Problems with my DVD

Post by **SoCal Chris** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:37 pm

I transferred about 1.5 hours of old 8mm home movies (boy I love Roger's stuff), did the editing I wanted, added music, and burned them onto a DVD. So why is my DVD being difficult? I burned the DVD (Imation DVD +R) using Sonic MyDVD and everything works fine on the computer. I have tried it on two differnet DVD players and the movie "gets stuck" at about the 37 minute mark. I tried re-burning onto a Sony DVD-R but got similar results. Any ideas?

Post by **ccortez** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:50 pm

SoCal Chris wrote:I transferred about 1.5 hours of old 8mm home movies (boy I love Roger's stuff), did the editing I wanted, added music, and burned them onto a DVD. So why is my DVD being difficult? I burned the DVD (Imation DVD +R) using Sonic MyDVD and everything works fine on the computer. I have tried it on two differnet DVD players and the movie "gets stuck" at about the 37 minute mark. I tried re-burning onto a Sony DVD-R but got similar results. Any ideas?

Are you using 4X media?

I have terrible results with any 4X media, and almost perfect results with media that is similar to TDK 2X media. Can't remember what generic brand we bought for the studio, but they were seriously cheap in volume (250 or 300, can't remember) and have been at least 98% good for us.

Of course, it could be lots of other things too. But if you're using 4X DVDs, I'd try that first.

Post by **SoCal Chris** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:56 pm

The Imation DVD+R was 4X and the Sony DVD-R was listed as 1X - 8X.

Post by **ccortez** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 5:08 pm

SoCal Chris wrote:The Imation DVD+R was 4X and the Sony DVD-R was listed as 1X - 8X.

Nope, wouldn't trust either one of those.

My entire experience with DVD burning has been this: the cheaper and slower the media, the more likely the compatibility with the most stand-alone players.

I have no scientific theory to back this up, but the experiential evidence has been remarkably convincing.

When I go to the office, I'll post the name of the generic brand we ordered, the price, and the place we got them from.

Post by **threeinv** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 12:40 am

If you had only tried a +R disc, I would have said to use -R (overall higher compatibility with home DVD players). However, rather than the media I'm going to blame the MyDVD software. See if you can get hold of a copy of Nero burning software and use that instead. Have MyDVD output the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders to your hard drive, then use Nero to burn them as a DVD Video format. I've used those Sony 1x-8x DVD-Rs with no troubles (Pioneer A07 burner). I agree that slower burning is better, but I use 8X as my limit. Any media or hardware capable of >8X I purposely slow down to 8X or less (4X if you're not in a rush).

--Derrick

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 8:33 am

I'm using a standalone pioneer machine for making DVD's.

I love it.

And it burns at 8x from the harddrive with no problems.

I think sometimes the simplicity of a standalone DVD burner can help keep one's sanity. I have a friend with a Sonic DVD system and it would take him several days to do what I can do in one day.

The basic difference is how sophisticated you need to be with chapters and with the title header. If those issues are not important, a standalone can be really good.

Post by **ccortez** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 9:55 pm

I think all of this "without problems" stuff depends on how many players you test on, how old some of these are, etc. Send me an 8X DVD, I can find problems. 8)

I am interested to hear from those using 4X and above media, have you tried these DVDs on standalone players that are a few years old? I understand of course that it's entirely possible there's something else wrong in my setup introducing problems...

I believe the model number of the one I'm using is Sony DRX-510UL. I've used DVD Studio Pro on the Mac and am currently using some Veritas product (RecordNow DX?) to write an image to disc on PC (Windows 2000).

I'd really like to be wrong. It would be nice to trust burning at 4X and above.

c.

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 10:02 pm

When I burn a DVD at 8 times normal speed I immediately put it in two other DVD players and a couple in a third DVD player.

They have all played. I've also supplied well over a dozen to clients and have not heard anything negative yet. My point is not every DVD one makes has to be imported into a computer.

There are situations where an 80 gig standalone DVD recorder will be a faster option than going the computer route.

Post by **ccortez** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 10:08 pm

Alex wrote:When I burn a DVD at 8 times normal speed I immediately put it in two other DVD players and a couple in a third DVD player.

They have all played. I've also supplied well over a dozen to clients and have not heard anything negative yet.

That's the most important part, and the reason I'm willing to sacrifice speed. But if I didn't have to...

Alex wrote: My point is not every DVD one makes has to be imported into a computer.

I'm sure you're right about that. I've never used a standalone recorder, but I'm starting to get more interested.

Alex wrote: There are situations where an 80 gig standalone DVD recorder will be a faster option than going the computer route.

Just about anything would be faster than what I'm doing now.

Post by **threeinv** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 2:07 am

My home DVD player is the Sony DVP-S360, circa 2000 or 2001. It has played both 4X and 8X media (burned at those respective speeds) with no trouble. I only recently upgraded the Pioneer A07's firmware to burn at 8X, but I've burned lots of 4X media at 4X for many people (unknown players) and have only had one person whose Samsung DVD/VHS combo player was incompatible with my BeAll printable DVD-R (Ritek G04 worked just fine). Since I archive all my VIDEO_TS folders, I can quickly and painlessly burn another disc for someone if they need it--the time savings of burning at 8X is well worth it to me. It's a huge improvement to have come from a 1-hour burn (1X), then 30 minutes (2X), 15 minutes (4X), and now to 7 minutes (8X). However, let me restate that 8X is as fast as I will go; I'm not buying into the hype for anything faster. Check out the Media forum and surveys at http://www.videohelp.com/ for lots of good info and feedback regarding disc burning and compatibility.

--Derrick

Alex · Post by **Alex** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 2:44 am

ccortez wrote:
Alex wrote: There are situations where an 80 gig standalone DVD recorder will be a faster option than going the computer route.
Just about anything would be faster than what I'm doing now.

My friend has (30) 2 hour HI-8 tapes he wants to put on DVD. It appears his older HI-8 deck started to put weird dropouts on his originals. Luckily my Digital 8 camcorder seems to play back his tape fine.

He mentioned to me that he wouldn't even be able to get one DVD done in a day using his DVD set-up and I believe he has the same one that you do. The Computerized DVD burners were designed to work in conjunction with NLE time-lines and such.

If you don't need to do anything fancy you may find a standalone works really well for certain projects that don't need to visit your NLE system and in turn needlessly fill up your harddrive and also take up a lot more of your time.

Post by **Pedro** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 4:26 pm

I also have terrible results with Sony DVD-R discs. The pioneer drive in my iMac even reports errors during BURNING! I could use the Sony stuff only in my top set JVC recorder but the recorded movies stuck in many top set DVD players. NEVER AGAIN THAT SONY TRASH!
The very best results up to now IÃ‚Â´ve got with 8x TDK-R discs. They are cheap (25 discs for EUR 22,95) and play in ANY player I have tested up to now.
Pedro

Post by **S8 Booster** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 4:40 pm

Just a note on Sonys:

On some of my MACs the Sony CD-R burning speed has to be set to the exact max of the CD data like 8X otherwise the burning will fail so there is a snag there somewhere. There is a "Auto" setting that does not work with the CDs. Is it the same problem you encounter with the DVDs? I have burned some Sony DVDs without any problem though. Using an internal Pioneer too.

Setting the burning speed manually may be worth a try.

I think many Sony DVDs are made in "cheap mode" because they are dumped aound here over the past year(s). Possibly LQ of slighly defectives not released for the PRO marked but dumped for consumers like electronic components are. Those components dumped from the PRO world failing to meet the specs are "more than sufficient" to be used in your ROLEXs etc.

Cheap Verbatim DVD-Rs never caused a problem with me anyway.

R

Post by **super8man** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:13 pm

I use a sony 8x burner on a pc platform and use regular dvd deals from newegg.com...currently buying the 100 stacks from them for about 35 bucks. Only found one dud dvd in the 300 or so I have burned.

I use dvd-r and have only had one complaint. My aunt could not read the dvd on here SONY dvd BURNER standalone deck. So, I burnt her a dvd+r and she was happy.

Oh, I do ALL my burning at 4X.

I would bet the real problem is with the crappy Sonic software you were using. Get a better product like DVD Architect or something. Sony's Sonic was the most useless pos I ever used for burning. I tried it once and trashed it.

m

Post by **ccortez** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:22 pm

Alex wrote:He mentioned to me that he wouldn't even be able to get one DVD done in a day using his DVD set-up and I believe he has the same one that you do.

Well, OK, it's not THAT bad. I can do several in a day, but I could do twice-several at 4X! ;)

When I get back from the holidays I'm going to do more tests with different setups and media and see if I can find a sweet spot at 4X (or higher)...

Filmshooting

Problems with my DVD

Problems with my DVD

Re: Problems with my DVD

Get real. Cheap DVDs are just fine. 4X burning rules.