Disc Playback Issues on Verbatim Pioneer Driver

[heatvault14]

So I recently bought a Verbatim 43888 Ultra HD 4K External Slimline Blu‑ray Writer which uses PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD04. As mentioned in the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide, the BDR-UD04 should just work right out the gate with UHD discs. So I installed makemkv and enable the VLC integration in order to play my 4K UHD discs and for the most part this seems to work fine except for one issue. Whenever I begin playback with VLC the disc will play fine for anywhere in between 10 and 40 minutes before suddenly VLC will completely freeze, and i mean completely. Both audio and picture will stop and I cannot even bring up VLC's controls and if I am in full screen I can't even exit without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or the windows key. VLC will be completely unresponsive and unable to close even with task manager. If I do nothing and wait long enough (usually between 5 and 10 minutes) playback will usually resume and I can close VLC. This issue occurs on all 4K UHD discs I have tested as well as regular blu-rays (although VLC did not become unresponsive on the blu-ray I tested but the playback did freeze). This issue did not occur on the DVD I tested but I did only test it once.

I should also mention that I am only able to play discs if I begin playback within a couple minutes of inserting the disc (at least for 4K UHD's I haven't tested this with other discs), otherwise if I wait too long VLC will be unable to read the disc, neither will makemkv and if I attempt to open the disc in file manager, windows explorer will crash.

Whenever the playback of the disc freezes I notice that there is no noise coming from the disc driver and the usually blinking light is completely off leading me to believe that for some reason the disc driver has gone to sleep. Reading around the forums I came across the "Sleep Bug" which UHD friendly drives supposedly have which sounds kind of familiar to what my issue is. However, I was led to believe that this should not be a problem for pioneer drives.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem is and how to fix it I would greatly appreciate it. Also sorry if this question has been asked before or if the solution is obvious but I have looked around the forums and haven't found anyone with this exact problem other than the aforementioned "sleep bug". Thanks.

[MartyMcNuts]

So I recently bought a Verbatim 43888 Ultra HD 4K External Slimline Blu‑ray Writer which uses PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD04. As mentioned in the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide, the BDR-UD04 should just work right out the gate with UHD discs. So I installed makemkv and enable the VLC integration in order to play my 4K UHD discs and for the most part this seems to work fine except for one issue. Whenever I begin playback with VLC the disc will play fine for anywhere in between 10 and 40 minutes before suddenly VLC will completely freeze, and i mean completely. Both audio and picture will stop and I cannot even bring up VLC's controls and if I am in full screen I can't even exit without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or the windows key. VLC will be completely unresponsive and unable to close even with task manager. If I do nothing and wait long enough (usually between 5 and 10 minutes) playback will usually resume and I can close VLC. This issue occurs on all 4K UHD discs I have tested as well as regular blu-rays (although VLC did not become unresponsive on the blu-ray I tested but the playback did freeze). This issue did not occur on the DVD I tested but I did only test it once.

I should also mention that I am only able to play discs if I begin playback within a couple minutes of inserting the disc (at least for 4K UHD's I haven't tested this with other discs), otherwise if I wait too long VLC will be unable to read the disc, neither will makemkv and if I attempt to open the disc in file manager, windows explorer will crash.

Whenever the playback of the disc freezes I notice that there is no noise coming from the disc driver and the usually blinking light is completely off leading me to believe that for some reason the disc driver has gone to sleep. Reading around the forums I came across the "Sleep Bug" which UHD friendly drives supposedly have which sounds kind of familiar to what my issue is. However, I was led to believe that this should not be a problem for pioneer drives.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem is and how to fix it I would greatly appreciate it. Also sorry if this question has been asked before or if the solution is obvious but I have looked around the forums and haven't found anyone with this exact problem other than the aforementioned "sleep bug". Thanks.

Pioneer drives do not have the sleep bug. It is possible that it may be sleeping by some other means.

You may not get much of an answer to your issue as for 99.9% of us, the objective is to rip our movies to MKV files for viewing/streaming etc. We generally don't care about playing the discs directly.

My answer would be to either try using a better software player as I find VLC to be pretty ordinary or rip your disc first then play your rip.

[heatvault14]

So I recently bought a Verbatim 43888 Ultra HD 4K External Slimline Blu‑ray Writer which uses PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD04. As mentioned in the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide, the BDR-UD04 should just work right out the gate with UHD discs. So I installed makemkv and enable the VLC integration in order to play my 4K UHD discs and for the most part this seems to work fine except for one issue. Whenever I begin playback with VLC the disc will play fine for anywhere in between 10 and 40 minutes before suddenly VLC will completely freeze, and i mean completely. Both audio and picture will stop and I cannot even bring up VLC's controls and if I am in full screen I can't even exit without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or the windows key. VLC will be completely unresponsive and unable to close even with task manager. If I do nothing and wait long enough (usually between 5 and 10 minutes) playback will usually resume and I can close VLC. This issue occurs on all 4K UHD discs I have tested as well as regular blu-rays (although VLC did not become unresponsive on the blu-ray I tested but the playback did freeze). This issue did not occur on the DVD I tested but I did only test it once.

I should also mention that I am only able to play discs if I begin playback within a couple minutes of inserting the disc (at least for 4K UHD's I haven't tested this with other discs), otherwise if I wait too long VLC will be unable to read the disc, neither will makemkv and if I attempt to open the disc in file manager, windows explorer will crash.

Whenever the playback of the disc freezes I notice that there is no noise coming from the disc driver and the usually blinking light is completely off leading me to believe that for some reason the disc driver has gone to sleep. Reading around the forums I came across the "Sleep Bug" which UHD friendly drives supposedly have which sounds kind of familiar to what my issue is. However, I was led to believe that this should not be a problem for pioneer drives.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem is and how to fix it I would greatly appreciate it. Also sorry if this question has been asked before or if the solution is obvious but I have looked around the forums and haven't found anyone with this exact problem other than the aforementioned "sleep bug". Thanks.

Pioneer drives do not have the sleep bug. It is possible that it may be sleeping by some other means.

You may not get much of an answer to your issue as for 99.9% of us, the objective is to rip our movies to MKV files for viewing/streaming etc. We generally don't care about playing the discs directly.

My answer would be to either try using a better software player as I find VLC to be pretty ordinary or rip your disc first then play your rip.

Yeah I thought as much, thanks for your response. I just thought that other people might of had this issue too because as I said, even makemkv has trouble reading the disc if I wait a while sometimes. I could try switching from vlc to a different player but which one would you recommend? As far a I know vlc is the only player with makemkv integration and the only player that can natively read 4K UHD discs is PowerDVD Ultra but even then it can only do it if you have an older cpu with intel SGX. Thanks.

[MartyMcNuts]

So I recently bought a Verbatim 43888 Ultra HD 4K External Slimline Blu‑ray Writer which uses PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD04. As mentioned in the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide, the BDR-UD04 should just work right out the gate with UHD discs. So I installed makemkv and enable the VLC integration in order to play my 4K UHD discs and for the most part this seems to work fine except for one issue. Whenever I begin playback with VLC the disc will play fine for anywhere in between 10 and 40 minutes before suddenly VLC will completely freeze, and i mean completely. Both audio and picture will stop and I cannot even bring up VLC's controls and if I am in full screen I can't even exit without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or the windows key. VLC will be completely unresponsive and unable to close even with task manager. If I do nothing and wait long enough (usually between 5 and 10 minutes) playback will usually resume and I can close VLC. This issue occurs on all 4K UHD discs I have tested as well as regular blu-rays (although VLC did not become unresponsive on the blu-ray I tested but the playback did freeze). This issue did not occur on the DVD I tested but I did only test it once.

I should also mention that I am only able to play discs if I begin playback within a couple minutes of inserting the disc (at least for 4K UHD's I haven't tested this with other discs), otherwise if I wait too long VLC will be unable to read the disc, neither will makemkv and if I attempt to open the disc in file manager, windows explorer will crash.

Whenever the playback of the disc freezes I notice that there is no noise coming from the disc driver and the usually blinking light is completely off leading me to believe that for some reason the disc driver has gone to sleep. Reading around the forums I came across the "Sleep Bug" which UHD friendly drives supposedly have which sounds kind of familiar to what my issue is. However, I was led to believe that this should not be a problem for pioneer drives.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem is and how to fix it I would greatly appreciate it. Also sorry if this question has been asked before or if the solution is obvious but I have looked around the forums and haven't found anyone with this exact problem other than the aforementioned "sleep bug". Thanks.

Pioneer drives do not have the sleep bug. It is possible that it may be sleeping by some other means.

You may not get much of an answer to your issue as for 99.9% of us, the objective is to rip our movies to MKV files for viewing/streaming etc. We generally don't care about playing the discs directly.

My answer would be to either try using a better software player as I find VLC to be pretty ordinary or rip your disc first then play your rip.

Yeah I thought as much, thanks for your response. I just thought that other people might of had this issue too because as I said, even makemkv has trouble reading the disc if I wait a while sometimes. I could try switching from vlc to a different player but which one would you recommend? As far a I know vlc is the only player with makemkv integration and the only player that can natively read 4K UHD discs is PowerDVD Ultra but even then it can only do it if you have an older cpu with intel SGX. Thanks.

I use MPC-HC on my PC and it can play UHD discs. It comes with the k-lite mega codec pack.

[TheMKVMaker]

Like the other people have mentioned that most of us are interested in ripping and not playback - so with that in mind, i'm curious to learn about your experience with the Verbatim 3888 and its ability to rip 4K UHDs and Blu rays...?

Let me know.

[heatvault14]

Like the other people have mentioned that most of us are interested in ripping and not playback - so with that in mind, i'm curious to learn about your experience with the Verbatim 3888 and its ability to rip 4K UHDs and Blu rays...?

Let me know.

Thanks, taking the advice of the post above I switched my player from VLC to MPC-HC which has definitely improved my problem. It still crashes on playback but over course of a 2 hour movie only about once, two times max so it is defintely watchable now. Plus MPC-HC has support for forced subtitles which VLC still doesnt have to this day.

In terms of ripping, I havent done a whole lot but I have ripped one blu-ray and about four 4K UHD discs all of which have had no issues. I dont have anthing to compare it too but from my expirience it apears to be fairly reliable.

The only issues I have had in ripping are unrelated to the drive but instead com when ripping discs with multiple audio or sub tracks in the same language. MakeMKV does give you the option to name these whatever you want but until I rip the disc and watch it I am unable to tell what they are. Do you know if there is any tool to rename sub and audio tracks after they are ripped or perhaps preview them before so?

[mbMKV]

Hi! Have you had any luck in resolving this?

Presumably, I am having the same issue - albeit using Kodi to playback the disc. No issues playing rips, but sometimes I want to play the disc right away and encounter the same freezes/crashes.
As you described, a few minutes after crashing I can hear the drive spinning up again and I can kill/restart the Kodi process in task manager (haven't had the patience to wait & see if playback would then resume also).
Right after the crash, Kodi can't be killed/restarted properly and Windows/Explorer will also crash when trying to access/eject the disc.

Thanks for any help!

[heatvault14]

Hi! Have you had any luck in resolving this?

Presumably, I am having the same issue - albeit using Kodi to playback the disc. No issues playing rips, but sometimes I want to play the disc right away and encounter the same freezes/crashes.
As you described, a few minutes after crashing I can hear the drive spinning up again and I can kill/restart the Kodi process in task manager (haven't had the patience to wait & see if playback would then resume also).
Right after the crash, Kodi can't be killed/restarted properly and Windows/Explorer will also crash when trying to access/eject the disc.

Thanks for any help!

Unfortunately not. Like I said before, using MPC-HC (from the K-Lite Codec Pack) definetly made the problem way more managable with a 2-hour movie only crashing once making it not too much of a hassle to edject and close the disk tray to fix the problem. I havent found a perfect solution though.

[asmcom]

So I recently bought a Verbatim 43888 Ultra HD 4K External Slimline Blu‑ray Writer which uses PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD04. As mentioned in the Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide, the BDR-UD04 should just work right out the gate with UHD discs. So I installed makemkv and enable the VLC integration in order to play my 4K UHD discs and for the most part this seems to work fine except for one issue. Whenever I begin playback with VLC the disc will play fine for anywhere in between 10 and 40 minutes before suddenly VLC will completely freeze, and i mean completely. Both audio and picture will stop and I cannot even bring up VLC's controls and if I am in full screen I can't even exit without using CTRL+ALT+DEL or the windows key. VLC will be completely unresponsive and unable to close even with task manager. If I do nothing and wait long enough (usually between 5 and 10 minutes) playback will usually resume and I can close VLC. This issue occurs on all 4K UHD discs I have tested as well as regular blu-rays (although VLC did not become unresponsive on the blu-ray I tested but the playback did freeze). This issue did not occur on the DVD I tested but I did only test it once.

I should also mention that I am only able to play discs if I begin playback within a couple minutes of inserting the disc (at least for 4K UHD's I haven't tested this with other discs), otherwise if I wait too long VLC will be unable to read the disc, neither will makemkv and if I attempt to open the disc in file manager, windows explorer will crash.

Whenever the playback of the disc freezes I notice that there is no noise coming from the disc driver and the usually blinking light is completely off leading me to believe that for some reason the disc driver has gone to sleep. Reading around the forums I came across the "Sleep Bug" which UHD friendly drives supposedly have which sounds kind of familiar to what my issue is. However, I was led to believe that this should not be a problem for pioneer drives.

Anyway, if anyone knows what the problem is and how to fix it I would greatly appreciate it. Also sorry if this question has been asked before or if the solution is obvious but I have looked around the forums and haven't found anyone with this exact problem other than the aforementioned "sleep bug". Thanks.

Try some of these fixes. Sounds like your video is crashing.

https://www.videoproc.com/troubleshoot- ... choppy.htm

We have had no problem with playback on Windows 11 VLC with Dell T7920 and Quadro K5000, please post back after trying changes above from video link.

Did you try any of these changes in the URL?

Asmcom

[MartyMcNuts]

Hi! Have you had any luck in resolving this?

Presumably, I am having the same issue - albeit using Kodi to playback the disc. No issues playing rips, but sometimes I want to play the disc right away and encounter the same freezes/crashes.
As you described, a few minutes after crashing I can hear the drive spinning up again and I can kill/restart the Kodi process in task manager (haven't had the patience to wait & see if playback would then resume also).
Right after the crash, Kodi can't be killed/restarted properly and Windows/Explorer will also crash when trying to access/eject the disc.

Thanks for any help!

Unfortunately not. Like I said before, using MPC-HC (from the K-Lite Codec Pack) definetly made the problem way more managable with a 2-hour movie only crashing once making it not too much of a hassle to edject and close the disk tray to fix the problem. I havent found a perfect solution though.

I doubt you will get a better resolution as watching the UHD discs directly is simply a very rare thing. As I said before, 99.9% of us aren't interested in UHD disc playback, we want to rip them and stream them.

I know you probably don't want to hear this but you might be better off ripping whatever movies you want to watch ahead of time, then use your player of choice (VLC, MPC-HC etc) to play the mkv file and you shouldn't have any issues. Also, due to the volatile nature of UHD discs, it would be wise to rip them once and store the discs away to reduce the risk of damage anyway.

[Toscaclarinet]

Are you using a laptop or a desktop to watch the films? I have always encountered issues watching blus and 4k discs on laptops, I don't know if they have a tendency to power down the USB connection or something which makes the disc freeze. If a desktop, is the external drive plugged straight into the pc or is it on an extension cable? Again sometimes being on an extension cable will result in external drives freezing because they briefly lose power.

I watch 4k discs through my PC, so you are not alone in wanting to do this, don't be discouraged! I have definitely had more success watching blus and 4ks using MPC compared to VLC, though the downside is no menus. I have also had a good record with the software from PlayerFab which does have menus but is shareware.

[mbMKV]

Are you using a laptop or a desktop to watch the films? I have always encountered issues watching blus and 4k discs on laptops, I don't know if they have a tendency to power down the USB connection or something which makes the disc freeze. If a desktop, is the external drive plugged straight into the pc or is it on an extension cable? Again sometimes being on an extension cable will result in external drives freezing because they briefly lose power.

I watch 4k discs through my PC, so you are not alone in wanting to do this, don't be discouraged! I have definitely had more success watching blus and 4ks using MPC compared to VLC, though the downside is no menus. I have also had a good record with the software from PlayerFab which does have menus but is shareware.

I am using a desktop and the (external) drive is plugged into a USB3 port directly using the cable that came with it.
I have since tried adjusting some of the cache-related settings in Kodi, as well as giving MPV a shot. Both result in the same issue as before - the drive freezing (seemingly) at random during various UHD-Blu rays. VLC I have not really tried because I have issues getting some of the other features to work (audio- and HDR-related). The playback itself is fine & smooth until (seemingly at random) the drive stops spinning and I can either wait or kill the player's process in task manager -> eject the disc physically -> re-insert and start playback again.
At this point I am assuming this is related to some USB-/power-setting in Windows, though I've already tried a couple there as well (most notably the USB-power off setting in the advanced power mode options).

If anyone has another idea, please, feel free to give me a hint.

[Billycar11]

Are you using a laptop or a desktop to watch the films? I have always encountered issues watching blus and 4k discs on laptops, I don't know if they have a tendency to power down the USB connection or something which makes the disc freeze. If a desktop, is the external drive plugged straight into the pc or is it on an extension cable? Again sometimes being on an extension cable will result in external drives freezing because they briefly lose power.

I watch 4k discs through my PC, so you are not alone in wanting to do this, don't be discouraged! I have definitely had more success watching blus and 4ks using MPC compared to VLC, though the downside is no menus. I have also had a good record with the software from PlayerFab which does have menus but is shareware.

I am using a desktop and the (external) drive is plugged into a USB3 port directly using the cable that came with it.
I have since tried adjusting some of the cache-related settings in Kodi, as well as giving MPV a shot. Both result in the same issue as before - the drive freezing (seemingly) at random during various UHD-Blu rays. VLC I have not really tried because I have issues getting some of the other features to work (audio- and HDR-related). The playback itself is fine & smooth until (seemingly at random) the drive stops spinning and I can either wait or kill the player's process in task manager -> eject the disc physically -> re-insert and start playback again.
At this point I am assuming this is related to some USB-/power-setting in Windows, though I've already tried a couple there as well (most notably the USB-power off setting in the advanced power mode options).

If anyone has another idea, please, feel free to give me a hint.

Try turning off USB selective suspending in power plan

[Coopervid]

On a dektop I suggest to use a powered USB hub that provides sufficient power all the time.

[asmcom]

On a dektop I suggest to use a powered USB hub that provides sufficient power all the time.

Good idea Coopervid. This will probably solve the issue. Maybe there is system corruption?

For attention of Heatvault14

Try running CMD as administrator and running this command:

SFC /SCANNOW

one space after SFC

If there was system corruption found, I would consider restore keeping apps and personal settings.

My advise would be to backup to output file and play this instead. Playing from disc is not great solution if you keep having problems.

Asmcom