Disc Utility - .dmg Failure

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Level 1

8 points

Disc Utility - .dmg Failure

Hi

I've finally manged to succeed in burning HD video material to red laser DVDs, I'm burning the material in AVCHD format so that my videos can be played on a Blu-ray player in HD. It's taken me a while to get to that point but I'm now more than happy with the results, I'm finally getting my home material to play in HD using inexpensive DVD-R discs rather than costly Blu-ray material. There are about 8 or so chapter markers on the disc, which are labelled and display fine as a menu page.

Anyway, if I write say 35 minutes of HD material to a DVD-R in Blu-ray format I want to be able to make additional copies of the disc for friends and my normal approach with other material (SD Video DVDs) is of course just to make a disc image of the disc and then burn the image to further DVD-Rs as required, In the past I've used Disk Utility to do this without any problem but I've hit a problem trying to do the same with these DVD-Rs.

I put the disc in and tell Disk Utility to produce a disc image and the reading seems to go fine. However, when it comes to the end of the disk read and when Disk Utility tries to write the file it falls over and gives me the error window below:

I have tried having the destination for the .dmg file set to an external HD and to my Desktop but the result has been the same, I can't generate a disc image of the DVD-R.

The DVD-R has 4.2GB of material on it so it's certainly not at it's storage limit, it plays perfectly on my Bluy-ray player.

Can anyone help?

Thanks you,

Quentin.

Compressor, Mac OS X (10.7.5), Disk Utility

Posted on Nov 26, 2012 11:28 AM

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Answer 1

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2012 2:53 PM in response to qfieldboden

Hi

Currently trying again having shortened the original movie down by about 8 minutes so the original disc wouldn't be quite so full. Can't see that making any difference at all but thought it might be worth a try!

Q

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Answer 2

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2012 3:05 PM in response to qfieldboden

Hi

And here is the result, shorteningthe movie made no difference, I'm still unable to create a disc image of the original file 😢

Here is what the Finder brings up when I look at the disc:

Looking like I'll end up with Apple support on this one, wonder what the chances are of resolving it there?

Any thoughts?

Q

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Answer 3

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2012 3:26 PM in response to qfieldboden

Hi

Well, just to be sure I just plugged a camera SD card into the iMac and wrote a disc image file of it to the desktop with no problem at all, so it's definitely something to do with these particular Blu-ray AVCHD DVD-Rs I'm tring to image.

Q

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Answer 4

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,980 points

Nov 26, 2012 4:01 PM in response to qfieldboden

That name seems awfully long for a disk.

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Answer 5

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2012 11:17 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Hi Tom

Yes, I wondered about that but I got the same outome using a shorter filename 😢

Thanks,

Q

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Answer 6

Dec 21, 2012 8:50 PM in response to qfieldboden

Disk Utility will not work. I assume you are using FCP X or Compressor 4 to generate a HD video. Let say you are using Compressor. What you need to do is the first time you encode your project and burn it to disk, instead of burning it to a DVD disk, burn it as a disk image. Then use an application like TOAST image copy to copy the disk image directly to a DVD or Blu-ray. Once you have a disk image, you can do the burn multiple times indefinitely. The reason disk utility does not work is because it does not know the file system uses by the Blu-ray player. TOAST solves that problem. You can get a new copy of TOAST 11 PRO with Blu-ray plug in on eBay for about $40. Follow the following steps:

How to Prep BluRay or AVCHD discs using Compressor to Encode and TOAST to burn (TOAST won't re-encode):

- Under Compressor, select File>New Batch with Template.

-Select Create Blu-ray Disc

- At top right hand corner of the batch job window, there is a "Create Blu-ray disc" warning icon or cog wheel icon. Click on the icon, now refer to the Inspector window. Click on the Job Action tab.

- Under "Output Device," select "Hard Disk (Blu-ray).

- Complete the rest of the Job Action selections to specify the DVD menu template.

- If you need to change the encoding parameters, select the "H.264 for Blu-ray" target under the job window, then go to the inspector window to change the parameters. For example, for AVCHD discs, I set an average data rate of 15mbps.

- Submit the job in Compressor.

- Compressor finishes with a .img disk image

- Start up TOAST

- Select the COPY tab

- Select project type: Image File

- Drag the .img file created by Compressor into the new window

- Make sure the "Use Fit-to-DVD video compression" is unchecked and verify there is enough DVD or Blu-ray media space to hold the video and audio files.

- Select the proper destination drive for burning

- Initiate DVD or Blu-ray burn.

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Answer 7

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 23, 2012 4:33 AM in response to pegasus1787

pegasus1787, thank you for the detailed reply which is very helpful and is a further alternative to the approach I worked out. I eventually started by buring my Blu-ray compliant DVD in the usual way (producing a master disc) and then using Toast to image the disc using the DVD-ROM (UDF) option under the "Data" tab "View Advanced Options". Doing it this way I was able to produce a disc image with the .toast file extension which I can then use to produce any number of copies of the disc for folks. Always nice to have different ways to skin the same cat and your input is very much appreciated.

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Answer 8

Dec 25, 2012 6:46 PM in response to qfieldboden

I've tried out the TOAST approach also, i.e. using TOAST to encode the ProRes 422 master file and make a .toast image. However, after some more experimentation, I've found using FCPX or Compressor to encode has two major quality advantages that you may want to consider:

TOAST's best quality setting for burning AVCHD disc only supports up to 16Mbps. However, if you use FCPX or Compressor and specify a hard disk image to be the final output, the applications will encode at speeds of up to 30Mbps. I have a 2 year old LG Blu-ray player and it plays these high speed encoded file with no problem. I noticed some folks did post on this forum stating AVCHD DVD can only support up to 15Mbps. All I can say is I've successfully encoded and played at speeds doubling the 15Mbps guideline and the improved video quality comes through clearly. If your player can play the higher encode speed, it's worth pushing the envelope.

A second advantage of encoding using Compressor is to optimize the encode using muli-pass. That often improves the end result and TOAST does not offer that option.

Hope that helps.

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Answer 9

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 26, 2012 6:19 AM in response to pegasus1787

pegasus1787, Ok, I'll try a bit more experiemnting to see if this approach might work for me. What video encoder settings do you recommend? My master APR422 file is 1920x1080@50fps, how does this look?

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Answer 10

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 26, 2012 6:50 AM in response to pegasus1787

Ok, a "trial" disc is currently burning. I found that the .img file generation process generated 3 files, .img, .ac3 and .264. I'm assuming I can just delete the .ac3 and .264 files and that they will have been incorporated into the .img file. The original master movie I'm testing this with was only 2 minutes and 20 seconds in length and yet the .img file is over 500MB, I guess this means that with the higher bit rate settings one would only get about 16 minutes of material on one of these discs? Using the approach I was using I was getting about 35-40 minutes of material on a red laser DVD.

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Answer 11

Dec 26, 2012 9:50 AM in response to qfieldboden

You're correct. Just throw away the .ac3 and .264 files. If you double click on the .img file, it looks just like the .toast file. And yes, a Dual Layer DVD can fit about 35 minutes of video, which is plenty.

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Answer 12

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 26, 2012 11:00 AM in response to pegasus1787

Hi pegasus1787,

Well I generated the file following your approach and using the settings I posted above but sadly the disc didn't play. I have to confess to still being a bit confused about this. Using the approach I was originally using I was encoding the original APR422 1920x1080 file using Compressor which is what you were suggesting and surely the only difference is that the output I generate from that process is written to a DVD rather than a .img file?

Using your approach you write a .img file and then clone that to discs but using my approach I produce a DVD which I then create a .toast image file of and then clone discs from that. Reading through your post again from Dec 26th 2:46am you mention you have tried using the TOAST approach "i.e. using TOAST to encode the ProRes 422 master file and make a .toast image" and I wonder if you may have misunderstood me. I don't use TOAST to encode my APR422 master file, that encoding is done by Compressor and the output of that process is a DVD, I don't write a .img file at that point. I then take that master Blu-ray Compliant DVD and clone that using TOAST, my working notes of the steps I use for this stage are listed below:

Notes about creating a disc image (.toast) file from a Blu-ray DVD-R for disc copying.

This procedure has been tested and works with Roxio Toast 11 Pro (Titanium).

Insert disc to be copied into the SuperDrive.
Launch Toast Titanium.
Select “Data” tab.
From drop-down menu select “View Advanced Projects”.
Select DVD-ROM (UDF) option.
In next window ensure that DVD-ROM (UDF) shows in top LH corner.
Open Finder, you should be able to see the disc icon for the disc to be imaged.
Drag and drop the disc icon into the drop zone of Toast.
Close the Finder.
In the “Destinations” drop-down menu select “Disc Image”.
Click on the Big Red Button marked “Save”.
In the pop-up window select the location and filename you want to use for your disc image, leave the filename with a .toast extension. I include in the filename ***BDMaster.toast to distinguish these files from SD video disc images.
When the file has been created eject your original master disc.

Your original disc has now been imaged and the .toast image file can be used to produce any number of copies.

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Answer 13

Dec 26, 2012 3:20 PM in response to qfieldboden

Oh, I misunderstood your post. I thought you were using TOAST to encode the ProRes 422 file. However, I'm curious why your .img approach does not work though? I assume you specified the DVD parameters like the capture below. Does the disc play at all?

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Answer 14

qfieldboden Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 26, 2012 4:30 PM in response to pegasus1787

Hi pegasus1787

I'm afraid I don't know why the approach didn't work, I just assumed it might have been something to do with the encoder settings I posted above. The disc tries to play in that the player comes up with a "reading" message but then doesn't actually complete the read process for some reason. My guess is that if I fiddled some more with the settings I could get it to work Ok but I probably don't really need to now that I know that my approach is fundamentaly sound.

I'm happy with the quality of the results I'm getting and now that I know that I'm not actually "losing out" on quality by doing it this way I'll probably stick with it. At least this way I do end up with my master disc which can act as an additional backup layer and I also end up with being able to get say 35 minutes onto the discs if I need to so there are no real capacity issues for most home projects. It also leaves me with the .toast file from which I generate as many copies as I want so all in all I think it serves my purposes Ok.

I am very grateful to you for the time you have spent guiding me with this, it's certainly been useful to see another perspective and I may yet tweak up the bit rates on the encoder settings I'm currently using to see if I can get any further quality improvements, particularly if the material is very short and disc space isn't an issue at all.

Thanks again.

Q

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