Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Hi Guys,

I'm wondering if you can help me with a problem I'm having. Particularly difficult bride has been complaining that her wedding DVDs aren't playing correctly. These are the same discs I use for every wedding, Verbatim Dual-Layer. She says they skip and freeze in one spot on her player, and her parent's player - BUT they play perfectly in her sister's. I shipped out some new discs to her when hearing of this problem and the same thing happened. Obviously, she is becoming more and more irate, and it's only been a few days.

I'm thinking this is some kind of compatibility issue with the players and my dual-layer discs, but I'm not sure what the solution is. I've told her it's probably her player, but the fact they are also not playing on her parent's is very strange. I'm shipping out 30 of these discs a year without problems.

I burned one of the discs last night and it played perfectly on my own player.

What is the best course of action here? Buy her a new DVD player? Tell her to buy a new DVD player? Burn an inferior single-layer disc? Give her the wedding on a USB?

Thanks

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I have had a similar problem with a regular verbatim dvd+r not playing in a clients older Medion dvd speler, the film would lock up at the same place each time and they needed to restart the dvd player just to get the dvd out again, Medion is a cheaper German brand, They played fine on their parents player and on 3 other where I tested it on. I tried switching from +r to -r, changed brands, nothing helped and this couple was also particularly demanding that the dvd should work on their player. As last resort I made the dvd again at a lower bitrate and then it worked, it appeared that their player could not handle too high bitrates.

I would burn the dvd on a single layer dvd, even if that means a little loss in quality, the lower bitrate probably might solve the playback problem. If that doesn't work you cold try burning it onto a + or -r depending on what type doesn't work for them.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I have suspected that they are using some crappy brand of DVD player. But isn't this their problem? They should invest in another player! If I burn on a single-layer I won't be happy with the quality.

Thanks for your help!

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Unfortunately, when it comes to skipping DVDs, it is always blamed on you. People will never believe their own players are at fault. There are a number of reasons why a DVD may skip even if there is nothing wrong with it. The most common reason is that the DVD player is dusty which is picked up on the DVD and stops it being read properly. The next common problem is that people don't appreciate that recordable DVD is much softer and more susceptible to damage than commercial film DVDs. People get fingerprints on them, or sometimes scratch them putting them into their player.

I film school productions and typically supply about 5-800 DVDs per year. Each year at least one parent will bypass the school and contact me directly to tell me that their DVD is faulty and demand that I do something about it as it has ruined their kid's Christmas etc. I have a simple policy that any DVD that is believed to be faulty will be replaced free of charge, but the original must be returned to me for examination first. If it is found to be damaged or faulty through incorrect use, then postage and replacement cost is charged. After several thousand DVDs supplied and perhaps 10 or so returned, I have only ever found one that was our fault as it had inadvertently been sent out blank!

Last year I wrote 80 DVDs of a nativity that we filmed for one school and just after delivering them, one parent sent me an email accusing me of using really poor quality DVDs. Furthermore,the family were devastated as their daughter had played a 'Major Role' in the school production and couldn't stop crying as the DVD skipped and jumped continuously. They had bought 3 copies and none of them played properly even on other players. She also said that she would send me some proper DVDs that her husband used so that I wouldn't redo them on my cheap low quality ones. Also she said that a number of other parents had the same problem and were very unhappy.

I replied politely suggesting that she returned the DVDs to the school that she had bought them from and I would test them for faults, and that I would like to know where her husband bought the high quality DVDs from as mine were the best commercially available. She responded with the comment that her husband had bought the most expensive Asda. (Walmart) ones for his own photos. I never received the DVDs from the school or any other complaints. A few weeks later I visited the school with some extra copies for someone else, and was told that the complaining parent had never brought them back. They had also heard from another parent that the woman had brought the skipping DVDs round to her house to try on their player and they worked fine, she was then told that the woman's young daughter had tried to play a slice of toast in the player and they had needed to replace it, but not to tell the school. She failed to respond to any more of my emails. Her daughter incidentally who was 5 years old, was one of 10 angels on stage for about 30 seconds!

Hope some of that helps to reassure you :-)

Roger

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Roger, that sounds like a total nightmare. I think when you are appealing to people's vanity (like weddings and children's plays) it really brings out the worst in people.

This particular bride has tried the discs on three players. They all played fine on one of those player. I then explained to her that this proves there is nothing actually wrong with the discs themselves. She was actually aghast that I had the audacity to question the quality of her DVD player.

Not sure what to do.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Christopher, I would try a single layer -r Taiyo Yuden disc. See how that goes.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I certainly would not give her more, like a usb stick with the film on, just do the single layer dvd, you might not like the quality but it's dvd so it always be a lower quality, if that one plays on her dvd she has no more reason to complain and if she does complain about the quality, then upsell her a blu-ray disc or the digital files on a usb.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I've always been pretty direct with people. I'd go ahead and let her know (kindly) that its not the DVDs, but the player. Which, amusingly, is already something she's worked out, but is still blaming you. If it was the cord that was bad, would she insist you give her new DVDs, too?

When I was being trained to answer phones for Amazon, the trainer had some silly acronym for when a customer tells you their problem. Step #1 was 'apologize.' I immediately asked, 'What if its not our fault?'

Never accept responsibility for a mistake when you didn't make it.
You can still offer help. Here, just informing her of her mistake.


/A reminder that buying the cheapest of something, frequently causes problems later.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Two or three years ago I subbed for some friends of mine who had booked in a wedding job but didn't have a camera man to allocate to it. Great event, got everything, everything was fantastic. Edited it up and everything ... all done.

And we hear nothing from the bride + groom after the event. Nothing at all, and no returning of calls. Even contacting via other family members didn't elicit a response.

A year later they called and came in to pay for and collect the DVD of their wedding and reception.

We can only guess they might have been a bit tight for cash after their event and decided to lay low for a while. A phone call would have been good, though. It was so out of the ordinary when compared to everyone else.

Andrew

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Just burn a DVD-R. Who cares if it's "inferior". That's what she wants. It's you that wants a highest quality version, whereas she just wants one which plays.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

You tell customer the issue is here player, end of story. Because it is.

I've had this issue a few times, and I tell them it's their player. If it plays properly in another player, customers are smart enough to know the discs are fine and they buy a new player.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

If you want to make the customer happy, why not try a few different brands of disc? Surely that would take less time and have more chance of a happy outcome than endless rounds of back and forth blaming her player? It might be truth, but would you rather make the customer happy or be right?

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Its very possible to be both right and make the customer happy.

Most people are perfectly reasonable when a truthful explanation (NOT an excuse) is offered. This situation is a perfect example.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I get that there are often quirky player and disc incompatibilities. But if I had paid several hundred or several thousand dollars on a wedding video, I wouldn't want someone explaining to me why my DVD player is at fault. Especially when it is almost a certainty that by just burning a different brand or two it would solve the problem.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I bought a bmpc and my old and cheap pc is not fast enough to handle the raw files, I also wouldn't want BMD telling me my pc is at fault when I would complain about that, especially not when I paid thousands for the camera. :D

I recently had a client where I supplied 3 dvd's and one of them skipped at a certain point, I made them a new one from the same spindle and that one worked. But if I supply 3 dvd's and all 3 skip but work fine on my dvdplayers I would burn 2 new dvd's, one +r (I supply -r now) and one other brand, if those 2 also skip I would try a lower bitrate, if that also skips I"d suggest them to get a new dvdplayer...

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Bob, my brides, when they see their discs work on other players, so far each one has realized without being told that they need a new player. I haven't yet been cursed with a customer so silly that they blamed my discs when clearly the player was the issue.

Here's how it has worked for me. They call and say discs don't play properly. I ask them to try them on another player, and I ask them if they're player is old, and it's always yes, it's old. They let me know later that yes, indeed, the discs played on another player and they are going to go get a newer player, because they realize their player is old and probably outdated.

They are invariably nice about it, at least my customers have been.

Also, if the player is at fault and you send other discs that don't work, it makes you look really bad, because you've taken responsibility for the problem. If your second batch doesn't work, then your customer will blame you and it makes you look incompetent. I know because early on in my career that is what I did. Then they really got mad. If they had got a new player the problem would have been solved instead of me buying a new type of disc, wasting my time and theirs.

There is a difference between being helpful and taking responsibility for something I cannot fix. Just my 2 cents.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I explained to this particular bride that the discs I sent her were of the highest quality, the same discs I use for all of my weddings, and that because they are working on one of the players they tried, proves that they are 100% fine, and that it's simply a compatibility issue with their own player, insinuating (but not stating) that their player is no doubt ancient or/and some cheap brand.

Her response was "our player is of superior quality".

I'm going to ship her out single-layer Verbatim discs and hope for the best.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I did not think of it in this way. I film about 40 weddings a year, using the same Verbatim dual-layer discs, and am NEVER told of any problems, and no doubt these discs are being played on a variety of different players. So when I heard of this problem I immediately thought it had to be a bad batch of discs, and so burned a new set, tested them on my own player (perfect) and shipped.

It was then in a subsequent email she informed me that they still weren't working -

- on her player, but on her sister's they were fine. That's when the penny dropped and I realised the problem was definitely on their end. Unfortunately, as you suggest, the damage may already have been done with regards to my rep.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

So then why do all their DVDs of Oceans 11, Pulp Fiction, Apocolypse Now, and Fight Club work..... but not their wedding video you made for them? Clearly, their DVD player works fine. It's the DVD you supplied for them which doesn't work.

Apparently there's 2 sides to this, and this forum so far seems to be a bit of a split down the middle. I'm a bit surprised tbh, that anyone would just leave it at 'oh no, that's you're DVD player that's the problem' when all you need to do is burn a more simple version of a DVD.


But can't you fix it by burning a proper DVD for them?? That's like a mechanic only using 15W40 motor oil or whatever that's meant for a pickup truck and when your little Nissan has problems with it he says "Oh no, the oils fine. It's your CAR which is the problem."

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I just encountered a similar situation with a client who is using an Xbox as their DVD player. The DVDs worked fine on their family's other DVD players but not on the Xbox. Will try another burn on a different brand of disks but not sure where to go if that doesn't work.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Hollywood movie DVDs are pressed from a glass master. The "pits" are actually molded into the material.

When we burn DVDs, the pits are instead etched into a dye layer with the laser. Quite a different process and results, different material substrate used in the media, so that is why recordable DVD will exhibit playback compatibility issues more than store-bought movies (assuming no authoring issues of course, which is another issue entirely).

I started burning DVDs around the year 2000 and compatibility was very hit and miss back then, and got gradually better over the years with newer players and for the last several years, I have practically zero issues with customer playback of 4.7GB DVD-R discs. I never use DL media, but anecdotal evidence suggests that not all players like DL media, while single-layer media works pretty universally (again, assuming proper authoring and high-quality media).

Thanks

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I'm the same, I have never used DL discs for this reason, I know other user don't seem to have any problems with DL discs, its just the way I do it :)

I would put her wedding on two or three different brands of -r DVD, Taiyo Yuden, Ritek or Virbatim.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I'd agree XBOX's are a bit annoying to deal with, and a bit of an exception in.that I wouldn't say 'It's their own fault'..... but it's close. On the flip side I think using Dual Layer DVD's is asking for this to occur eventually over time, so you need to have a backup plan.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Further to what Jeff is saying, the reason why the commercially replicated DVDs will perform better is that their aluminium substrate has the best possible reflectivity for the 'non-hole data bits'.

Writeable discs are not as good, and in fact the DVD drives even have internal calibration info for the characteristics of each type of blank that may possibly be used. Got an older burner that suddenly doesn't know what to do with your usual DVD blanks or any others? It can be that the current writeable discs (and their formulation) on the market are newer than the internal library on the burner.

Similarly, if the laser diode in a DVD player mechanism is stating to wear and age, its output strength will suffer. This in turn will mean that it has a harder time recognising the data that is on the written/manufactured disc because the level of reflectivity will not be as great.

[Apparently the cheaper optical drive mechanisms have a plastic lens on the laser instead of a glass lens. The downside of this plastic lens is that it won't keep its perfect transparency forever and thus diminishes the life of the hardware.]

Andrew

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

If you delivered a dvd-r I would try a dvd+r or the other way round depending on what you delivered, that might do the trick.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I wouldn't be so sure that would be the case, I got a brandnew purchased blu-ray disc from the movie "2012" that refuses to play on my blu-ray player as it also stutters and locks up, it allready was causing problems when it came out of it's packaging. I also got a expensive first gen stand alone blu-ray player that skips and stutters all they way true my dvd and blu-ray collecion, it worked ok for a long time but then suddenly started to act up, it was out of warranty so I had to retire it.

I also run into clients that tell me they do have playback issues with purchased dvd's on their old dvd player, eventhough my wedding film does play on their dvdplayer, but they know if my dvd would give problems they are better off just buying a new player. Many people have old and cheap dvd players which are hardly used, in teh past I often delivered my dvd's to my clients and many times they had to look for the remote because it was that long ago they used the player. A good dvd, even when pressed, does not guarantee it will play without issues on these often old players that have issues especially if you have a too high bitrate dvd or when you use a dual layer dvd.

The reason why people don't invest in new dvd players anymore is because these days you can just rent movies true their tv and just stream them, all dvd rental places where I live are gone as they had to close their doors.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I was more playing devils advocate or trying to show the customers side of things. Technically, yes there's differences etc.... but imho to tell a customer 'Oh, you're DVD player is probably old & outdated' they'd likely respond with 'It's fine' or 'I watch Netflix DVDs all the time' or whatever..... even claiming "our player is of superior quality" when it's probably about 7 years old. Anyway, again I was just trying to see it (and show it) from the customers side.

That reminds me of this scene from The British Office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-wf...utu.be&t=2m34s

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

+1 to Bob's suggestion. Years ago I had a job the required 5-7000 disc runs. Unfortunately couldn't do glass mastering as it was like 175 of one, 82 of another, 155 of another etc etc from a wide range of titles so they had to be burnt. As was expected with that many burns some would come back and in 99% of cases the problem was fixed by supplying a burn on a different brand of disc. In one particular case with an irate client we sent them a disc and a brand new $39 DVD player from an ALDI store just to get them off our back. Aussies, Brits and Europeans will know ALDI. Never heard back from that particular client so I guess it must have worked.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Noa you are lucky your player refused to play '2012' - it has taste lol!

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Back in the day I had a Pioneer DVD player costing £hundreds. It would not play any recordable DVDs, recordable CDs and only Region 2 DVDs. Along came Aldi with a £25 region free player that played everything - recordable DVD/CD DivX etc etc...

...I bought one and the Pioneer is in the loft.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I didn't buy that film, it came with a blu-ray burner that I bought for my pc, they obviously had lots of it left :D But it was a commercial blu-ray, just like you could buy separately in the store. Eventhough the film suxs I was looking forward to see how the imagequality looked like on a big screen but have not been able to see it completely...

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I also agree with the posts about not supplying on DL discs as the compatibility is reduced further. Recordable DVDs are always likely to give problems on a dubious player compared to glass mastered discs for reasons already explained, so the fact that they can play shop bought films is irrelevant.

Unfortunately to the client, a DVD is a DVD and if their player plays the latest blockbuster movie, 'it should also play yours'. In those circumstances, you need to give them a clearly worded written technical explanation of why this is and why some players irrespective of cost just do not like recordable DVDs. You could also suggest that in these days of downloadable movies, many players stand idle for days or weeks on end and start to accumulate fine particles of dust on the laser lens that may be improved with the use of a DVD lens cleaning disc.

Rogef

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Also something that has helped me so much!! Try to use disks made for your DVD writer/burner ..I have LG writers in all 3 computers and have always used LG disks (probably made by someone else but they have given me zero errors in 15 years!!) It is the most compatible way to go. I switched to another brand about a year back and spent an entire week rushing around replacing disks for brides and very quickly tossed them in the bin and went back to my LG disks!!

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Find a $30 DVD player that you know will play your disc and send that to them too. It costs more to legally license music.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Speak for yourself, I seek out the $29.99 songs on Songfreedom. j/k :)

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

What if it concerns a blu-ray disc, buy them a blue-ray player? :) It's not our job to buy the necessary playback equipment for a client. If that player then would malfunction they will come to you to have it replaced. I also supply h264 mp4's on a usb stick and I have had clients telling me their tv doesn't display the video, you can't expect me to buy them a new tv as well that is compatible with my videos. In such a case I tell them they have to buy something like a WD TV from western digital or get a more up to date tv that will support mp4 playback.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Yes. That would be about $15 more than a DVD player :)

Seriously. You can spend time educating your client about disc/player quirkiness, or you could make a great, memorable customer service experience.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

I'm in full agreement with Bob. Present the bride with a brand new BD player that you have confirmed will work with your discs. It's a small amount to pay for such a big gesture of goodwill. I know that earlier in this forum we've discussed doing this as a regular practice back in the day when Blu-Ray was new... just bundle in the price of a nice new BD player as part of your total package price. Don't bother to itemize it. Just hand it over on delivery as an unexpected pleasant surprise. Better to score points this way than to go through the hassle of incompatible discs.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

Ever heard of Pandora's box? :) So you give a new player to the bride and then she calls you because you gave more dvd's of which she gave a copy to her family and she says, "they don't play either on their players, can you pls send a dvd player to them as well? Here's the address"
Or the bride has other dvd's with cinema movies and one of them don't play in your new supplied dvd player or it malfunctions during the warranty period, guess who she is going to call?
Or the bride is so happy you gave her a new player she goes to a internet wedding forum saying how great service you provide because she got a new player, the next bride that reads it will book you and eventually ask, "I take it you include the players as well?"
Before you know it you have a separate room in your house filled with dvd and blu-ray players, new ones and ones that need to be replaced.

Re: Difficult Bride + Discs Not Working
 

The cost of a new cheap DVD player ($40 I read earlier) is a more than reasonable overhead for getting the booking.

Andrew