Sudden Problem Burning with Nero 7

April 13, 2011 4:37 PM

What would cause Nero to start erroring out every time I try to burn a data DVD??

I'm no newbie to burning Dvd's, I've done it for many years, data, movies, etc. However, lately I've been having no luck at all with movies or data - I'll stick with my data issue at the moment because its more pressing.

I have Win 7 (ultimate) with Nero 7 Ultra Edition, I've made no changes to my setup, and up until the other day, I had no problem.
Now whenever I try to burn a DVD or DVD-DL with just data files (I've tried both ISO and UDF format), the disc errors out on me.
Sometimes I get the error right away "Could not perform start of Disc-at-once", other times I get it at the very end "Could not perform end of Disc-at-once".
Link to the error

Either way, I end up with an unreadable disc. I'm using the same high quality media I always use top of the line TDK and Sony discs. And yes, I checked my DVD has no firmware update, but it shouldn't matter anyway, since up until a few days ago I was burning just fine.

Any help is greatly appreciated... p.s. The issue with movies (the last time I tried, before this data issue) was that I could burn them just fine, they would work perfect on any computer, but they always would freeze and cut out when played on any dvd player, sometimes at the beginning, sometimes not until the last 5 minutes, but I could never get one that would just work properly on a regular dvd. I'm stumped on that one too.

Thanks Guys!

posted by absolutshrk to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

It's possible that the write laser in your drive has burned out. Several years ago I ran into the same thing on a machine at work that did nothing but burn discs all day. I got weird errors in the burning software, burned discs not working, etc. I replaced the drive and all was well again.
posted by zsazsa at 4:53 PM on April 13, 2011

Best answer: Yeah, that's sounds like the typical symptoms of a drive wearing out. Particularly …

The issue with movies (the last time I tried, before this data issue) was that I could burn them just fine, they would work perfect on any computer, but they always would freeze and cut out when played on any dvd player

Basically, burnable DVDs work slightly differently to pressed DVDs. The 'pits' in a pressed DVD are ¼ wavelength deep, so the laser beam travels an extra ½ wavelength overall & the detector sees a 180° phase shift (which, in effect, cancels out the original beam). On a writeable DVD the 'pits' are merely 'burned' areas where the reflectance is low (DVD-RW is a similar but reversible effect).

DVD players, DVD-R drives, and DVD-RW drives all use slightly different specs for the laser wavelength, reflectivity threshold, float distance, etc; the upshot is that writable discs are on the borderline of acceptable for read-only drives (IIRC, they actually changed the original DVD spec slightly to accommodate writable + R/W discs). So basically, read-write drives are more tolerant of bad discs than read-only drives, and rewritable drives are more tolerant than read-write drives. Which explains why discs written by a failing drive can play OK on a read-write or rewritable drive, but fail on a read-only drive (such as in a player).
posted by Pinback at 5:30 PM on April 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

For whatever it's worth, I have a DVD player which will play DVD-R but won't play DVD+R. I've heard this is pretty common.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:46 PM on April 13, 2011

From the log:

Disc finalized, LBA total Image size: 3328336 (6500MB), Last LBA L0: 1664175 (3250MB)

Could it be that the image is larger than what the disc can allow? Kind of an odd way to error however, as you would think it would kick back a "not enough disc space" type of error.
posted by samsara at 6:05 AM on April 14, 2011

Response by poster: samsara: I thought of that, but tried a smaller file size, def not too big.

Thanks for the advice guys..
Pinback: thank you for the detailed answer, esp. regarding movies. I suspect you're right; its been driving me nuts trying to figure out why I used to be able to copy movies all day long and now I never get a good burn.
The drive is kind of crappy anyway, is has the Labelflash standard which I guess is so unpopular you can barely find any labelflash media out there anymore; the Lightscribe spec won out. I should just get a new one so I can use Lightscribe and burn labels as I've wanted to.
posted by absolutshrk at 8:22 PM on April 14, 2011