Make-MKV 1.99 - Loss of BD drive loading status tracking

[onland]

I've started to use / test Make-MKV in more depth recently after having installed various previous versions of this utility as a standby toolkit. While the decoding and local streaming capability (to VLC-Player) with BDs that have only AACS and also AACS with BD+ which I have tested with this utility so far has shown that it is a very capable BD decoder utility, I've noticed some problems specifically with BD writers which I have installed on my system. These problems and tests were run under Win-XP Pro SP-3 with auto insert notification turned off globally for all drive letters. Four optical drives on this system were tested with Make-MKV 1.99. Two DVD writers (one genuine Plextor, not the later OEMed fake Plextors, one Sony-Optiarc), and two BD writers (a Pioneer 06 series and a Pioneer 09 series).

With all four ODDs, while the utility was smart enough to automatically select the drive that had a disc inserted (tests were only done with only one disc inserted in any of the 4 drives at anytime), it was found that with the Pioneer BD drives, if a BD was inserted (either before Make-MKV was started or while Make-MKV was running) and then ejected once using the utility's eject button, the utility would lose track of the BD drive's loading status permanently during the SAME session of Make-MKV. This means that once a Pioneer BD drive's loaded BD was ejected by the utility, that BD drive's loading status would no longer be recognized any further UNLESS Make-MKV was quit and the restarted. Even if any disc type was inserted into the BD writer, Make-MKV would no longer detect the change in drive loading status (e.g. loading drawer closing).

This problem occurs only with the Pioneer BD writers when BDs are ejected. If DVDs are inserted and ejected (from these BD writers) using Make-MKV's eject button, the utility will continue to correctly indicate the loading status of the ODD in question and display the animated drive correctly (i.e. disc loaded, loading tray opened). However, if BDs are ejected from the Pioneer BD drives, the utility will be stuck on the message UNMOUNTING PLEASE WAIT in the drive status display area of the program and will remain in that status permanently for that drive unless the utility is quitted and restarted.

A further test was performed by ejecting a BD from the BD writers by pressing the drive's eject button instead. The problem is exactly the same - if a DVD is ejected from the BD writer this way, the utility correctly detects this action and tracks the drive's loading status normally. However, if a BD is ejected using the drive's eject button, the utility fails to detect this loading status change and continues to consider the BD loaded. However, in this case if the same BD is re-inserted, Make-MKV then fails to operate normally on the re-inserted BD and that particular BD drive is no longer operable by the utility unless the program is quit and restarted.

Since this system also has various other ODD utilities including Opti-Drive Control ODD disc tester / analyzer, Image Burn, Plextor Plextool, Nero Burning ROM, as well as other well known CD and DVD rippers, and NONE of these utilities have any problems recognizing all 4 ODDs' loading status regardless of disc type inserted or loading drawer status, I would have to suspect that this issue is probably a Make-MKV problem rather than a problem specific to Pioneer BD writers (since I'm not able to test with other brands of BD writers for this test). I would be interested to hear if anyone else might be able to reproduce the same problem on their system with a BD writer and under what Windows operating system that occurs.

Finally, many of the above lists of other ODD utilities' eject button also doubles as a load / eject toggle button to both open and closer the ODD's loading drawer, and I think that Make-MKV would be more user-friendly if the drawer close function would be implemented when the eject button is clicked in the utility to both open and close the ODD's drawer. I would imagine this would not be difficult to implement, if the BD writer's loading status detection loss issue is resolved in future Make-MKV releases.

[mike admin]

Do you get the same behavior when running MakeMKV in "single drive" mode? You will have to enable it in preferences.

[onland]

Do you get the same behavior when running MakeMKV in "single drive" mode? You will have to enable it in preferences.

I retested this bug with single drive mode preference enabled, and each time the utility was started, I would select one of the two BD writers on the system. The behaviour of the utility and this problem was found to be exactly the same as when the utility was operated in multi-drive mode, with one minor difference - in SINGLE drive mode, if the BD drive has a BD inserted and then the drive's eject button was pressed manually to eject the disc, the utility would correctly detect the drive was in drawer-open / ejected mode. However, after that the utility also becomes unuseable with that specific drive. When a new disc (of any type) is reloaded by pressing the BD drive's eject button to close the loading drawer, the utility no longer has drive loading status detection with that drive and considers that drive in ejected mode at all times. The only way to resolve this at that point is to quit and restart the utility.

This behaviour is identical on both Pioneer BD writers when used with Make-MKV 1.99. I would be interested to know if this problem is confirmed with other multiple ODD system set ups with a mix of DVD and BD writers, and why the utility has this problem only when the drive is ejecting a BD but not when ejecting a DVD. Also, just as a test, I inserted a CD-audio disc at one point to see how the utility would react. It would be great if the utility would be smart enough to detect that a disc other than DVD or BD was inserted and display a message accordingly. All discs I used for these tests are commercially pressed. No recordable media was used.

Could you tell me the purpose of the single drive mode option on the utility and do I understand it correctly that when the single drive mode menu appears and I select ALL DRIVES, that the utility is then operating the same way as if the single drive mode preference option was not set? It would be nice if the eject mode would also close the drawer for future releases. Thanks for your consideration.