Blu ray burning issue

Viddy wrote on 3/30/2014, 1:02 PM

Hi all,

I am hoping that my new ventures into Blu-ray authoring don't follow the pattern of unreliable DVDs I used to create many years ago! I have just started to create my first Blu-ray discs (only from my home videos edited in Sony Movie Studio v12 & then authored in DVD Architect 5).

My experience so far has been actually quite rewarding but I have come across a couple of niggling glitches and I am hoping someone might read this and have had similar frustrations... but managed to solve them.

Briefly, I use SMS v12 64-bit Platinum Suite and am editing in 1080HD. I then send the video project over to DVD Architect 5 (DVDA) and build a Blu-ray with simple menus etc. I then let Sony DVDA create an ISO image on my hard drive and then get Sony DVDA to burn that image to my external USB Samsung SE-506BB Blu-ray writer (which has the latest firmware on it).

I was delighted when my first Blu ray disc seemed to play very well on my Samsung 3D Blu-ray player. The video was about 15 mins long and had just three chapters. I thought I had created a perfect disc but then suddenly there was a very brief falter. Almost like a short pause — then the video carried on okay until about six minutes later when the same thing happened again. In the end, my 15 mins Blu ray actually exhibited three of these brief pauses. I was disappointed as everything seemed to be going so well.

I then checked the video files that Sony DVDA had produced and could see no errors at all. I got the feeling that the problem might be more to do with the actual burning of the Blu-ray diec by Sony DVDA.

I then decided to create a second disc from exactly the same project and same ISO just to see if I had a faulty BD-R. However, to err on the cautious side, this time I opted for the slowest writing speed offered (which was 2x instead of 4x which I had used for the first burn).

I played the disc and it looked like my problem was sorted... it played absolutely perfectly... right up until the last two minutes of the video when I saw a brief 'pause' again. Tch tch! Only one glitch this time - but still not the perfect Blu-ray!

To be honest I feel that I am so close to creating a good Blu ray disc but hope that I am not going to be plagued with these odd glitches. I feel that the ISO image is not the culprit - especially as the second Blu ray only had one glitch, not three like the first one had - and that glitch was in a totally different part of the video.

With this type of 'intermittent' problem my past experiences suggest to me that quite often one never gets to the bottom of these kinds of errors. However, if my problems ring any bells with anyone and they have tried worthwhile fixes I would be most grateful for any input and help.

I have mentioned the hardware and software I am using. I am running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on a quite powerful PC (with a Quadro Cuda enabled card etc and 16Gb memory). The Blu-ray writeable discs I am using are TDK 25Gb ones (BD-R 25).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Many thanks
Viddy

P.S. I should mention that, as a test, I would love to try using a freeware Blu-ray writing program called "ImgBurn" as I believe it has good disc-verifying and checking tools. However, everywhere I see it I see available for download I also see so many references by users about malware and adware etc. that ImgBurn seems to want to install (even if you try to stop it apparently) which makes me rather concerned about using such a program.

Comments

Jack S wrote on 3/30/2014, 1:38 PM

Viddy. I, like you, have recently ventured into Blu-ray authoring. I've never used DVDAS to burn my disks, even when I was authoring DVDs. I've always used a commercially available suite (mine is AShampoo Burning Studio 12) but many on this forum recommend ImgBurn, which is free of course. The other thing I would try is a different brand of Blu-rays. I always burn my projects to Verbatim BD-RE disks first so I can verify that everything with the project is OK. I've not yet had a problem with these playing on my Panasonic Blu-ray player. I then burn my final project onto Maxell BD-R, again with no problems. Another possibility is your Blu-ray burner. Some brands are more forgiving than others. I have a Pioneer burner and it's never failed me yet.
Good luck. The end results are well worth the perseverance.

TOG62 wrote on 3/31/2014, 1:11 AM

I have used many TDK DVDs with good results, so bought a pack of their BR-Rs. Although I have had success burning at a slow rate, I do not find them entirely reliable. These are discs that use yellow dye and are not made by TDK.

I certainly think it's worth trying another brand.

Viddy wrote on 3/31/2014, 8:42 AM

Hi

Firstly thanks very much for replying to my post - and the information you both gave has been really useful.

I decided to risk installing ImgBurn and, admittedly you have to be careful and make sure you select 'custom install' along the way, but it did seem to install without anything unwanted being also installed. I will keep an eye on things and if I discover anything I am not happy with I will report back. I would juts like to point out to anyone wishing to install ImgBurn to make absolutely sure you read every installation window that crops up during install. There are several and if you miss one you may not get the 'clean' install that I did - dunno, it's a problem I find quite often these days with Freeware, the inclusion of 'extra' software that is often very much not wanted! I would prefer that the creators of freeware programs offered to charge a small fee to ensure you get a totally bloat-free installation (I know some do do this and I feel it's the best way as I can fully understand their need to maybe generate some income from the hard work).

I also installed something called "DVD Identifier" which reads manufacturing data on the Blu-ray disc to report the actual maker. By the way, this little freeware program seemed to install without any problem or 'extra' unwanted programs as far as I could tell.

As I mentioned, I am using TDK BD-R discs, which I bought on a 50x spindle. The "DVD Identifier" tool tells me that the actual manufacturer is "CMC Magnetics Corp" (*** DO NOT VISIT THE CMC WEBSITE AS MY VIRUS CHECKER REPORTED A TROJAN PRESENT ON THEIR WEBSITE SO IT WOULDN'T LET ME OPEN THEIR HOME PAGE ***). I am a bit puzzled by this manufacturing discrepancy, but have since found out that TDK may often outsource their Blu-ray disc manufacturing (so maybe this is okay and to be expected that CMC make TDK's discs for them?). I do wonder though whether the discs have some issues with regard to reliability. Now that I have discovered this, and based upon your comments, I will definitely try some other brands of BD-R (and even BD-RE) and see if I am happier with them. I remember years ago deciding that for blank DVDs the Panasonic make was the best (and absolutely made by Panasonic only).

Any further input about which Blu-ray blanks are the best and most reliable would always be welcome. I am sure lots of forum users have thoughts about this - often learned from experience with different brands. I feel sure that this factor (i.e. the brand and manufacturer of blanks) is key to the success of discs created, probably even more so than the burner software etc.

The good news is that, I used the same ISO that DVD Architect had created but used ImgBurn to burn the image (at 2x speed) and verify the burn afterwards. It reported no errors and I am delighted to say the the latest Blu-ray I created this morning played absolutely perfectly in my Samsung 3D Blu-ray player.

Of course I am not sure whether it was ImgBurn that did the trick - or whether the disc I used just happened to have no flaws on its surface? Either way I am delighted that there is every chance that I can burn reliable Blu-rays in the future. I daresay more tests are required but it's not a bad start!!

I agree with Jack S that the end results are well worth the perseverance and I think my DVD authoring days are now over as the quality I can achieve now is very addictive. I have a lot of 720p videos which I can (time allowing) migrate onto Blu-rays so that I can at least preserve their 720 HD appearance without resorting to always playing them back from a hard drive. Great if I want to create a video to give to friends.

It's still early days and I appreciate this forum as it has come to my help in the past with Movie Studio questions etc.

I don't think I will ever use DVD Architect in future for the actual 'burning' process but I do like its simplicity and the ISOs it creates seem absolutely fine. However I feel that ImgBurn (and I daresay AShampoo too according to Jack S) give a little more control over the crucial disc-burning stage.

I was interested to read TOG62's comments about the yellow dye — again, I remember the 'dye' or 'ink' type being an issue with blank DVD discs in the past. My TDK BR-Rs do seem to have a yellowy-brown tint so maybe I should seek out different 'dye' types. What colour dye do you tend to look for TOG62?

Anyway, thanks again!

Viddy

TOG62 wrote on 3/31/2014, 9:09 AM

I have had good results with BD-R discs from Panasonic and BD-RW discs from Maxell and Infiniti.

The Panasonic discs are brownish in colour, whereas those from TDK are gold coloured and made by Ritek. You TDKs appear to be from a different source.

BlackMax wrote on 4/28/2014, 3:47 PM

If you want (or need) a disc with "no chance" it will suffer a dye problem in the future (precious home videos for example) you will look into M-Disc. They recently released a BD-R disc, and LG writers have been M-Disc compatible for some time now.

The byline is "etched in stone" I think and the technology should last for 1,000 years (ahem, longer than you need no doubt, but the US govt likes them for some reason)!

I bought a 3-pack of Millenniata BD-R M-Discs and burned them all with data (UDF 1.02), backups of my personal files and some videos. They verified perfectly and I expect them to last forever unless my fire safe succumbs to the mother-of-all housefires I suppose.

LG's internal BD writer w/M-Disc support is crazy cheap from newegg--the WH16NS40 OEM is only $60 bucks with their email code.