After burning image ESR patch undone

[Sooperfizzy]

First post, greetings, fine people!

Here is my problem. After ESR patching a ripped game the patch is undone after burning.

I ripped the game (SEGA Superstars Tennis) with ImgBurn. When I check the ISO (before burning) with WINRAR it shows it is modified as a DVD ISO with AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders. However, after burning it just shows the original files as they show on the original disk.

When I use Verbatim's, no problem at all, burned all rips with ImgBurn with no fails at all.

Now I bought a couple of Maxell DVD-R's and they just keep failing on me. I hear you thinking, well just use the Verbatim's...but I would like to know what is going on here as it beats me what removes the ESR patch, before I am going to buy me another pack of disks, maybe risking more fails.

Cheers!

[dlanor]

First post, greetings, fine people!

Here is my problem. After ESR patching a ripped game the patch is undone after burning.

I ripped the game (SEGA Superstars Tennis) with ImgBurn. When I check the ISO (before burning) with WINRAR it shows it is modified as a DVD ISO with AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders. However, after burning it just shows the original files as they show on the original disk.

When I use Verbatim's, no problem at all, burned all rips with ImgBurn with no fails at all.

Now I bought a couple of Maxell DVD-R's and they just keep failing on me. I hear you thinking, well just use the Verbatim's...but I would like to know what is going on here as it beats me what removes the ESR patch, before I am going to buy me another pack of disks, maybe risking more fails.

Are you certain that you have used exactly the same method each time to inspect the burned discs ?

You need to understand that all PS2 game discs and all DVD video discs always contain two different filesystems with near identical content. One is the ISO9660 filesystem and the other is the UDF filesystem.

This is different from a normal PC DVD-ROM disc that often contains only the ISO9660 filesystem, though usually augmented by the Joliet extensions.

Because of this many PC softwares assume that any disc with a UDF filesystem on it must be a DVD-Video disc, and then show only the content of that filesystem, while other PC software only cares about the ISO9660 filesystem and always shows only the content of that. And normally you never notice the difference because when both filesystems exist they normally have identical content.

But this is where an ESR-patched disc differs, having an ISO9660 filesystem showing the original game files and a UDF filesystem showing the dummy VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders. So depending on the preferences of the PC software used to inspect such a disc it can appear either as the original game disc or as a DVD-Video disc.

The only tool I know of which is able to show this correctly, displaying BOTH filesystems and showing their conflicting content, is IsoBuster. All other tools I have tested show only one or the other, but never both.

So I suggest that you use IsoBuster to inspect those discs again, as I am sure it will show the conflicting file systems for all discs you had ESR-patched the ISO file of before burning.

And the failure of your Maxell discs to actually run the games is probably best explained by the simple fact that the Maxell quality is crap...

Best regards: dlanor

[Sooperfizzy]

Ah, makes sense...

I used WINRAR only as I was curious what actually happened after an ESR patch, and I figured wrongly it had made a DVD image and hid all the other files in it somewhere. I do not use that to actually check after a burn, I just checked the resulting burn with explorer.

Indeed when I open a burned Maxell disk with ISObuster I do see these DVD folders under UDF, as well as the original files. The strange thing then is the following if I understand everything correctly...

With the Verbatims the disc's filesystems are not read/recognized at all in Windows 7 (and ISObuster) after I do a succesful burn, but they play fine in the PS2. I guess ImgBurn handles a Maxell disk differently, as I left everything exactly the same except for DVD brand.

I recently softmodded my kids PS2 out of lazyness. He is only 6 and scratching up the disks, some hardly playing, so I had to get off my lazy ass and change them for him. Softmodding was a piece of cake using the tutorials here, and having no problem at all with ESR before, this seemed real weird to me.

I used FIFA 08 and a self made swap key btw...I had to rename the exploit EU instead of US. Anybody from South (central) Limburg in the Netherlands, I will surely help you out with your memcard, just drop me a note.

Thanks so much for your insight!