My DVD-R movies freeze and break up after about 20 mins

the manglator

I've done an interview/documentary which lasts about 30mins, edited it in premiere, used Sonic MyDVD to write it to DVD-R, and applied Neato CD Labels on them, boxed them up and all.

I made 20 copies for sale and now I'm getting a fair few people coming back to me saying that the video is grand for the first 20 mins but in the last ten the picture usually starts to break up and sometimes freezes alltogether, going back to the start menu.

I've tested on of the 'faulty' ones on my own DVD player and it playes grand and I randomly tested most of them before I sold them.

Does Anyone know why this might be happening??????????

I think maybe its the Labels on the disks, I'm getting a printer later on in the week which prints straight on to the disks so maybe this might help.
I hope!!!

Thanks in advance

Borderfox

I had some problems like this when making videos of people at horse riding competitions played grand on my dvd player and pc but when other people tried to play it on expensive dvd players it worked sporadically for them. I played around with different media too which seemed to help but mostly was expensive dvd players not recognising the dvd's.

Borderfox

I have an Epson r200 printer and its the business for printing dvd's. I got printable cd's and dvd's from www.marxcomputers.ie if that's any help

Lump Basher

I burn hundreds of DVDs per month, and I found out the hard way: don't burn at 8x - even with an 8x burner and media - keep it @ 4x.

Exact same thing was happening - do you burn at 8x?

On another note - don't use Sonic DVD. Download the trial of Premiere Pro, and you can open up your 6.5 project perfectly, then go to "FILE > Export Timeline > Export to DVD".

the manglator

I just tell Sonic to write at the best speed so maybe its a good idea to specify 4x to be safe.

The reason I am using Sonic is that when i try to burn using Premiere or Encore the thing takes ages and then it just crashes.

Sonic's the only one that seems to work, even though the menu templates are ridiculously bad.

Any other ideas for good DVD authoring programs (reasonably priced for the student of course!) that have decent menu options??

Oh yeah and I've ordered the epson r1800 printer to print directly on to the dvds next time, because I've heard a lot of people complaining that the sticker labels can unbalance the discs.

Thanks for your help

Tony H

first of all buy the best media that you can , taiyo yuden or verbatim are the best and the labels can cause problems with some dvd players , use nero to burn your project , and if you want any advice the best site to look at is
http://club.cdfreaks.com/?

Lump

To be honest I think the problem runs deeper, if it's crashing burning using some software and not others it might be a setup problem. Have you got the latest drivers?

John

sham69

I also burn a lot of dvds a week. Could be one of many problems.
Cheap media can cause problems, make sure your hard drive is fairly clean and defragged. I use nero to burn and i get about a 99 percent success rate.
As mentioned earlier dont burn faster than 4x. Make sure you have the latest drivers and firmware for your drive. I would not recommend sonic dvd.
Also as mentioned earlier some of the more expensive players seem to struggle with some dvd-r's. Are you using - or + 'rs?

johnnyrotten

I think it may be down to the hardware. I have an expensive Surround sound DVD Home theatre set which gives many problems with DVD-r and DVD+r. But my cheap Lidl DVD player plays all mt DVDs perfectly.

Bottom line...Does the DVD player support DVD-r / DVD+r ???

Lump Basher

johnnyrotten wrote:

I think it may be down to the hardware. I have an expensive Surround sound DVD Home theatre set which gives many problems with DVD-r and DVD+r. But my cheap Lidl DVD player plays all mt DVDs perfectly.

Bottom line...Does the DVD player support DVD-r / DVD+r ???

Of couse it does, or it wouldn't play them AT ALL. The problem is clearly with the discs.

And Sham69 - it makes no difference if it's +r or -r.

the manglator

I hear ya.

I'm going to get the verbatim or maxell discs this time, the last ones were by 'imjet', not exactly a recognized brand as far as I know but cheap as hell!

I've always used DVD-Rs because I know they're the ones supported by most players. At least I know that the movie started to play on everyones players, but just started to act up after a while playing.

They tell me that the disc usually played grand the first time, but after that the problems started to arise. Very Strange!

So would Nero be the best option to burn them next time??

I'll be doing this next batch in the next day or so.

I'll defrag the disk and check for the latest drivers first, and I can tell ya how I get on.

At the end of the day, maybe I'll find out the problem lies with the people just having bad/old DVD players!!!

Lump Basher

Nah - it couldn't be EVERYONE's players. SOlution: Use Nero if possible, get better discs, and burn at 4x.
Download the latest trial version of Nero, as is has built-in protection against buffer underruns ("Justlink"). Maybe just use Sonic to author the project to a folder, but use Nero to burn the authored files @ 4x - maybe even 2x to be sure. The fact that Premiere & Encore crash (which are usually very stable programs - bar Encore V1.0), means there's some conflict issue between drivers while the burning is being attempted. Nero should hopefully avoid this issue, as it's very stable and made just for burning.

decob

As a number of people have already stated, it could be a number of thing.

1. Media - avoid cheap media for video, go for a decent brand, taiyo yuden are regarded quite possible as the best, and hence are very expensive. I use Ritek grade and no real problems thus far.

2. Avoid putting labels on them, Get white full face dvd's and and something like the epson r200/300 to print the labels.

3. Don't burn at the max speed of your burner or media.

4. Also what data rates are you encoding your dvd;s at... i've had issues previously where something was encoded too high (but still well within the dvd spec) that on some players fell apart..

maxplanar

The behaviour you're talking about is very typical of DVD players that aren't actually spec'd to play DVD-R/RW. Even old DVD players will have a decent crack at playing the disc, even if it's not officially supported. After a while playback will start to get blocky, stutter, long pauses, the whole deal, until finally playback fails - and it could take 20 minutes to reveal the problem, although I'd expect it sooner. A DVD player that specifically supports the protocol may not look any different, may have a very similar product code number, whatever, but you must have it to play back this format disc. It's a total minefield - you can NEVER guarantee playability of a DVD-R/RW disc. Glass mastering is your only guaranteed method of ensuring playback on every DVD player, and that costs $$$$$$.

Your best bet is to check the player against the database available at www.videohelp.com, where they list the capabilities of every player on the market.

Finally, it could also be caused if your data rate is too high overall. Is all your audio AC3 encoded? If not, it should be.

the manglator

Thanks for the advice,
But the fact that the DVD generally plays fine the first time on many people's players, but only gets dodgy on subsequent plays near the end would seem to go against the idea of the players not supporting DVD-R media.

That point you make Maxplanar about the data rate being too high overall, and having the audio AC3 encoded, is it in Premiere when I export the movie as an AVI that I should be doing that?