first time making DVD. not perfect. any ideas?
 

i made my first DVD today. i edited the project with VEGAS and created the DVD using DVD ARCHITECT. it took a while for me to grasp DVD ARCHITECT, but finally i think i got the hang of it (thanks to this forum).

i used:
DVD BURNER: LG Electronics GSA-4082b DVD BURNER (supports 8xDVD+R/-R)
DVD MEDIA: Memorex DVD+RW 1x-4x

i played the DVD on a Kenwood home DVD player. all seemed to go OK. the menu, submenu and scene selection worked fine. but when playing the movie, there where apparent glitches, freeze ups and pixelization at inervals of every 10 seconds or so. apart from that, everything seemed fine.

what could i have done wrong? any ideas?

You might want to try another DVD brand and format, such as a Verbatim DVD-R. Also, buy some DVD R/Ws so you're not burning coasters until you have the problem solved.

Also, try playing your burned DVD on another player to elliminate any player issues. Does it play OK on your PC?

There's lots of things that could be factors including your player, the format of the DVD (-R/-RW/+R/+RW), the brand of the DVD, the bitrate you used, etc....

Adi,
I sent you a link to the recorder's firmware - it might resolve some issues if updated.

Also to repeat the set top player might be problematic.
For example I backed up my DVD movie (>2h) at low bitrate to a single DVD-R (Princo). It played perfectly to the last 15-20 minutes when it started similar to your mosaic noise and jumps. The last 5-10 minutes were unwatchable.
I re-encoded to a bit higher rate and used brand media. This time I started having similar problems even earlier but the single duration was shorter and I could watch to the end.

Checked with Nero Disc speed utility (surface check) showed NO errors at all! I also could play both DVDs on my PC without a hitch.

IMho - the set top player, DVD media and may be recording speed - while you figure it out you need lots of testing. And after you think you are done, you buy same media to understand it's OEMed from diferent maker...
Phew!

ok. thanks for the link. i'll do some more testing..... didn't think it would be difficult to do. oh well.

trick to any movie burn (cd or dvdr)is to burn at either single or 2x at the fastest... regardless of what they say about speed, jsut trust me on this one..

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : trick to any movie burn (cd or dvdr)is to burn at either single or 2x at the fastest... regardless of what they say about speed, just trust me on this one.. -->>>

Adi,

Peter is on the mark in advising single or at max 2x movie burn speed.
For data backup (system, programs, images and text documents etc.) max. write speed is useable. The reason is that you are writing a continuous data stream when writing DVD movie disks, so any interuption of data throughput or 'lag' during write calls will corrupt the written info... Same thing applies for music CDs, write them at a slower speed to avoid playback problems.

I reckon you've also got some anti-virus software? And maybe system restore is set to run? Perhaps even screen saver set for maybe 10min.?

All these things need to be changed - preferably disabled, when writing CD/DVD as they can screw things up badly.... If you don't know how to disable them, get someone who can to do it for you, or at the very least change their settings so that they don't cut in on a DVD length write session - around the 1hr 30min mark should cover you for most things......

ok. i actually did burn at x1. i finally did a test that was successful and was readable without problems on two different machines. i burnt it on two different media. the DVD+R was readable on both a pioneer stand alone player and a pilot dvd player. the DVD-RW worked only on the pioneer. the pilot dvd player couldn't read it.

does this mean that when making dvd's for clients, i should first varify what dvd player they intend to play the movie on?

thanks everyone.

I think you'll find most DVD players will play DVD-R. I always burn to DVD-R as the lowest common denominator format. I did a quick search on Amazon.com and looked at about 7 current models. This is by no means conclusive, but it does give a quick sample of major brand models.

Phillips +R
Panasonic -R
Samsung -R
Toshiba -R
Sony +,- R
JVC -R

Each one also supports the respective (-) or (+) R/W too.

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers has a list of DVD player compatibilities. You might want to check your model.

Good luck.

Dennis Vogel

If you can't press a DVD for a client (ie, too expensive or not
enough discs) then why not give them both a -R and +R on
the best media out there (test this yourself or read good tests
that have been done on the subject).

The price for two discs should be little compare to the overal
price of the production. You can explain to the client why there
are two discs and rest pretty easy at least one of them will
play on their DVD player.

Ofcourse one standard would've been better, but that isn't up
to us I'm afraid.

Rob,

That's the best solution. Why trouble a client with questions regarding their DVD player? Just build in the cost for the extra disk and time.

Dave

you're right. i can also think of different situations where the 2-copy-solution could come in handy (client want's to watch dvd at someone else's home, client buys new dvd player, etc.). so that's what i'll do. thanks for the help.

Maybe the media is causing your problems. To get good burns, try good media like Riteks (<$1 at meritline.com).

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

Just to confirm my mixed experience.

Last night I had to burn full DVD (4.36GB).
For security I used 2x on my cheap Princo 4x DVD-R.
As usual with that crappy media I could play the disk to about 80% (1h10min out of 1h40min).
Checked with Nero CD speed's Surface Scan it showed 5% unreadable at the end of the disk. In the PC I could play a bit more without freezing than on the set top DVD player.

Because of a lack of time and frustration I then decided to burn Ricoh 8x DVD+R media at max speed. It came out perfect copy - play back without a hitch on the set top and didn't show any error in Nero surface scan!!!

So my conclusion here is - use quality media recomended for your drive (check LG's manual for that).
I still think the manifacturers nowdays tune up their recorders for speed so sometime the lower speeds doesn't work well. Can't prove that of coarse.
Also if you use cheap media you can still burn to 3.9 GB mark and you should be fine even at higher recording speeds - why loose time when even at low speed you might be out of luck?