Newbie to BR burning

[Eric C]

So I expected some growing pains and a new learning curve when attempting to burn BR, but this is getting ridiculous.

 

I have tried various types of media (Verb LTH, Optical Quantum, Phillips, Memorex, Maxell) and the results have all been similar so I'm thinking it's either my hardware or a setting in the software rather than purely faulty media.

 

Anyway...what I am getting more times than not is what appears to be a completely successful burn. No errors or bad messages, a successful verify process, then when I take the disc out and examine it I see one of two things: 1) a change in coloration in the dye at various points and/or 2) lines that look like song breaks on a vinyl record. In some cases I have gone ahead and tried to play the disc on my standalone BR player and while it seems fine it's hard to have much faith in a "dirty" looking burn.

 

The only thing I have seen that represents a red flag to me at all is the message (in the attached log file) that I get periodically about letting the "buffers recover". Seems like the process slows down roughly 2-5 times per write session for this to happen. That being said, I have had cases where that happened several times and the burn looks perfect and still other cases where I never got that message and the burn looks like a vinyl LP record. I have been backing up my DVD collection for years and thought I had a good sense about how/why things worked and didn't work, but I'm not seeing the logic so far with the BRs.

 

Anyone see anything that jumps out as a problem or symptom to a problem? (OH, and you'll see a note on there about having AnyDVD enabled...I always disable that before attempting the write process so I don't think that's the culprit)

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Cynthia]

(in the attached log file)

[Eric C]

Just proving I am, in fact, a newbie to BR.

 

WITH the attachment now...

ImgBurn Log.txt

[ianymaty]

Make sure you running the 1.00-A9 firmware. http://www.firmwarehq.com/LG/WH10LS30/files.html

 

Right click the drive selection box when you're in Write mode and click 'Check for firmware updates'. There you'll see the full firmware version number.

[Eric C]

Good call! The drive was running version 1.00-07 instead of 09. We'll see if this makes a difference.

[Eric C]

Still burned with a few "rings around the disc"

[laserfan]

Well if the discs burn without errors and play, then maybe you shouldn't argue with success!

 

Others here will know better than I, but the "Waiting..." messages suggest to me that your PC gets busy doing something else, or maybe your hard drive is badly fragmented. Do a Disc Check on all drives, and clean-out all temporary files and junk, and then run Defraggler to see how bad they are (and to fix if needed).

 

Next I suppose you should give us all PC specs including drive loading.

[ianymaty]

If the burn and verify was succesfull don't bother that change in coloration, it's due to different speeds used to burn different parts of the disc.

 

As you have buffering problems happening frequently, you should stop heavy tasks while burning discs. Defragmenting the drive may help also.

 

Make sure you have the latest chipset/storage drivers installed. This site may help identifying what's need to update.

[Eric C]

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback that the different coloration has to do with burn speed...never realized that. I know it's not (overtly, at least) an issue of too many things running at once as I'm pretty particular about making sure no other processes are (knowingly) running while burning a BR. Those suckers are too $$ to waste if I can help it!

 

What about the rings around the disc that I see periodically after burning? Would that just be a momentary change of write speed?

 

I will try to defragment idea, too, and see if that helps at all.

 

Thanks!

[ianymaty]

Probably you get the rings when the buffer kicks in.

 

Also, the disc is not written at the same speed along the whole disc. It atarts slower on the inner and reaches the maximum (of which you select) only at the outer part.

 

So it could cycle through speeds from the inner to the outer, that causing a little buffer drop and eventualy a slight laser recalibration for the speed. That's a drive internal function and it's normal.

 

The different laser power could cause the "so called rings"

[Eric C]

Had a nice run where all my burns were totally "clean" (no marks, rings, multiple shades of color, etc.) but now I'm in another stretch where every single burn has at least some visual marks. As innocuous as it sounds, it still looks odd to me so thought I'd try to post a pic in case that helped anyone identify issue/confirm harmlessness.

 

Please see attachment...disregard the phone and the odd lighting and you'll see one "ring" going all the way around the disc on the backside.

 

Let me know if this raises a flag at all...thanks!