BD-RE: 11 Write/Erase Cycles and Disc is No Good?

[BassPig]

I have been using the same BD-RE disc that came with my LG burner to do several test revisions of a project. The disc has been performing flawlessly up to erase/burn cycle #10. On the 11th erase/rewrite, the disc is having difficulty sustaining more than 3mb/S in some places, on playback in my Sony BDP-S301 player.

I'm thinking there may be two possible reasons:

The Blu-ray burner's laser is failing, or,
The BD-RE disc's dye is worn out.

I'd hate to think it was the burner, as I've only used it to burn 11 times since I bought it in 2008! (I have a Pioneer burner in the same workstation for burning DVDs and CDs and to save the expensive BD burner from unnecessary use/wear.)

Those here who use BD-RE discs a lot, I ask the question, are you noticing deterioration of the readability of these discs after very few burn cycles?

My impression, from reading authoring forums, is that BD-RE should be good for about 1,000 write/erase cycles.

Do I have a bad piece of media, or are BD-RE discs not as long-lived as DVD-RW?

[BassPig]

I'm starting to become concerned that the problem may be my burner or my player now. The 12th burn cycle on the BD-RE media was the worst--totally unplayable with every chapter stuttering and freezing.

The next thing I did was burn a BD-R disc. This was significantly better, but it still has places where it stutters.

All previous burns were playing smoothly--even the ones where the bitrate was over 40mb/S in very complex scenes. But now, nothing plays well, even if the bitrate is in the teens.

I'm going to take the disc to a friend's next week and try it on his Samsung BD-P1600 and see if the problem is evident there.

[Emulgator]

I can confirm rapidly decreasing reading capabilities on different DVD+RW media starting from the 2nd or 3rd burn on
(Philips being the worst in my portfolio).

Therefore I stopped using any RW media for serious storage tasks, except for just-in-time standalone checking of DVD/BD projects.

It looks like a degradation due to the phase-change recristallisation process that may hurt BD-RE even harder.
My few Verbatim BD-RE's still do work, but none of them has reached more than 5 writes.

[BassPig]

Wow, only five burn cycles and already degraded. So much for the rumour that BD-RE is good for 1,000 cycles.

I use these discs for testing things like menu functions and to check overall quality of the video, but now that quality has degraded to this extent, the disc is no longer playable.

Of greater concern now is that the BD-R disc that I burned after that RE disc is also having difficulty with playback on the Sony player. It only burned at a real (automatic) rate of 1.3X, so I don't know how much I'd gain by burning at 1X. Even footage that was not giving me trouble before is now stuttering on playback, as burned to the new discs.

I was a bit concerned over the fact that I was able to play back raw XDCam footage off a DVD-R DL disc without stutter, on the editing workstation, but additional XDCam footage (35mb/s) I burned to BD-R would play for 2 seconds then freeze, when I attempted to play off the BD disc under the same conditions. I thought BD was supposed to have a higher sustained read rate than DVD. What is the actual truth of this?

[Capsbackup]

Perhaps you should try those discs on different players, and see if the results change. It would be a good idea to rule out one or the other. I have used Sony BD-RE discs 20+ times and never had a problem on playback yet.
Also, what software you use to burn with can make a difference. I use IMGBurn, for DVD or BD. Before using the disc, I perform a full format, which takes quite some time (about 1.5 hours?) Then, a quick erase before the next burn.
This has worked for me. :)

[BassPig]

I have a friend who is setting up a projection system this week in his studio and bought a Samsung BD-P1600. I'm going to bring all the 'bad' discs and see how the Samsung player handles them.

This might be either an encoder compexity issue or a reflectivity issue. I also noticed that once the stuttering begins, it stays, despite scenes upcoming that have low bitrates, such as the camera panning to the blue sky where there is mostly flat color and little HF detail. BR drops to 11-12 mb/s, but stutter continues. Pausing the player and restarting does not correct it either.

To be sure there was nothing wrong with my encoded file, I imported it back into Premiere CS3 and exported a DV24 file that I know I could play without dropping frames. The 'suspect' parts of the footage played without any dropped frames--all frames were in the encoded file.

Starting to suspect a combination of factors, including the player having difficulty reading the disc, and maybe the CODEC complexity, being h.264. I know my quad core workstation can't play back the 35mb/s h.264, but it CAN play a 20mb/s h.264 of the same scene. Just that the lower quality version has compression artifacts that are visible while the high bit version looks visually lossless.

I'm using Encore to author and Nero 8 to burn. Is the laser power control strategy not controlled by the burner hardware, but by the burner software? I would not imagine that the software used to burn the image would make any difference unless that were true.

I may revise this reel again and if I do another burn, I'll try burning at 1X and see if that improves disc play.

[Ghitulescu]

I can confirm rapidly decreasing reading capabilities on different DVD+RW media starting from the 2nd or 3rd burn on
(Philips being the worst in my portfolio).

Therefore I stopped using any RW media for serious storage tasks, except for just-in-time standalone checking of DVD/BD projects.

It looks like a degradation due to the phase-change recristallisation process that may hurt BD-RE even harder.
My few Verbatim BD-RE's still do work, but none of them has reached more than 5 writes.

Strange observations you made!

I knew that you need several cycles for a DVD+RW (as well as for -RW, although +RW are more in need for them) in order to reach the optimum performance.

Also tests in German magazines showed that DVD/RWs are more stable at storage than DVD/Rs. I have a badly burned -RW (Fuji) that I still hope I can read, I can read exactly the same amount of data (PIE, PO etc.) now as well as 5 years ago.

I cannot comment on BD-R/E.

[Ghitulescu]

I was a bit concerned over the fact that I was able to play back raw XDCam footage off a DVD-R DL disc without stutter, on the editing workstation, but additional XDCam footage (35mb/s) I burned to BD-R would play for 2 seconds then freeze, when I attempted to play off the BD disc under the same conditions. I thought BD was supposed to have a higher sustained read rate than DVD. What is the actual truth of this?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1270405#post1270405

DVD drives in PCs are much faster than those in BD/DVD-players, as the latter only need 1x speed ;)

[Capsbackup]

@BassPig;
I have a friend who is setting up a projection system this week in his studio and bought a Samsung BD-P1600. I'm going to bring all the 'bad' discs and see how the Samsung player handles them.
I would also suggest trying these discs out on a newer Sony, BDP-BX1/2 or BDP-S350/360, even though your BDP-S301 was a good player, there are read improvements on the newer players.

I'm using Encore to author and Nero 8 to burn. Is the laser power control strategy not controlled by the burner hardware, but by the burner software? I would not imagine that the software used to burn the image would make any difference unless that were true.
If you follow this forum, you will find quite the contrary. IMGBurn is free, BD-RE/DVDRW are rewriteable, so you don't have anything to lose ( except some time! ). Besides, since tracking down problems is a process of elimination, this one should not be overlooked.
OK, maybe I've out spent my 2 cents now. :D

[Ghitulescu]

@BassPig;

I would also suggest trying these discs out on a newer Sony, BDP-BX1/2 or BDP-S350/360, even though your BDP-S301 was a good player, there are read improvements on the newer players.


So this will conceal the error !!!! You'll think that your disk is still good when in fact it's not. A disk is not good when it can be read by good players/readers but when it can be read by all drives.

[Capsbackup]

So this will conceal the error !!!! You'll think that your disk is still good when in fact it's not. A disk is not good when it can be read by good players/readers but when it can be read by all drives.

I don't agree. We are discussing trouble shooting, so it is necessary to find the real problem. If it is proven that a combination of players have the same issues, than either a bad disc or burner is the cause.
If you follow the beginning stages of BD/AVCHD backups, you'll see that many players are not able to play what people are now trying to do with software like BD-RB and BD authoring software like Scenarist. BD media, like DVD media of past, is only now becoming popular, with more people testing it out. There will no doubt be compatibility issues, which is to be expected. Just like MFG's release firmware updates for their players as they discover problems and improvements. Many testers have been reporting players that may or may not play different combinations of backups. This does not mean the backup that plays on one player and not another is not a good or bad disc. Nor the player is good or bad. But I believe some MFG's have more compatible players for a variety of media and backups, which is the point I was trying to present, and not overlook.

[Emulgator]

Before my post may lead to misinterpretation:
"My few Verbatim BD-RE's still do work, but none of them has reached more than 5 writes."

This statement regarding BD-RE meant: I used only five cycles on these discs until today and they were not degraded yet.
Not saying that I had serious errors. So I can make no final vow about the recording layer of these Verbatim BD-REs.

But with DVD+RW it looked like dead after 2-3 writes for Philips.
Much better for Taiyo Yuden DVD-RW 1x (the first "TDK" batch with untold scratchproof coating).
These work safely for 5 years now, but still no more than 10 writes per disc performed because these are too slow to write..
Medium reliability for Verbatim DVD+RW 4x, but not safe enough for me to have these as master storage.

Now one may draw the conclusion that something with RW-recording layers may not be too reliable,
because only DC erasing may reset the layer perfectly, but I have no burner which can perform this.

It seems obvious that dyes should die faster with time, light and temperature exposure.
Now it seems that the recristallisation process of phase-change-able alloys also has its weak spots,
because can not be repeated too often perfectly in a buried layer, coated by polymeres.

I have only 2 DVD-RAMs and used these only for playing around.
How these would reach the promised 100.000 writing cycles,
using basically the same phase-change effect remains a mystery to me.
Not enough time for me to prove right or wrong and DVD-RAM is doomed to be a rare Panasonic-only species.

Finally I used Verbatim DVD+R /+R DL as masters.
Tested as follows: Burned DVD+R with NEC-3520 as DVD-Video disc at 16x, then abused it a bit.
Baking 1h at 100°C in the oven,
putting it in clear water with detergent for 5 days,
freezing it in the fridge at -18°C for may be half a year,
then taking it out, sliding it over the carpet more than 30 times back and forth,
stepping flat on it on the floor. Then reading: was readable without visible faults on 2 players.
I should have made real error checks using DVDInfoPro before and after, but I forgot the "before" and so I left the "after".
After freezing the dye got speckled, but it was still readable.
Then tried to break the disc by bending at room temperature and it broke like a new disc after heavy bending only as it was close to U-shaped.
The two sides were still glued perfectly. Of course the top and bottom side separated, but this is the same behaviour with a new disc.
Safe enough for me.

(I will repeat this even harder: The fungus test is soon to come, I have a nice wet cellar...
CD-R will fail because recording layer is on the outside, and the lacquer is eaten really fast.
But with the buried and glued layers of DVD+-R and +-R DL and BD-R I have good faith.
Fungus will have to eat sideways into the layer from hub and rim, this may take more time...)

[Capsbackup]

OK, I'm not sure I can offer a reply, but that is one major test!! And I thought I was excessive at times. ;)

[Ghitulescu]

I don't agree. We are discussing trouble shooting, so it is necessary to find the real problem. If it is proven that a combination of players have the same issues, than either a bad disc or burner is the cause.
If you follow the beginning stages of BD/AVCHD backups, you'll see that many players are not able to play what people are now trying to do with software like BD-RB and BD authoring software like Scenarist. BD media, like DVD media of past, is only now becoming popular, with more people testing it out. There will no doubt be compatibility issues, which is to be expected. Just like MFG's release firmware updates for their players as they discover problems and improvements. Many testers have been reporting players that may or may not play different combinations of backups. This does not mean the backup that plays on one player and not another is not a good or bad disc. Nor the player is good or bad. But I believe some MFG's have more compatible players for a variety of media and backups, which is the point I was trying to present, and not overlook.

Actually we agree ;). The problem the OP mentioned was not that his BD was not recognised by the BD player, which is a problem of compatibility, but that the same player does not play the same disk correctly. So it's not a question of format incompatibility but a reading problem. A physical one. Which can be traced down to laser rot (BD player), structural changes in the medium (BD disck), laser rot in BD burner or its physical missalignements (general burn errors, TA and jitter).

If you pick up a more sensitive player, then it may read the disk making you think the disk is OK, although it may be at the upper range of specifications.

The solution to all these is not a find a more sensitive player (you need one if you want to save the info) but to see if the medium specifications are still ok. For this you need regular tests, I have no idea if the tests I usualy perform on my DVDs (PI/PO, TA, jitter) are yet available for BDs, but such a test should be made after each burn. If PI/PO go up everytime, that's a good hint that the 1000 cycles are marketing balooney.

Since blue laser rots faster than the red one, a dedicated BD device should be used for such tests. I know it's expensive but with 10-15€ a blank, it might be saving money on the long run.

[setarip_old]

@BassPig

Hi!

1) Have you as yet played your problematic disc on you friend's new standalone player? If so, what were the results?

2) Have you tried running a BluRay compatible CD/DVD cleaning disc on both your player and your burner?

[Ghitulescu]

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=20888&PageId=0