Invalid Blu-ray disc when burned from folder

[Nospampls]

I'm trying to burn a BD-RE disc produced in Cyberlink Power Director 8. When I have PD8 burn directly to the disc, it will play on my Sony BDP-460N player. However, when I have PD8 'burn' to a folder on my hard drive and then burn that to disc using Imgburn, the disc is not recognized as valid on the Sony player. Both play fine on the computer (PowerDVD 9).

 

I've examined the two discs on my computer (one good, one bad) and the contents look identical. The one difference I can see is that in Computer the 'good' disc shows (correctly) that there is 22.6GB free of 23.0GB. The 'bad' (Imgburn-produced) disc shows 22.5GB free of 22.5GB, which doesn't make sense to me.

 

Thus is seems that the disc directory is messed up on the failing (Imgburn-produced) disc, and perhaps the Sony player can't deal with that. Hopefully this will provide a clue.

 

Can someone offer a suggestion?

 

Windows 7 64 bit

Imgburn 2.5.2.0

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Post the log.

 

Have you compared the actual file contents or just looked at sizes and names?

[Nospampls]

Post the log.

 

Have you compared the actual file contents or just looked at sizes and names?

 

Thanks for the prompt reply.

 

To answer your question, I only looked at directories, not contents.

 

I delayed responding because was getting inconsistent and confusing results. But I now have it narrowed down - the problem seems related to how the disc is initialized.

 

My problem only occurs when I'm using a 'fresh' Verbatim BD-RE 25 disc. In this case, Imgburn will insist on doing a full erase and zeroing, and the disc I then burn BDMV and CERTIFICATE folders to will play in Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 on the computer, but not on my Sony player, which reports INVALID after loading.

 

The log attached is for the above job.

 

Subsequently doing a quick erase on the disc in Imgburn and repeating the burn produced the same failure. I tried this repeatedly

 

I then erased the same disc in Nero (took about a minute) and then Imgburn reported that the "Disc Needs Formatting" and will not perform a quick erase, but insists on a time-consuming full erase, which I declined to do.

 

Instead I launched Cyberlink Power2Go, which initially reported that the disc was blank, and did a quick erase there (took a couple of minutes or so).

 

Imgburn then reported that the disc was "empty" and I proceeded to burn the project above.

 

The resulting disc played fine on the Sony.

 

I then used Imgburn to quick erase and re-burn the project, and it again played fine on the Sony.

 

Both versions of the disc display 22.5GB free of 22.5GB (i.e., empty) in Computer, so evidently this is not the problem. (The disc mentioned in my original post that showed the correct size was made by Power2Go.)

 

I've experimented with several discs, and until some program other than Imgburn 'erases' them the first time, Imgburn cannot produce a disc that will play on my Sony. After using another program one time, I can quick erase and burn in Imgburn successfully indefinitely.

 

I'm not yet sure whether running both Nero and Power2Go was necessary. Likely only one of them was, but I don't yet know for sure.

 

To summarize, Imgburn doesn't seem to be able to initialize new BD-RE discs such that burned movies will play in my Sony. However, a work-around is to erase the disc with other software, then return to Imgburn and the disc will work from that point forward (i.e., I never have to revert to using Nero or Power2Go again).

 

Does this help identify my problem?

 

Thanks.

 

Rolfe

imgburn.log

[LIGHTNING UK!]

It's probably a 'spare areas' thing. ImgBurn defaults to formatting without them. Go into the settings and change that.

 

You do lose some space on the BD-RE but if that's what it takes to get a working disc then you'll have to live with it.

 

Post the disc info (copy + paste from the area on the right when you're in Write mode with a 'working' disc in the drive) and I'll know for sure.

[Nospampls]

It's probably a 'spare areas' thing. ImgBurn defaults to formatting without them. Go into the settings and change that.

 

You do lose some space on the BD-RE but if that's what it takes to get a working disc then you'll have to live with it.

 

Post the disc info (copy + paste from the area on the right when you're in Write mode with a 'working' disc in the drive) and I'll know for sure.

 

I have attached info for a "working" and "not working" disc. They are identical in content and at first glance the 'info' appears to be identical. But one plays on the Sony and one does not.

 

I've changed the 'spare areas' setting. I presume I have to 'full erase' the 'not working' disc now, correct?

 

Thanks.

working.txt

not working.txt

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Hmm ok, it's not spare ares then.

 

I have no idea now, sorry.

 

p.s. a quick erase just writes zeroes to the first few hundred sectors - it's 100% pointless if you're just going to write to the disc anyway.

 

If you full format a 'working' disc in ImgBurn, does it still work?

 

If not, you'll be able to try just Nero or just Power2Go and then ImgBurn to see which one (if not both) then produce a working disc.

 

If you tell me exactly what works, I can snoop on the I/O from that program and see what extra stuff they're doing that could explain why their discs work.

[Nospampls]

OK, now we're getting somewhere.

 

I took a 'working' disc and did a 'full erase' on it with the 'spare areas' setting UNticked, then burned my test video. It played on the Sony just fine.

 

I then re-ticked the setting (the default condition) and again did a 'full erase' and re-burned my test video. It is INVALID on the Sony. (Although in my testing I would occasionally 'break' a working disc, I was not aware of how until now.)

 

As I mentioned previously, whereas my Sony player is sensitive to how the disc was prepared, my computer (PowerDVD 9) is not.

 

So the solution is to untick the 'spare areas' setting and do a full erase on any new BD-RE discs for compatibility with my Sony DVD player. This is great, because it obviates the need to use other software to prep the discs.

 

I'm curious to know what 'spare areas' is all about, if you'd care to explain.

 

Thanks for your help. This has been driving me crazy. If it would be interesting to you, I could look at specific sectors of a working and failing disc and attach the contents for comparison.

 

I've again attached the info for the failing disc.

 

Rolfe

not working.txt

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Spare areas is just where a chunk of the disc is reserved / unavailable.

 

The drive can then use this area to relocated sectors that would otherwise be bad (unwritable/readable).

 

SSD drives do the same type of thing. The drive might have 130GB of memory on it but only 100GB is made available to the user. The extra 30GB is used for whatever the chipset on the drive wants to use it for.

[pex9]

having the same problem here where in the setting do i find the spare area to check it? also if i just have 1 folder bdvm and not the other folder can i still burn it to blu ray disc and play on the sony player?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

We don't do 'same problem' threads here (a.k.a. thread hijacking)

 

Make a new thread and we'll help you with your problem.

[pex9]

sorry didnt know