Is My Blu-ray Drive Really The Problem?

[XrayDoc88]

I have ripped hundreds of DVD and Blu-ray movies with my LG WH14NS40 drive. I continue to rip additional movies without incident. But I have two Blu-ray movies that will not save. They are "About Time" and "War For The Planet Of The Apes". Both discs look perfect to the naked eye. I get hundreds of entries like the following:

"The source file '____' is corrupt or invalid at offset '____', attempting to work around."

I also get:

"Encountered 959 errors of type 'HashCheckError'."

The only information I can find on the MakeMKV website states that hashcheckerrors usually mean a failing drive. Is this likely true in my case? I find it very odd that I can continue to rip new movies without problem and that only these two movies won't work.

Any advice? Thanks!

[Woodstock]

If you can read most disks but a few fail, the most likely cause is those few having problems, usually finger prints or scratches.

If MOST disks fail, then you should look at the drive.

That said, I've had disks that show a lot of read errors in one drive, and even errors that indicate that the drive has gone off-line, but no errors in a different drive. There are tolerances in both the disks and the drives that occasionally conspire to make a disk unreadable in a particular drive, but both the disk and drive are "in spec".... just opposite ends of the "spec".

Have you read this topic? http://makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15055

[XrayDoc88]

I did read that thread before posting. Perhaps these two discs have mastering errors? They are literally brand new with no visible defects. They haven't even been played in a set top blu-ray player. I wonder if others have had problems with these two movies. I guess I'll hold off replacing the drive because it seems to work fine. I just wish I could rip these two movies. I only own one blu-ray burner.

[preserve]

Try holding the discs under different lights, such as LED lights or the light of a projector (if you have one). There can be stuff on your discs (even brand new discs) that is really hard to see unless held at the perfect angle, and different lighting conditions (especially bright light, I think) can help.

That said, if they look flawless, you've tried cleaning them and if your drive works without problem with all other discs, it's certainly possible that these are defective pressings.

I now almost always buy from Amazon and rip as soon as I receive a disc. If there's an issue like this - rare, but I've had a handful - the disc goes back to Amazon as defective and they replace it hassle-free, and hopefully the replacement then works. (Only had one case where I couldn't get a good disc after multiple tries.)

[XrayDoc88]

Well, I'm relieved and disappointed. I decided to take a really close look at both discs. "About Time" does indeed have an almost imperceptible circular scratch in the outer third. That must be the issue. "War For The Planet Of The Apes" has a single, very tiny bright dot that I can feel and won't wash off. It's almost liks a pin landed on the disc. The rest of the disc is perfect. Do you think that tiny dot is enough to ruin the ripping of that disc?

I have both of these movies in my online VUDU collection, but I don't like using VUDU. Do you know if it is possible to download the movie from VUDU (which is legal) and then somehow covert it to the MKV format to add to my own PLEX server?

Thanks.

[Woodstock]

Vudu has digital rights (their rights, not yours) management in the files, which would have to be removed.