dbminter

Board appears to be operating as "expected" now when I click on unread content.

Yeah, as long as there's a VIDEO_TS folder on the disc with VOB and IFO files and they're properly authored, DVDShrink should read in the contents for possible salvaging. However, my experience with DVD Video Recorders is the contents they write to discs need to be finalized before they can be playable contents.

I actually had 3 NS60's sitting around. One gets used and the other 2 were older units. I always have a backup for my tech on hand when it dies. And it is a question of when, not if. The oldest one died and I swapped in the oldest of the other 2, but it also died in under a week. It's time was close to dying, too. The one I swapped in just recently was the newest one I had. Next month, I plan on getting another NS60 to have on hand to swap in when this one eventually gives up the ghost. There's no set in stone answer on when a laser will die. I've had drives that lasted 2 years and I've had drives that lasted 2 months before they gave up the ghost. But, there are certain factors that help age a laser. Particularly, how long it's been used. In other words, how many discs it's burned. The good news about LG is they have a very good replacement policy. They will replace a drive if it dies before a year. If it's out of warranty, they charge $40 for a replacement, which is cheaper than the drive new. However, though I've had to get several replacements from LG over the years that were out of warranty, they have never charged me the $40 replacement fee for any drive I've returned.

As for the reliability of the NS60, it's really up to the discs you're putting in. For instance, just now, on the NS60 I swapped in, I got a failure on Verify right at the start of a BD-R burn. However, the next write of the same image to the same Verbatim BD-R succeeded so that most likely a fluke. 1 bad disc in a stack of 50. So, it's generally not the reliability of the drive that fails, it's the discs. However, some drives do have bad firmware like Pioneer and ASUS. Of course, this could be an indication the BD laser is going bad in this NS60, too. I've no idea how long this NS60 was sitting there on the shelf or how long I'd used it before putting it on the shelf.

Verbatim probably actually doesn't make their own optical drives. Half of their discs they don't make themselves; they're farmed out to CMC Magnetics. You should avoid slim model drives whenever possible. They're generally junk. I do have a slim model Verbatim DVD drive for those rare cases when my NS60 won't read a disc. LG drives can be picky readers. Like maybe 1 disc in 100 can't be read by them. The only 2 burn tests I gave it had 50/50 results. DVD-R burned fine, but DVD+RW didn't.

The WH16NS60 is as reliable as the lasers that are put into each unit. (A BD burner has 2 lasers: one for CD and DVD and the other for Blu-Ray.) By that, I mean I've had relatively 100% success rate except when the lasers are dying. For instance, earlier in the week, I swapped out an NS60 for a replacement because it failed twice in a row to burn BD-R. Swapping it out worked because the BD laser was dying. Personal experience has lead me to believe the NS60 is the best of the worst. It has the fewest problems of the 3 major manufacturers. The LG's limitations are it claims to write 16x to 16x BD-R but only writes at 12x. Other write rates are also slightly less than the other manufacturers. If there is any recovery of buffers during a write, BD-R maxes out at only 6x and DVD-R at only 8x. Lastly, the NS60 does not properly write to the latest model Ritek 8x DVD+RW. It does to the earlier model Ricoh, but not the latest Ritek ones from Imation. There are two other major BD manufacturers out there. As you know, Pioneer is one. Pioneer unfortunately is a non-starter because it's become junk over the last few years. BD-RE only ever verifies at 2x max even though 2x BD-RE is capable of much faster read speeds. Lastly, Pioneer firmware has, for years, been unable to write properly to the old model Ritek 8x DVD+RW. They always fail Verifies. The other major manufacturer is ASUS, but they're a non-starter, too. When their model was first released, the firmware destroyed DVD+RW and BD-RE! Subsequent firmware updates stopped that, but the drive still doesn't properly write to new Imation Ritek 8x DVD+RW. The deal killer is DVD+R DL. They always fail Verify at the layer change, meaning the firmware doesn't properly write Verbatim MKM high quality DVD+R DL. I've never written any TL BD media so I can't say how well the NS60 handles those. I've burned a few M-Disc, but only SL's. And the only BD DL media I've ever burned is BD-RE DL. You may be tempted to get the WH16NS40 because it's cheaper if you don't need UHD. Don't. The NS40 will 9 times out of 10 fail to properly write to BD DL media.

Is there something wrong with the board right now? Unread Contents is displaying a new message, but when I open it, instead of opening the latest post, it displays the first post. And, even if I do do that, the forum still thinks it's an unread post. Only if I actually open the page containing the last post does Unread Contents clear the post. Thanks!

Pioneer USED to be a good brand. But, starting around 4 years ago, they became junk. I had a Pioneer BD that lasted over 2 years , the best performance I ever got out of an optical burner. The last Pioneer I had died after 2 months and I've never gone back to them. They also steadfastly refuse to address the improper write strategy for Ritek/Ricoh 8x DVD+RW in their firmware which prevents their use in Pioneer BD drives. LG makes the best of the worst BD burners. They all have issues, but LG's WH16NS60 is the only BD burner I recommend and it does support M-Disc.

Windows 11 is a major step backwards. Upgrading Windows 10 to Windows 11, Win 11 can't even open PNG files right! If you double click on them, Photos won't open them saying something about a specified module could not be found. Photos WILL open them IF, every time, you select the Photos app to open them manually EACH time!

BTW, to get a bit off topic, have you seen that FXX is carrying reruns of King Of The Hill? For the first time in several years, KOTH is back, after being nowhere on TV for a while.

If you have Virtual CloneDrive installed on Windows 10 and you upgrade it to Windows 11, you must reinstall CloneDrive in order for it to work on Windows 11. This has happened many times in the past when upgrading Windows between versions, so it's not new. Just a reminder to do it.

You know what? In all this time, I never noticed the change log file before! Good to know where it is now.

Well, $500 is a nice incentive for LUK to try and get a new version released by year's end.

Well, LUK may have painted himself into a corner elsewhere when he said he'd hoped to have a new update released by the end of the year. Work does progress on ImgBurn, though not at the pace of the past. There was a beta released almost 3 years and 10 months ago with the latest changes rolled into it. It would be nice to get another beta to try out before the final release, though...

Well, the ASUS BD burners may be an option if you never intend to burn DVD+R DL. I never got beyond testing the last ASUS BD burner I got for testing a few months ago after it failed to properly write to DVD+R DL. BD-R was fine, but I only ever got around to testing DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD+R DL, and BD-R. And the DVD+RW, while the ASUS drive had moved beyond the catastrophic failure of DESTROYING DVD+RW it used to do, I hadn't thoroughly tested the DVD+RW burn results. Initial indications were it didn't write correctly as they had playback problems on the PS3. But, I never got around to thoroughly vetting them yet when the catastrophic failure on DVD+R DL was a deal killer. I told ASUS, but, of course, they don't listen.

Beyond the DVD+RW issue on the Pioneer 212 I last had, like I said, it died before 2 months had passed. It stopped writing BD-R. In the US, the NS60 could be found on Amazon.com and NewEgg. That's where I've gotten mine before.

Yes, things really did go downhill that fast for Pioneer. The DVD+RW thing has been there probably longer than that, which was what initially drove me away from Pioneer. One firmware update fixed the problem, but all future firmware updates regressed the issue back in. About a year or so ago, I tried Pioneer again, since they had a new hardware model. Thought I'd hope against hope that they'd fixed their issues. Turns out, it was actually worse. I think the only real difference between the LG BH and WH models is a case similar to the Pioneers you linked. The WH16 simply replaced the BH models. Both support M-Disc, BD XL, and both appear to have the same maximum write speeds. The difference between the WH16NS40 and NS60 is the NS60 supports UHD. That's why the NS40 is cheaper, but I recommend the NS60 over the NS40 because the NS40 fails 9 times out of 10 to write BD-R/RE DL media. What country are you trying to find NS60's in?

The only real "difference," most likely, is the S12XLT is the model that superceded the 212EBK. Meaning, it's replaced the other model, but the 212EBK stock is still available. Pioneer is known to do this: replace older models with newer ones that do the same thing while still offering stock of the older model. However, I would recommend you forego any Pioneer BD burners. Pioneer used to make the best BD burners out there. Had one that lasted for 2 and a half years before it needed replacing, unparalleled in a world where, normally, optical drives need replacing every 7 months, on average. Over the years, though, their quality has really turned into . I recently tried a 212 that Pioneer had to ultimately refund my money on. It died before 2 months! Plus, for years, the Pioneer BD firmware does not properly write to Ritek 8x DVD+RW and Pioneer refuses to do anything about it! There are basically 3 manufacturers to choose from for BD burners: Pioneer, LG, and ASUS. The one with the FEWEST issues is LG, IF you get the RIGHT LG BD burner. The WH16NS60 is my recommendation. It has no deal killers, just a few execution choices that make it a slower read and writer, in some cases, than the Pioneer. However, slower reads and writes are better than catastrophic failures, which are in the Pioneer and ASUS models. You may be tempted to get LG's WH16NS40 since it's cheaper. If you don't plan on writing BD DL media, which the NS40 says it supports but does not properly write to, you can get that. The NS60 supports the M-Disc you're looking for, and I think the NS40 did, too.

If you have a preexisting image set that ImgBurn has already created, you can create an MDS file with the Create MDS File option under Tools. To always have ImgBurn create an MDS file whenever it creates an image, under Tools --> Settings, set the following: Build --> Page 1 --> Create Image File Layout --> Choose either Auto or Yes --> Image Layout File Format --> Check the MDS box --> OK

What it sounds like you want is some kind of Blu-Ray authoring program. Since you specifically mention .SRT files, it sounds like you have some kind of downloaded video file with a separate subtitles .SRT file for it. Unless the Blu-Ray player you intend on using this video file on specifically reads .SRT files for containers, burning the .SRT file anywhere on the disc won't cause the subtitles to appear. You'd need to use some kind of Blu-Ray or DVD authoring program to combine the .SRT into the new video container. I use ConvertXToDVD for DVD authoring, which does support adding .SRT files to output, but 1.) it's paid software and 2.) you may not want to convert to DVD but to Blu-Ray or to another container file. The same company does offer similar software to make Blu-Ray video, though.

I'd blame your drive. It's a slim model one, and most slim models are junk. The only slim model I've ever seen that was near usable was LG's BU40N that came in my Dell XPS 8930 desktop. And there's a "Verbatim" model I have from Office Depot, but I don't know who actually made that. It is a slim USB model that I use entirely for reading, but I've rarely, if ever, tested its write capabilities because I never had a reason to use anything but a half height burner because of all the horror stories I've heard of writing discs with slim model burners. I'd first try replacing your drive with something else. Preferably an external model that is not a slim, aka a half height model, as that would be easiest to install. What I use is the LG WH16NS60 in a Vantech USB 3.0 enclosure. However, you may not need a Blu-Ray burner. If you do get the NS60, be sure to get a USB 3.0 enclosure as 2.x won't be fast enough for a BD burner.

If it's an internal drive, the age of the PC doesn't factor into when an optical drive will die off. Optical drives, internal or otherwise, have an average time before failure of about 7 months.

We'll need the entire log for this failed burn. One thing that sticks out is what the drive is apparently returning in terms of error information. It seems it's returning a range of sectors starting with sector # -22 through sector # -1.

Semaphore time out errors are generally caused by a conflict between the USB bridge in the external enclosure and the USB controller on your motherboard. First thing to rule out, make sure you're connecting the USB BD burner by USB 3.x instead of USB 2.x. USB 2.x is generally too slow to support BD burning and could be the cause of such an error in this case. Second, you say it only occurs on BD DL discs. What about regular BD SL discs? If it's one and not the other, it could be the manufacturer of that BD DL disc is not properly supported in the BD burner's firmware. Third, you're using the BW 16D1HT, which I consider junk. That drive has never worked right from its inception. Upon release, the original firmware DESTROYED DVD+RW and BD-RE on attempts to write to it. After 2 or 3 years, firmware updates fixed this issue, but did NOT fix the inability to properly write DVD+R DL's correctly without failing. So, I returned the last 16D1HT I got after I tried it again to see if firmware updates had fixed the issues I'd found before. It fixed the DVD+RW and BD-RE issues, but I then discovered it cannot write to DVD+R DL. I'd recommend you swap out that drive and get an LG WH16NS60 and a Vantech USB 3.0 enclosure. I've used those for years. DON'T get the WH16NS40 to save money because it doesn't have UHD BD on it. The NS40 does NOT properly write to BD DL media. It will fail 9 times out of 10.

Is this drive connected internally or in a USB enclosure?