stopped happening, but it made me wonder if the forum software had gone through a recent update. Thanks!

If DVDFab is calling ImgBurn directly, then who knows if it's doing it correctly or not. That introduces a whole new set of additional variables for things that could go wrong. At this point, I'd ask you to do something for me. Take this disc that won't play on your Sony Blu-Ray player but will play on your PC and put it in your PC drive. Open ImgBurn in Read Mode. There's a pane of disc information on the right side of the top window that says near the top Current Profile. Right click with the mouse on this pane of information, choose Select All, right click again and choose Copy. Paste that information into a reply here on this forum thread. Next, in File Explorer, navigate to the root directory of this inserted disc. Do you see a VIDEO_TS folder or a BDMV folder in the root directory of the disc?

Well, I'm still not getting a clear answer on if you're putting a Blu-Ray into a DVD player. You say it's a Sony DVD player, but DVD players won't play Blu-Rays. You also say you're using DVDFab and then you say you're using Blu-Ray Creator. Is there a Blu-Ray option with DVDFab? So, I don't know if you're creating DVD Video or Blu-Ray Video. Probably the easiest way to answer this. When you use ImgBurn's Build mode, are you adding a VIDEO_TS folder or a BDMV folder? If it's VIDEO_TS, that's a DVD. And if you burn a VIDEO_TS to a Blu-Ray disc, it will not play in a Blu-Ray player. And it definitely won't play in a DVD player. PC drives don't care what you feed them. The software that plays back the media does it based on the file formats, not the disc formats, as standalone player hardware does.

When you say "4 files as input for 4 separate episodes" are you just burning the 4 container files to the BD or are you converting them to Blu-Ray Video first with a converter software? If you're doing the former, then popping in the BD won't automatically cause it to play. Your player has to support natively playing container files. Also, you're mixing terms. Blu-Ray and DVD are two different media formats. It's either or. Another thing, you say your Sony player is a DVD player. Are you sure it's not a Blu-Ray player instead? If it IS a DVD player only, then putting a BD in a DVD player definitely won't be recognized by a DVD only player. And, as I said, if you're making a VIDEO_TS DVD Video but burning it to BD, a BD player won't play it as a DVD, even though it will do it the other way around.

Are you creating a DVD Video or a Blu-Ray Video? You mention DVD's, but the media information you provide is for Blu-Ray. If you've created VIDEO_TS DVD Video files and you burned them to a Blu-Ray recordable disc, then a Blu-Ray player will not play them. Sony specifically created the player standard to avoid doing this.

I know ConvertXToDVD, the software I use to convert container files to DVD, chokes on h264/265 files in its current iteration. VSO is working on a 64 bit version of the application which will address this. In the meantime, they have a conversion software to convert h264/265 files into something compliant with CXD.

DVDFab Decrypter being resident while creating an ISO shouldn't affect the outcome of the ISO. Those types of programs only affect the Verify portion of a disc burn. Although, AnyDVD used to affect the burning of DVD+RW negatively, forcing a reformat of the disc. The layer break should have no effect on attempting to play an ISO file natively. Those generally only matter when burning the data to double layer DVD. It sounds like the ISO's are definitely not compliant in some variety. I don't natively mount ISO's in Windows. I use a program called Virtual CloneDrive. It's free so if you feel like experimenting with it, you could give it a try and see if that works. If it does work, what you could try if you want to get native ISO mounting in Windows to work is to mount a DVD Video ISO you have and create a new ISO in ImgBurn with Build mode by pointing to the mounted drive's VIDEO_TS file. It could be something wrong with Windows native support for mounting ISO files. I would create an ISO in ImgBurn, just using any old data you have lying around. Preferably not a VIDEO_TS folder as you're trying to isolate variables. Make it as simple as possible. Then, attempt to mount that ISO you just created. If it doesn't mount, then there appears to be something wrong with the native ISO subsystem support. Although that seems highly unlikely as I believe you said you reinstalled Windows at some point.

You can when you choose Create CUE File under Tools and add your own audio files to create an Audio CD. You cannot however, to my knowledge, alter or add metadata to an existing BIN/CUE Audio CD image file set.

One of the reasons I knew those DVD-R's lasted so long was I was copying most of them over to new DVD-R. These earlier ones were made before I had learned of CMC and what cheap media can do. So, I was taking all the burned DVD-R that were not Taiyo Yuden or MCC and copying them to better quality MCC's. I had a few Maxell discs that wouldn't read and I discarded, but I think those were down to the LG drive used as the reader. LG's are not the best readers and will fail to read in some discs other drives like Pioneer's will. I was not aware of that at the time and only learned later through trial and error. So, some of those discs I couldn't read might actually have been salvageable.

I do have somewhat of a real world result for how long BD-R last. I had one I burned 7 years ago back in March where all the contents read back fine from last week. So, BD-R should last at least 5 to 10 years. But, I've also had DVD-R from last year that were readable after I had burned them 19 years before.

I can't answer as to the UK part as I live in the US. I use VERBAT-IM BD-R made by Verbatim. However, it seems in places like Europe, Verbatim BD-R are not the same quality as those I can get off of Amazon.com. I would recommend the LG WH16NS60 if you can find it. Otherwise, try the NS40, but last time I used it years ago and others reported similar issues here, double layer BD media do not write properly on that. Although a firmware update since those years ago might have helped those issues.

Ah, so d was short for denarius, an old Roman coin. Doesn't make much sense but it is an explanation to my question. Thanks! I always thought it funny our last Vice President was Mike Penny!

I believe before decimalization in Britain, prices of things could be listed by 3/11d. I am guessing the 3 is 3 shillings but what is the d? Pence/pennies? If so, what does the d stand for? Thanks!

I don't think such metadata is stored on discs themselves. That would require extra work that the disc manufacturers frankly don't want to do. I think the only kind of similar metadata to what you're looking for that is contained on a BD-R is the MID/DID. What you could do in future is something I adopted. Put in the UDF Label field a brief description and maybe include the date. Or develop some kind of system like Stack 2023-05-19 Disc x. I also tend to, in Build Mode, put a folder and subfolder structure in the root directory with a description of the contents. This usually includes a folder named for the date when the disc was burned.

There is one fault present in all LG drives that I failed to mention. They're not perfect readers. They will many times fail to read data from a disc that other drives like Pioneers will read in. That's one reason why I keep a USB Pioneer drive on hand. If my LG won't read in a particular disc, I plug in my Pioneer USB drive and see if that will read it.