Sony Storage Support

Title
Sonic.log for MyDVD 3.1 and later

Description
Disc writing errors with MyDVD 3.1 and later

Symptom
When getting errors when writing to a DVD or CD , check the Sonic.log file for possible explanations

Solution
There are two 'logs' in MyDVD 3.1 and later: Sonic.log is for writer errors and VerboseImport.Log for file importing/transcoding.

Sonic.log - Disc writing
When writing a project to CD/DVD in MyDVD 3.1 and beyond, a file called "Sonic.log" is created and written to the root level of the MyDVD folder. The log has a 256 byte "header which for hold the program name, date, time and Padus registry information. We will eventually add more to the header. The log can up to 10Megabytes at which point it wraps around, but leaving the 256 header intact. Each time the program is started the log file is overwritten, so if there is a problem the user should rename the log after the problem. A new log will automatically be created.

Customers having writing issues should send Sonic Support their sonic.log files and also list the CD/DVD writing applications currently installed on their machine.

Verbose Logging Feature in MyDVD 3.1 to find MPEG file incompatibility
When importing a file into MyDVD 3.1 and beyond, one may get an warning message that their asset is illegal in some way and offers to correct the problem by transcoding the file. One can find out what specifically is wrong with the file by creating and placing a trigger file called "VerboseImport.Log" in the same directory as the file being imported. When a file is imported, MyDVD will write a log including problems found for that file in the directory containing that file.

Things to Note:
If a log file already exists for an asset and that asset is re-imported into a project, MyDVD will simply append the log to the existing log If an MPEG file has been imported before, there will be a .ses folder next to it. Delete the .ses folder and import again to see new verbose log. If a log file is not generated make sure that the trigger file is properly named "VerboseImport.Log" and is at the root level of the assets being imported. Get properties on the file(s) being imported and make sure that they are NOT set to "Read Only." Remember that when importing MPEG file with a .wav equivalent that both files will be brought in together and that both should be check for Read-Only status.