only worked the first time

[assimo]

earlier today i was playing a burned copy of shin megami tensei (sp) devil summoner, using the ESR loader, and it worked just great for the first time playing it - cutscenes and everything ran great. but then the second time i loaded it a few hours later, it was just slower... the cutscenes (the opening one) was really slow.. and then i tried it a third time, and the game barely loaded.... any idea of what this could be?

i apologize for the incoherence, as i am at the moment trying to mess with mcboot as i'm typing this

[dlanor]

earlier today i was playing a burned copy of shin megami tensei (sp) devil summoner, using the ESR loader, and it worked just great for the first time playing it - cutscenes and everything ran great. but then the second time i loaded it a few hours later, it was just slower... the cutscenes (the opening one) was really slow.. and then i tried it a third time, and the game barely loaded.... any idea of what this could be?

This kind of phenomenon where a first session worked fine, but with deteriorating results for later sessions, apparently a direct function of passed time, is something I only saw myself in a few experiments with crap quality dual-layer discs. It probably can happen to any disc type of really crap quality, except that I always use top quality when I can, so I seldom notice that. And I suspect it can also happen with decent quality discs if burned at a speed far outside the range they are designed for (up or down).

The 'burning' is in fact a photochemical process, changing the transparency/reflection properties of the exposed disc layer, and that process does not necessarily give an immediately fixed result. Chemical processes can continue inside the disc long after you removed the disc from the burner. The specified burn speed (or half the specified max speed) is supposed to give the chemical compounds the exposure needed for ideal results, and any speed deviating too far from that will result in a bad burn.

Those discs of mine would work OK when freshly burned, but for each hour passing from that burning they would lose some of their readability, ending up completely unusable for the PS2 consoles, though still somewhat readable on a PC.

I'm not sure if it is the same thing that is happening to your discs, but it could well be so.

The first thing you should do is to consider if those discs are of sufficient quality for PS2 use, and the second thing to do is to consider your burner settings. "Auto" settings are not always the best, in case your burner has no entry in its database for the disc type you use.

When setting a burn speed manually it is usually best to use a speed in the middle of the intended usage range, which normally comes out as appx half the specified max speed. So for a max speed of 16X a burn setting of 8X would be appropriate.

Using very low speeds, as often recommended in old tutorials, is a usage appropriate only for very old (obsolete) and very crappy disc types, and for the latter you never can expect good results anyway, and especially not with a PS2 (more demanding than a PC).

Best regards: dlanor

[assimo]

ah ok thanks, that's pretty helpful. i usually use maxwell or memorex dvd-rs. mostly maxwell. and, i just read in a forum that i should burn all my games at x1 with imgburn. and i have been, and most of my games worked until like.. today, where all i get is a black screen after the esr screen.. meaning no flashing colors, etc.

is each game different for a burn speed? like, where would i find info on how fast (slow) to burn each game? besides the esr list on here

thanks

[dlanor]

ah ok thanks, that's pretty helpful. i usually use maxwell or memorex dvd-rs. mostly maxwell. and, i just read in a forum that i should burn all my games at x1 with imgburn.

Burning at 1x speed would not give me a useful result at all, with the high quality Verbatim discs I use, as that is like grossly overexposing a photograph. Overexposure reduces detail leading to data loss, and the same naturally also applies to gross underexposure. Both are bad for the end results.

and i have been, and most of my games worked until like.. today, where all i get is a black screen after the esr screen.. meaning no flashing colors, etc.

is each game different for a burn speed?

No, not at all. The content of the data does not affect how it should be burned.
It is the disc media and the burner which matter in this.

Ideal burning speed is either what is explicitly recommended for that disc type by the manufacturer, or half of the max speed specified by the manufacturer, or the auto speed known by a burner which has this disc type in its database (with data supplied by the disc manufacturer).

In all cases it is the disc manufacturing process and nothing else which determines how best it should be burned. That is why attention should be given mainly to manufacturer specs, at least for quality brands. The makers of crap quality discs obviously can't be trusted in this, as they frequently lie about their discs' capabilities, and sometimes even falsify the disc identification codes to make their discs be falsely identified as top quality discs by the burners (inevitably leading to bad burns with 'auto' settings).

Best regards: dlanor