My first DVD created with Pinnacle Studio 7 and TMPGEnc DVD Author worked fine, but in the process of creating my 2nd DVD, I ran into so many problems which I believe were associated with Studio 7 that I completely wiped my PC and started with a fresh XP install. The most annoying problem was that approximately 4 minutes (and multiples thereof) into each clip, there would be a video pause and the only way around it was to patch the frozen portion, but the kicker was the PC eventually slowed down to the point where it would not play any video file and it barely had enough speed to burn a CD.

For now I haven't reinstalled Studio 7 (partially since I can't find the original CD, and it can't import a DV file and stay in sync, I have to use Scenalyzer), but I also want to try using the software that came with my DVD burner (MyDVD) then use TMPGEnc and TMPGEnc DVD Author and I want to make sure things work before I spend the money.

I recovered most of the MPEG2 files I created with Studio 7 previously and made one new file encoded with TMPGEnc and authored the DVD. My standalone player has problems with the new file, it looks like the frame rate decreases if there's a lot of motion. All of the files are encoded at 3500kbps CBR video and 224kbps audio, the ones that work OK were encoded with Studio 7. For the 'misbehaving one' I used the wizard on TMPGEnc, selecting standard NTSC and adjusted the bitrate accordingly. All the files look fine on my PC when played with Media Player, and the DVD plays correctly on my PC using PowerDVD.

I'm wondering if there's some difference in the files created with the two encoders that would cause the authoring program to do something to that new file to make it difficult to play. I'd prefer to burn just the offending file to a CDR and try to play it since I have plenty of blank CDs but not many blank DVDs, but from what I'm reading here it looks like my DVD player won't like a CD in that format. I really don't want to pull all those videos back in again and reedit/reencode.

I suppose my next step is to author a DVD with just that file on it to see what happens, then go from there.

Any suggestions?