DVDRW Dropouts on standalone DVD player, others play it fine

[choirislife923]

I might be overreacting, but last week, I was granted permission to videotape a choral student showcase for one of the local high school choirs (basically, all of the members of the group had their own individual performance). The video, for the most part came out fine -- minus one REALLY BAD dropout on my 2nd tape; fortunately, since the person who experienced the video dropout was a friend of mine, she was able to understand the situation and gladly accepted my 75% off discount for the DVD I am selling of the production.

But another problem appeared today -- when I made a test burn of the authored DVD using a DVD-RW and played it back on my standalone ($20 DVD player from Radioshack's Black Friday sale last year), the video would drop in and out in another one of the performances. When I viewed it on my XBOX, PS2, Power Mac G5, and PC, it played back perfectly. Would this problem have to do with the fact that it is a DVD-RW? Since all the other units I tried this on we're practically computers, I have an odd assumption that they imployed some self-error correction technology and fixed it without notice. But on the other hand, could this all be due to DVD-RW incompatibility and the problem would be gone once I burn a final DVD-R copy?

[laspis59]

Your best bet is to burn to a DVD+R disc and if your DVD burner is capable of doing so,change the Booktype to DVD-ROM before burning the disc(Its more compatible with DVD Players)Burn at a slow speed to help reduce the amount of errors on the DVD+R and use good media.I would recommmend Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD+R's(The data on these discs lives longer and takes longer to become unreadable)
If the DVD-RW plays back fine on some players but not on others then it is probably down to a incompatibility problem or if it was burnt too fast then it might be harder to read and only some DVD Players are powerful enough to read the data.

[choirislife923]

Your best bet is to burn to a DVD+R disc and if your DVD burner is capable of doing so,change the Booktype to DVD-ROM before burning the disc(Its more compatible with DVD Players)Burn at a slow speed to help reduce the amount of errors on the DVD+R and use good media.I would recommmend Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD+R's(The data on these discs lives longer and takes longer to become unreadable)
If the DVD-RW plays back fine on some players but not on others then it is probably down to a incompatibility problem or if it was burnt too fast then it might be harder to read and only some DVD Players are powerful enough to read the data.

thanks for your reply. since -Rs tend to be less expensive than +Rs, I have an entire stack of 100 DVD-Rs (about 70 or so left). I tried burning to a DVD-R at 2x (lowest speed my burner will go) and playing it on the standalone again. it was an incompatibility problem between the DVD-RW and the standalone, the video played fine using dvd-r.

[lordsmurf]

Yes, DVD-RW is only about 60% compatible.

[laspis59]

Good to hear that the DVD-R works on your standalone Player choirislife923.DVD-R discs are quite compatible with most DVD Players,but if certain people you give your self made DVD-R's to complain that they dont work on their standalone player,then using DVD+R and changing the booktype to DVD-ROM,will most definitely work on their player,just so you know incase,but using DVD-R should probably be fine so you wont have to throw them in the garbage.