Authored DVD looks fine at home but crappy elsewhere

[steelborn]

Hi,
I've authored several dvds with Moviefactory 2. When I play them on my home dvd player, everything looks fine. When I give the discs to others to watch, they say the images are jittery and things are out of sync. How can this be? I'm using the Sony DRU-500A. I encode my media with TMPGEnc. I'm using DVD-R discs. What else can I be doing to make sure these things play properly on other machines?

Thanks in advance,
Erik

[Rickster]

It's a crapshoot, man. With DVD-R's, you always run the risk of the disc not playing in someone else's dvd player. You can lesson the odds of complaint if you find some gold or silver dvd-r media and not use the magenta tinted ones. Some dvd players have a problem reading the data through the magenta coloring on the disc. And some players, like RCA models, won't play DVD-R's at all...I've seen this firsthand myself after looking in the manual and seeing it won't play DVD-R's.

[steelborn]

Are there any gold or silver dvd-r media that you could reccomend? I've got, like, 50 of the magenta ones.

Thanks,
Erik

[borghe]

I don't have recommendations for discs, but I can verify it's a crapshoot. A friend had burned 4 copies of a disc. Each disc was a perfect copied and played fine on my player and his player. We took the lpayer to a bud's PS2 and it would only load 4 out of every 5 times. We then took it over to my brothers house with a second generation Sony player (DVP-S300) and everything played fine but the audio slowly went out of sync. We never got it fixed though.

[steelborn]

Well crud, that's no good. If you wanted to make a disc that plays everywhere, you'd have to get it burned professionally. I'm sure that's not cheap

[mkelley]

There are other things you can do.

First, if you have authoring software that supports it (MF does not) use AC3 audio. Try DVDLab (30 day fully functional trial) which will support it. BeSweet can do the encoding for you (freeware).

Make sure you use high quality disks -- I wouldn't worry if they are magenta or not <g> but they should definitely be 2x certified. Use a name brand like TDK or some such.

Burn using Record Now (it came with your Sony drive) instead of MF's burning routines. Just choose Data and drag the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders over to the disk. Choose verify so it also verifies your burn.

Doing these things I am able to create disks that play on every player I have ever tried made in the last three years or so (all four of my home players -- I even went to Best Buy and tried them on seven or eight machines there). It's no guarantee they will play anywhere, however, but you will increase your odds.

[steelborn]

Would you mind walking me through the steps you use and the programs. I've been cutting pieces in Avid Xpress DV, and then exporting as Quicktime reference. I open the reference in TMPGEnc and make an mpeg file that I use in Movie Factory.

Thanks

[mkelley]

My authoring is all based on DV-AVI. I edit in Premiere and then export as an MPEG .m2v (using MainConcept, built in to Premiere 6.5) and .wav. I take this .wav and convert it using BeSweet as here:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/129419.php

I then bring in the streams (AC3 and .m2v) into DVDLab and author the DVD, and burn the DVD using Record Now as I mentioned earlier.

DVDLab trial can be downloaded here:

http://www.mediachance.com/download.htm

If you have DV-AVI you can convert it using TMPGEnc to elemental streams the same way -- for sure I wouldn't be exporting anything as Quicktime (but that's just me -- assuming everything is coded properly you should be able to use a lot of different sources. But making sure you are using DV-AVI means the pulldown and aspect ratios are right, frame rates, etc.).

[steelborn]

The quicktime reference file is just a way for TMPGEnc to use the original media. That's really the best way to get anything out of the Avid, unless I digitize to a DV tape and use that somehow.
I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for your help.

[VMiyoshi]

Yeah mkelley is right, I do all the same things, but I will use Cheap DVD-R's. I don't really think if a disc is Brand name it will play in more DVD Players, But I can tell Cheap Disc don't always burn fast, you have to test out what kinda of Disc for best for your burner. I have the same burner you have, but mine is External. I have learned it is picky on what kind of disc it will burn at Quick speeds. But it's true name Brand Disc you buy in lets say best buy will always burn at what ever X speed you buy, but who wants to pay 2 dollars and 50 cents a disc, I don't. I'm Currently still testing. I have some Cheap Primo's that I bought back in Nov. of 2002, for a dollar a Disc, that should burn at 1X, but when I upgraded the Firmwire on my Sony Burner they burn at 2X. I got a 200 Pack, and I burn all my DVD's I give to customers on them, and they have no problems. The only problem I have is I can't find them anymore, or any DVD-R's for a dollar a disc that will burn at 2x. And I haven't had any luck getting any other cheap disc I buy from these websites to burn at 4X. The only disc I got to burn at 4X was Memorx DVD+R, but there high. I need something cheap to burn at 4X, and not DVD+R, because I don't really trust that it will play in more DVD players. I have seen more DVD Players reject DVD+R disc then DVD-R disc.

[FulciLives]

Hello

Just a quick note about Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2
It will accept AC-3 audio if it is MUXED in with the video. So after creating the video with TMPGEnc you will have a file with a M2V extention. Encode your audio to AC-3 using BeSweet or whatever (BeSweet is free) and then MUX using TMPGEnc to create a single mpeg file (filename.mpg) that has both the video and the AC-3 audio.

MF2 will accept such a file. You WILL get an error message but ignore it. Although you will not have any audio in preview mode when using MF2 it will pass the audio along to the final DVD recordable without any problems. Just make sure that you do not do any editing in MF2 ... just make your menus and chapter points etc. Also make sure you have checked the option that says something to this effect (my wording may be off just a bit) "DO NOT RE-ENCODE DVD COMPLAINT FILES"

All done and no need to use DVDLab.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[txpharoah]

Some older Samsung, Phillips and Sony DVD players seem to be the leading culprits when it comes to DVD-R discs playing out of sync. Was it one of those giving you the problem?

I always have issues with my personal burns playing oddly on older Samsung players. That's the small percentage where my DVD-R's don't work, and that's the player's fault, not mine.

[steelborn]

I have the Sony DRU500A. The problem only happened on certain players. My player, and my brother's played the discs just fine.

[gmatov]

that's the player's fault, not mine.[/quote]

txpharoah,
Come on! I only make VCDs, SVCDs, X both, and they look great at home, but when I take 'em to work, I spend half the movie apologizing for the crappy playback. Most of it is the player, there. I had to look up a hack that would even ALLOW it to play my backups
I think a lot of what is produced looks a lot better when no one is critiquing it.
I still don't know how you guys are getting 3 hour encodes for 2 hour source with an 833 Celeron,when my 2000XP takes 10 to 12. And yours are DVD quality.

[dcsos]

Why are you using TMPG?

THE AVID DV EXpress has MPEG output directly
Of course It won't make a MUXED clip, but the 2 files AVID makes
are certainly DVD compliant

Almost any authoring application can use the AVID files directly!

I'll bet your problem stem from reprocessing thru TMPG

just BUILD the DVD with AVID MPEG files and they'll play in any player

my only warning concerns the BITRATE SLIDER in Avid DV Express:
They made it so its possible to make the bitrate too high for a DVD
so make sure to limit the overall bitrate to 6MILLION or less for your first try..Then, if the DVD plays everwhere see if you can go higher

[steelborn]

But how would that make the disc play fine on some machines and not on others? From the research I've done, TMPGEnc is supposed to be the best encoder out there (software only). XDV is not supposed to be very good at encoding (along with Cleaner 5). I wonder if a hardware encoder would make any difference?

[mkelley]

steelborn,

It's unlikely your encoder is causing any problems -- there are pretty well-established standards for what MPEG encoding is supposed to look like, and all encoders conform to this (BTW, TMPGEnc is not the best encoder out there by far -- it's probably one of the most well-known and maybe even most widely used, but nearly all pros know there are better encoders, such as MainConcept and CCE. These encoders produce better quality and/or much faster speed, but cost more and are thus not adopted by a lot of people to whom money is a concern).

Regardless of the quality of the encoding, an MPEG file ought to play the same on any player. When it doesn't it's not how the file is encoded, but a wide variety of factors -- instructions to the player as to how to play the file (how the VOB and IFO is put together), the sound that is muxed in, the disk quality and format, etc. etc.

Chasing after the encoding part of this equation is pointless.

[dcsos]

I disagree respectfully, altough he does say they look ok at home......
I would try just doing one job with only the AVID DVD EXPRESS making the files for ULEAD to author directly..

I think by going outside of AVID you've introduced a problem..so don't use CLEANER either and make the files in AVID COMPLIANT with ULEAD so it doesn't re-encode the assets

This will look great anywhere.
THE AVID ENCODING may not be as highly regarded as Main Concept's but
IT IS EXCELLENT and beats out TMPG in my book...