dbminter

I'm guessing Xray is a subfolder in the folder Study in the root directory of the disc? It depends on what Xray is. Is it a folder or a file? If it's a file, it will usually have some kind of . extension after it defining what program opens it. Unfortunately, probably only a screenshot of what you're seeing where it says Unknown in the properties would help here. And I don't know if you know how to create one.

It is possible that whoever made this disc with an "X-Ray" on it constructed it to run ImgBurn, but there's no need to view "X-Ray" with ImgBurn. The X-Ray would either be a simple picture file or some kind of proprietary file that requires special software on the disc to view. Whatever the case, ImgBurn is not required to do any of this. ImgBurn just makes copies of discs or creates images for burning to discs.

Well, it's not entirely clear what you're attempting to do. No disc when inserted should say you need to download ImgBurn unless it was prepared to do so. In that case, it should have had a copy on the disc to begin with. Viewing the images implies you got a disc with pictures on it. Unless "viewing images" means you got a disc with disc images on it. In that case, you'd want to burn the images, but that begs the question of what these disc images on the disc are. Read and Build are different things. Read mode creates an image copy of a disc which can be burned to writable media. Build creates images from existing files and folders that can be burned to writable media.

I think I actually have one of those linked Verbatim DVD burners, but I bought it entirely as an external reader. I don't think I ever tested its write abilities.

MP3 should be avoided whenever possible. It's a lossy format, so the sound quality will be affected. FLAC is one of the lossless formats, so the audio is pretty much 1:1 as on the CD's. Your best bet is to always try and use an original CD and rip the tracks to FLAC. Or make an image of the disc, but images are not necessarily reliable. Plus, reading at slower speeds is recommended and using something that generates hashes like Free Audio Converter. (Not the 4dots one, the other one called Free Audio Converter: freac.)

Your faults are most likely one of two things, both already suggested previously. Slim models are generally less reliable than half height optical burners. And the CMC discs are the worst optical discs out there. Verbatim does release some of the best, but they also make some of the worst in their Life Series. Try the Verbatim DataLife Plus, NOT Life Series, or ones listed as AZO dye, as was previously suggested. It's probably why the CD-R's failed but the CD-RW's succeeded. The CD-RW's may not have been CMC. There was no attached log for a CD-RW burn, so I can't say who made those CD-RW.

I went ahead and got a Pioneer 212 that arrived yesterday. Circumstances got involved where I decided it was best to not wait for the 213 as my LG needed replacing. So, I swapped in my spare LG to use in the meantime, sent the defective one in for swap, and ordered a Pioneer 212. Preliminary tests show the major issue Pioneer had with their firmware for over 5 years has finally been addressed! The Ricoh/Ritek 8x DVD+RW from over 5 years ago finally supported properly again. No more failures to Verify on nearly full discs. This is with previously formatted discs and new discs formatted by the 212. I've not fully and thoroughly tested this yet with a playback test on DVD Video to make sure the discs were WRITTEN properly, though. Which means a playback with no skips, pops, pauses, etc. in audio and video. Several DVD-R and DVD+R DL test have been performed. Again, not thorough playback tests on DVD Video, but, at least, there are no Verify failures and read tests on PC passed. Still need to check one other big flaw. On Ritek/Ricoh BD-RE, they Verify at mostly 2x speed until the very last minute or 2 where the speed jumps up to normal. Hopefully, this has been addressed, but I won't know until I get a chance to test it. Still need to check CD-R/RW, 4x DVD+RW, 4x DVD-RW, and BD-RE DL. However, I rarely use those, so I don't know when I'll get an opportunity to test those. All in all, though, addressing the fatal flaw for over 5 years in Pioneer's drives is a good sign. However, past firmware has introduced this issue, FIXED it, and reintroduced it, so...

It's sort of like BD-R. If it's just data I'm backing up, even if it fits on a CD-R/RW, DVD+-R/RW, or DVD +-R DL, I'll use a BD-R. BD-R lasts much longer since it doesn't use organic dyes. It uses metal oxide. So, it won't decay as fast. And BD-R is relatively cheap now. However, if you want to play an Audio CD or DVD Video/Audio disc on a Blu-Ray player, you must use the appropriate writable media for it. Otherwise, thanks to Sony, the player design won't recognize the type of disc inserted. It goes by the media type.

About going up from CD and DVD and increasing the likelihood of errors, you are packing more data into basically the same amount of area when you go up to DVD. So, the likelihood of error on DVD does increases versus if you did it on CD. Sort of like video tape. You can cram a lot more movie on a VHS tape if you use SLP 6 hour mode, but the video quality greatly suffers over time. As does the likelihood of tracking control problems.

I got my first DVD video recorder at Sears. Then, I got an updated model from Panasonic with a VCR built into it in 2006 at Walmart. Last year, I completed a 2 to 3 year project to convert all of my VHS tapes to DVD. I had about 500. Once my local cable company switched to digital and required a box to receive cable, my DVD video recorder could no longer record from TV. So, I had this DVD video recorder sitting around doing nothing and a separate VCR connected to it and I decided to finally complete my library conversion project. I also connected an audio tape player to the DVD video recorder and converted my nearly 40 year old library of audio cassettes to DVD. I'd also use the DVD video recorder to record onto DVD-RAM, on the first Panasonic model, then on to DVD-RW on the updated one. I'd then shuttle the discs over to the PC where I'd do final processing on them. Edits and make my own menus, etc. My first DVD-R PC burner was bought for that purpose. Cost me $500 in 2002.

I believe the USB models of Zip were first introduced in 1999. It was more than just a DVD burner. It recorded video on to DVD. So, while it had a DVD burner drive in it, it also had other hardware and software necessary to record VHS and cable TV to DVD. So, there were things like a Time Base Corrector, which, back then, ran $500 on their own. By 2006, Panasonic, the innovator of the technology, was selling DVD video recorder and VCR combo units for $300.

$15 was the high quality Mitsubishi stuff from Panasonic. It was around the time I paid $999 for a first generation DVD video recorder. I didn't pay $15 a pop for very long. A few months later, I came across Optodisc, which used to make their own quality discs. Then, they switched to CMC, which was my first exposure to cheap discs. Those CMC discs were impossible to use with any kind of regularity. Those $15 discs were still readable until last year, when I made new archives so they would be newer discs. Oh, I remember those terrible buffer underrun days. My CD-R drive was plagued by it, and early DVD burners didn't have buffer underrun technology in them like they eventually would. You'd spend an hour writing to a DVD-R only to have it fail at 99% due to a buffer underrun. I can remember when the 100 MB Zip Drive disks were mass storage in 1995. 5.25" floppy drives had a "latch" on them. You'd push down the latch to keep the disk in place in the drive. 5.25" were my first exposure to floppy discs. I had a Commodore 64 around 1987 whose external storage was 5.25" floppies. My first BASIC class in high school, we also used 5.25" floppies. For Pascal in my senior year, the school replaced all the TRS 80's with IBM AT PC's which had 3.5" floppies in them.

I don't remember the manufacturer of my first CD burner either. Got it from Babbage's, which became Electronics Boutique. I remember paying $15 a pop for quality Mitsubishi DVD-R in 2002 when I first started burning those. My first IBM x86 PC was in 1992. 30 years ago this past January, actually. Back when PC's had a Turbo button on them. It had a whopping 40 MB HDD. And dual 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. I was also one of the first adopters of cable Internet in my area back in 2000.

For music CD's, I don't make image files. I rip the tracks as FLAC. Spoken word CD's are a bit different as if you rip them to containers and make new Audio CD's from those, you run the risk of added "skips" between audio tracks as the creation is seamless on the pressed discs, but not when you create the containers and add them. And this is with the 2 second pause between tracks disabled. Plus, for spoken word CD's, I generally make DVD Video out of them. Yes, you can make DVD Video out of Audio CD contents. It's convenient because if you have, say, a 5 disc book on CD set, you can make an archive that spans only 1 DVD+R DL. I've gotten up to 11 discs on one DVD+R DL before. Saves space storing archives. However, that requires ripping all CD tracks to one contiguous container file. Or multiple files for, say, tracks that make up individual chapters. That was the situation I encountered 2/3 weeks ago. A BBC radio play on 3 Audio CD's I saved space on by converting it to 1 DVD+R DL.

And I thought I was an early adopter of CD-R getting my first burner in 2000.

Under Settings on the Read page of the software interface, there are 2 Read Speed options. Change them to something slower. Audio CD can be a real pain. I had a disc just 2 or 3 weeks ago where reading to image was fine, but it didn't read it correctly. When I used Free Audio Converter to extract the tracks, it failed a hash check because it was reading too fast. So, I slowed down the read in ImgBurn to get an image that read correctly at the slowest possible speed. Then, I mounted that image as a virtual drive for FreeAC to extract from. Just be sure to change the read speed settings back, unless you want the slowest possible read speed on all operations.

The problem is most likely the CMC Magnetics cheap discs. There is only one good quality manufacturer of DVD+R DL. That's Mitsubishi. CMC makes the worst out there. You'll probably find better success switching to Verbatim DataLife Plus (NOT Life Series, as those are CMC.) DVD+R DL. Those are MCC, which are Mitsubishi. This would also explain why you got failures on both ImgBurn and other attempts to burn to the same discs in 2 different drives. But, if you do have an image file that fits on a single layer DVD, might as well use those. They're cheaper and adding a 2nd layer does increase the likelihood of issues.

If you get the same read errors in Alcohol at the same places, then you can safely rule that it's how the games in Phantasmagoria were pressed. And since you seem to get similar spots on other Playstation games, it's probably as I mentioned earlier the nature of the beast when dealing with PS archives.

Given how it's the same results regardless of what drive you use, the hardware interface, or PC, and that it happens on more than 1 of these discs in the same game set, it's probably down to how this game set was authored. Also given how it happens at the 99% mark, it's probably in either the "copy protection" area or audio channel data. Have you tried any other game discs besides the ones from Phantasmagoria? Sometimes Playstation games just exhibit odd behavior. I just over the weekend encountered odd behavior reading PS games on the LG WH16NS60. They start out at a really fast read rate, but then drop to 2x, resulting in like 20 minute read times. It happened on all 5 PS games I tried and did not happen on any other CD read operations I tested afterwards. So, it's something unique to PS games in my NS60 it seems. And there are some PS games that cannot be read in by ImgBurn on certain hardware. For instance, Mega Man 8 in my collection is one of those and it failed to read for another user who posted on here about attempting to archive the same game. Those require Alcohol 120% to read. You could try downloading the free version of Alcohol 120% and see if you get reads that way. I would guess you would since ImgBurn did not technically "fail" to read the Phantasmagoria discs.

Are the 4 different drives all from the same model/manufacturer or different models and manufacturers? Are they all internal SATA or USB? If you did try 4 different makes and models of drives, it's probably the nature of the beast of Playstation discs. Playstation discs are often very picky to make archives of. As long as the image completes, I wouldn't be too concerned. If the discs play fine, again, I wouldn't be that concerned. It seems whatever this repositioning is, it was temporary and was recovered from as it wasn't a fatal error.

Unfortunately, I know next next to nothing about PIE, PIF, jitter scans etc. as I never employ them. In fact, I don't think I've ever done a single one. As long as burn and verify completed, I've been relatively satisfied with the results. I recently made a post here on my long term results of various MID burns to discs; mostly DVD-R's. Except for the obvious culprits of CMC, VANGUARD, or other no name brands, only a handful of discs weren't fully readable after almost 20 years. And those that were failures may not have actually been real failures. As I later discovered, the WH16NS60 sometimes fails to read some discs that other drives don't have an issue reading. Came across a pressed disc just last week where that happened. My Pioneer BD read it, but the NS60 wouldn't.

I wouldn't think any drive actually has to "learn" media it's never written to before. Because the drive itself cannot store such data as only the firmware portion contains any writable memory, I'd think. I would try lowering the speed and using a 2nd disc to see if there's any more initial "bursts" like you encountered. I'd be a bit wary of a burned disc that has a slow reading portion on it at any point.

Yeah, no one packages optical discs well enough for shipping. The cake stacks are almost always damaged in transit from Amazon.com. That's why I save the cake stacks whenever they arrive undamaged. After I'm done with the discs, I have cake stacks to swap in for ones that arrived damaged. However, I've been doing that for years, so I have older ones, since hardly any of the new ones arrive undamaged. So, looks like I was right in that those pearl white ones were thermal label discs. That just means you need a special printer to print labels on the surface. I don't know much about them. I don't know if thermal printers ever took off or if they still make them anymore. I get my discs as inkjet printable, even though I don't have an inkjet capable printer for printing on the label surface. However, they are good enough for using CD markers on to write to. And, if I ever get an inkjet capable CD label printer, I can write labels to them in the future.

Well, near as I can tell, AZO dye is not metallic. Only BD-R has metal oxide in it. The nature of recordable CD and DVD is they use organic dye, which decay faster than metal oxides. But, I don't know that for sure.

The DVD-R I was using that stopped working on 1.02 and then resumed on 1.03 were 16x certified. I am guessing, though I don't remember for sure, the DVD+R were as well. I rarely use DVD+R. I only tried them out when the DVD-R stopped working to see if they might be a viable substitute. Those "pearl white" ones sound like thermal printable label surfaces, though I don't know that for sure.