AlbertEinstein

This is all well and good but I specifically do my burns at 2x because I'm very safe and conservative about the process. Does the burn speed literally burn the maximum read speed into the media as well?

No, it's not. Although, I have some BD-R DL I have burned, this specific disc isn't that.

I just used ImgBurn to verify the disc and it finished in 12+ minutes. No reported errors. So, this is the randomness I speak of. But again, it might be more related to the Windows software than my hardware. ImgBurn had no trouble at all verifying the disc.

My BD-R drive is an LG WH10LS30 with firmware 1.02 which is the latest available according to the LG support website.

Oh, I have believe me. I'm a patient person who likes to learn and understand things. But seriously, waiting 5 minutes for the bump'n'grind to stop just to get a damn root folder up on the screen tells me something isn't right. That's what I hate about optical media. When people laugh at me for still using it today I always have the reliability argument to fall back on. And I still stand by that argument. I think BD-R can last up to 20 years, let alone M-Disc lasting up to a 100 years. But this this painful bumping'n'grinding is what I hate about optical media. If that could be done away with somehow I would be more proud to use this older technology without question. And btw, I think I have said this in times past, but it seems like ImgBurn can get a read on discs faster than Windows, at least sometimes. And I think that has to do with the way the software attempts to read the volume and file descriptors on the disc. So, there's that factor also in all of this craziness.

Okay, firstly, I burned the BD-R as a data disc. Yes, it contains some video clips in mostly .mp4 video container formats. But I wouldn't want to view all the videos to verify the quality of the burn. It contains all manner of different files besides video including images, text files, etc. So, just think of it as a data disc. So, this flakiness I speak of means exactly that. Sometimes, I'll try to read the BD-R disc and Windows spins....*quitely* a few times to get synchronized to whatever the hell it's syncing up with and then it shows me the root folder on my optical media in the 'File Explorer" or a good old fashioned PowerShell prompt (I use both). As I stated, sometimes this process is very quick, sometimes I hear a lot of bumping'n'grinding before I get the display of a root folder. And sometimes I have to end up killing the process because it's just not happening. Much like some blind dates in real life might go down...it's *just not happening*. So you kill the process. And yes, this is on the same disc at different times.

I've recently mastered a freshly burned BD-R 25GB disc. Sometimes it seems to behave properly for the Windows OS and sometimes not. This randomness is the reliability of an optical media disc, literally, from day to day is what puzzles me most about optical media. Is it that flakey? What metrics, if any, can be used to check the quality of a burned disc, if that's even possible. Thanks for reading!

Thank You very much for your reply. It's all that was needed to make me feel better about the wait. As long as there is progress I'm sure the wait will be worth it.

I have this intuition inside me that says it's best to first compress hundreds of small files into single larger files before backing up and burning this data to optical media. And the reason is the horrid noise making that occurs from my past experiences when Windows has to browse through a folder of small files, especially folder/files that are images. I hate the constant grinding noises that occur when browsing optical media full of small files. So, I guess what I am saying (or asking) is should I be using my optical media to archive only and not browsing the data on it as though it were an acceptable device for browsing the data it holds, other than possibly video files which would be written, and likewise, read mostly sequentially anyway. And therefore be larger files by the same token.

I would like to know the state of this software. It's like a mystery. Is there a planned public release date? Is there a planned definite time frame for period of beta which would be to work out bugs and a public release target date for a newer version? I can't help but think the reason for all delays is related to monetary issues. If so, that's perfectly fine but keeping the user base is the dark is not going to effect those issues. At least, I wouldn't think so. It seems like enough time has passed now to work out any bugs. But just some tidbit of what is going on behind the scenes would be nice.

Thank You very much for the help on this. I'll pass your comments on to the developers applications that fall short of this feature!

ImgBurn is, at the moment, the only software package on the Windows platform that I am aware of that supports the maximum character limit of 126 characters for an optical media label using the UDF file system. However, it is fully supported, again AFAIK, on almost every Linux operating system. I keep pushing everyone I can for the adoption of software developers, including Microsoft, to fix this shortcoming in their software packages. But one question I have is, how ImgBurn supports this feature when the Windows Operating System itself, does not? I would be very interested to know so that we could at least offer this solution to other developers interested in supporting the UDF file system properly.

Well, then why won't Microsoft fix this issue? Why does their crappy File Explorer still only show 32 bytes of data for a Volume label these days? I hate that crap!

I think your software got the fields backwards. I read in the UDF standard that the 'Volume Identifier' has a maximum length of 32 characters and it's actually the 'Volume Set Identifier' that get's the recommended maximum length of 128 characters. Not that this matters all that much to me. Because I would rather get 128 characters for the 'Volume Identifier' as I never even really use the 'Volume Set Identifier' when authoring my discs. It's just something I realized today when reading over the standard. Your software has the names backwards but that's a good thing. Anyhoo, looking forward to the next release of this software, if it ever happens.

Thank You for your post. It's not a big deal really. I was just curious if the metadata was there somehow. I guess not. Maybe it's in that real small print literally on the inside ring of the disc? I'll pull out my magnifying glass out and see what I can deduce there. But at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. I use a regular old black Sharpie marker to label most of my media. It's a perfect stand-in until I find extra time and ambition to do up some fancy laser printed labels. And if it's so damn hard to tell them apart then why treat them as such? LoL! I crack myself up!