DVD playback fine on computers, but not so fine on home players...

[stonesfan]

Hi folks

Am using ubuntu 8.10 and the latest version of Devede. Whenever I produce a video DVD from an avi or mpg file, it plays back perfectly on a computer (have tried 2 laptops and 4 desktops using windows and linux), yet play it back on a home DVD player, and the playback can get a little 'shaky' with the image literally doing just that. Have tired different brands of DVD-R plus +/-r. In some players the playback is just about acceptable, others, its simply not watchable.

Any ideas? beginning to really annoy me now and I'm needing to produce our football club's highlights DVD in time for Xmas! Have managed to master all of this video editing lark, but the final stage is eluding me.

Am using Videostudio 9 in Windows to edit the video and render to an .avi file, then switching to linux to do the producing.

The files play back flawlessly as .avi's or mpgs. Mind you, they also do as a DVD video on a computer system.

Any ideas?

Cheers

[fritzi93]

Since playback on your computer is okay, it would seem to indicate a problem with:

1) Crummy media, or at any rate media your set-top dislikes.

*OR*

2) Dirty laser in the set-top player.

To elaborate: most reliable media are Verbatim and Taiyo-Yuden, the latter available online. Verbatim is manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemical. Other brands, you literally never know who made it unless you read off the manufacturer I.D. with DVDinfoPro, or ImgBurn. Some stuff is truly junk, such as CMC magnetics (Memorex!)

Then again, you may have okay media and still get bad results with old burner firmware. Or okay media and a finicky set-top.

The dirty lens possibility is easy to eliminate, get a cleaner disc and try it. It works well for me, if you smoke or have some other environmental factor that will gunk up a laser lens, it's worth a go.

[stonesfan]

Thanks for this. I will indeed try some of the Verbatim media as suggested.

If this doesnt fix it. Am going to try:

a) with a decent brand new DVD burner. They are so cheap to pick up now. £22 can get you a HP or Sony.

b) Being as its linux, can just take the hard disk out and plug into another system and try burning from there.

Have also tried burning this DVD with a windows based app, so don't think its my software config.

Oh, and a lot of the disks ive been burning with are 'Memorex'!