Can't rip (or even read) "The Hunger Games: Catching fire"

[SamuriHL]

Because they're stacking more data in the same physical space. Layer breaks were already problematic with double layer discs. Adding a third layer means more data but the disc isn't physically bigger so the laser has to read increasingly smaller changes.

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[VarHD]

Yes, but wouldn't this mean that a certain drive may not be able to read ALL triple layer discs? I'm just curious why only some and not all. I mean, if I have 10 discs like that and 9 are read with no issues, but the 10th can't even be mounted - what's so different about it? The others have lots of data on 3 layers as well, how is the data on this one different?

[SamuriHL]

There's different data on the discs. Which means the data is laid out differently. This isn't a binary thing "can read triple layer" or "can't read triple layer". As you've discovered, it's a spectrum where some drives like some discs and can't read others and other drives have no issues with those discs but have issues with others. I still believe it comes down to the calibration data on these drives but that's just my opinion.

[drayla]

Hi, Ended up here after a google search because I'm seeing the same problem here on my bw-16d1ht with Catching Fire UHD. I had cleaned the disc, no joy. Actually just ordered another LG drive and can check that later but wanted to add an observation here.

I tried the disc three times this morning and failed each time. On a whim I wanted to see if the disc would play at all so i ran PowerDVD19. At this point all I did was launch powerDVD, didn't actually play the disc yet.

Then I went and attempted MakeMKV again and its actually saving now, no errors after about 15% completed. Not sure if this sheds any light on the problem or not but thought it was interesting.

[drayla]

Apologize if this turns into a double post, not sure what happened when I submitted my last attempt.

Anyway, ended up here after seeing the same issue with this disc. The disc failed at least 4 times before, on a whim I happened to launch Powerdvd19. All I did was launch it, never actually played the movie or anything but now, with powerdvd opened and just sitting there. I'm about 50% done with ripping the disc and not one error.

[SamuriHL]

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense though. PowerDVD would absolutely not play that disc in an ASUS friendly drive. It requires an official drive. I know you said you didn't do anything other than opening PowerDVD, but, my opinion is that had nothing at all to do with it being able to read it and is merely coincidence in this case.

[drayla]

Certainly possible. I just got home from work and started everything up (no pwerdvd this time) and the disc opened fine

[SamuriHL]

The moon was in proper alignment.

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[VarHD]

Time for the next episode of "I can't catch the fire"

I just received my new drive, the LG NS55 and... no luck. Just like the ASUS, the first disc lists a lot of read errors and ends with

Code: Select all

LIBMKV_TRACE: UDF mount: disc not properly formatted(bad VDS)

Similarly, the second disc lists fewer errors (only 3 different offsets), but unlike the ASUS, it finishes with a different error message, one I haven't seen before yet:

Code: Select all

DEBUG: Code 101000192 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:213131778
DEBUG: Code 101000192 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:121261934
Error 'Scsi error - ILLEGAL REQUEST:INVALID FIELD IN CDB' occurred while reading 'BD-RE HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS55 1.03' at offset '32768'
DEBUG: Code 0 at gEg|u}czqm>XF:b )JR:213129777

After some Googling, apparently it's pretty much the same as the other ones, it's still just a read error.

Just FYI, the drive came with FW 1.03 which could not read any UHD disc, I flashed it using the official LG flasher to MK's version of 1.03 and that helped. Of course, just to be sure, I've checked a different "known good" UHD disc and it read it so the drive works fine in general, but it still has an issue with this particular movie.

@drayla - thanks for your input, interesting case. As SamuriHL said, it's probably a coincidence... unless you can reproduce this process. Can you? Can you try to open MakeMKV and insert the disc 5 times and if it fails every time, open PowerDVD19 and then it will work? Can you then repeat this 2-3 times? Just for science

Also, if you don't mind, can you tell me if you've had the same type of read errors with your disc? That is, something like:

Code: Select all

DEBUG: Code 100864261 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:213131778
DEBUG: Code 100864261 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:121261934
Error 'Scsi error - MEDIUM ERROR:L-EC UNCORRECTABLE ERROR' occurred while reading 'BD-RE HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS55 1.03' at offset '1048576'
DEBUG: Code 100941314 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:213131778
DEBUG: Code 100941314 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:121261934
Error 'Scsi error - HARDWARE ERROR:TIMEOUT ON LOGICAL UNIT' occurred while reading 'BD-RE HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS55 1.03' at offset '131072'
DEBUG: Code 100864261 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:213131778
DEBUG: Code 100864261 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:121261934
Error 'Scsi error - MEDIUM ERROR:L-EC UNCORRECTABLE ERROR' occurred while reading 'BD-RE HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS55 1.03' at offset '131072'
DEBUG: Code 100864261 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:213131778
DEBUG: Code 100864261 at ueX$([U\RyQWMQ{AgE:121261934
Error 'Scsi error - MEDIUM ERROR:L-EC UNCORRECTABLE ERROR' occurred while reading 'BD-RE HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS55 1.03' at offset '131072'

And what disc is it? Is it region A, B or C? Can you send a link to the site you bought it from? If you're too new here to post links, you can break it into pieces like: "go to Amazon with dot co dot uk and then add... REST OF THE LINK".

Oh and finally, what was the exact alignment of the moon when it worked?

[SamuriHL]

I'm starting to think that disc has mastering issues and/or quality control issues. That's messed up that the LG didn't read it either.

[VarHD]

Based on what drayla says about the disc, I'm wiling to buy another copy. That's still way cheaper than biting the bullet and getting the "official" LG drive, which may or may not help, if it's a really messed up disc.

So far, both discs I tried are actually region B - one from the UK and one from an Australian release which is actually still B. Maybe it's time to get an A from the US? That shouldn't make any difference for the drive, right? It can't really play those discs anyway and MakeMKV is going to crack it in the process...?

[SamuriHL]

Before I go into my spiel on region coding, to directly answer your question, maybe. However, continue reading please.

UHD does not have region coding. At all. It's not built into the spec. Now, if it comes with a blu-ray, the blu-ray will have region coding but the UHD doesn't. The reason I bring this up is because it could be the exact same UHD between regions. That's not guaranteed. In fact we know that they love to have multiple title keys for these things but it doesn't seem to be a "region" thing...more just random batches than anything.

So to sum it up, it might matter, it might not, and there's no region coding on UHD.

[VarHD]

UHD does not have region coding. At all. It's not built into the spec.

Interesting. Good to know. I actually didn't know that

I guess what I'm looking for is just a different release. I don't know where do they actually manufacture those discs, is it all just "made in China" or do they press them in the US and Europe and Asia separately just for logistical reasons to avoid having to ship them across the continents?

When I searched for this movie on Blu-ray.com (using the international setting), I see that the individual releases (ignoring the collections as those most likely contain the same discs) were as follows:

- 8 November 2016 - USA + Canada
- 28 November 2016 - UK
- 7 December 2016 - Australia
- 2 November 2017 - Germany
- 29 March 2019 (!) - Spain

Again, I have no idea if these are all copies of the same master. I know that at least the front of the disc is slightly different between the UK and Australian release (the ones I have now) and I know that the Australian disc produces "can't read" errors only in 3 offsets vs. a dozen or more in case of the UK disc.

Germany and especially Spain were very late to the party so maybe these are some newer re-releases. I looked up an image of the back cover from the German release and it has ONLY German subtitles so for this reason alone, this has to be a different release because the rest always has English, English SDH and Spanish subs. I don't care for subtitles anyway, I only rip "forced" subtitles if a movie has dialogues in languages I don't understand so I don't mind losing that option. Maybe I should try the German release.

[SamuriHL]

I have no idea on that one. I know they were pressing some of them in Mexico at least a few years back and those sucked quality wise. I don't know if that's still the case or not. I suspect things changed with UHD but given how much data they're shoving in the same physical space I'm really not surprised we have these kinds of issues. I would suspect you're correct that discs sold in different regions may be mastered differently (different audio/subtitles, whatever) and that likely would change the equation with ripping it. Maybe worth a shot.

[VarHD]

Today I received my third copy of this movie - the German release. It came in one of those super thin flimsy cases which some people may like, but for some reason I always associate them with "low effort releases" - movies that barely make it to Blu-ray with no expectation to sell well, where the disc doesn't even have any proper artwork on it (although this one does) etc.

The disc itself popped out of the... thingy in the middle that's supposed to hold it in place, but luckily it wasn't scratched and yes, it did turn out to be a very low effort release - only German subs and only 2 audio tracks - German and the original English:

Not much to see here.

CatchingFire_Content.png (31.55 KiB) Viewed 19659 times

Even the title of the file was the default "title_t01.mkv" because they didn't bother naming files...but, as you can already tell by the screenshot above, it works! But here's the funniest part - it only works BECAUSE it's such low effort release as there's only ~60 GB of data on the disc which makes it a dual-layer disc:

Third layer would have been too much effort.

CatchingFire_Layers.png (57.41 KiB) Viewed 19659 times

There is a "catch" here (no pun intended), though. According to caps-a-holic (https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0 ... 76&i=8&l=0) the video of the US release runs at a bitrate of 62498 kbps while the German one "only" at 42498 kbps (the Atmos track is also slightly lower bitrate). That's how they've managed to downsize it enough to fit on a 2-layer disc.

That said, when you look at all the comparison images, most of the time it only looks like there's a different grain structure on the German disc which probably comes with the stronger compression. The only image where it's clear to see that it's a more compressed release is picture #6, specifically the gray ceiling. Here's a 200% zoom of it:

CatchingFire_US-German_Zoom.png (731.78 KiB) Viewed 19659 times

but you can see it best when hovering over the image at caps-a-holic using the "Fullscreen comparison" option.

So that's that. On one hand, mission completed - I managed to finally rip the movie, but on the other hand... it's a more compressed version. I know, it probably won't even be visible when watching, but still, it's a bit of a bummer. I doubt I'll continue to search for a working copy of the "good" version with higher bitrate. Maybe at some point I'll actually buy an "official" drive and revisit this to see if it will read the other two triple-layered discs, but for now I'm done.