Choppy DVD playback

[jabbo5150]

I am at a loss here.

I am running OS 10.4.4 on a G5 Dual 2Ghz with 2GB of Ram

My machine has the SONY DVD RW DW-U21A drive in it.

I have a spool of Memorex 8x DVD-R and TDK DVD-R

Quite frequently, when I have tried to burn a DVD on teh Memorex discs recently, when I go to play them back in my DVD player, I get a choppy picture, or it freezes, or it looks like the colrs are breaking apart on the screen. I dunno what the technical term for that is, but that's what it is doing.

But not always.

I have burned some discs from the Memorex spool and they burn fine.

Now most of the TDKs work fine, but I have had a few of them go bad.

I have had these problems both burning out of DVDSP 4, as well as from copied diskimages I have tried to make for people and burn in Toast 6.1.1

I ran Disk Utility, repaired permissions, cleared the Cache with Cache Out X and Ran Disk Warrior.

Any idea what can be causing these problems? I don't think it is my DVD player as it plays other burned DVDs just fine.

Also, I know many people have said that the Pioneer drive works better than the Sony and that there is a dual layer that does 16x regular DVDs as well as Dual Layer at I think 2x. Should I install one of those instead? Would I have to flash the drive? (I have no PC access to do this and no real extra money to buy one of these right now). Which model Pioneer is the one I should get? 8x media is getting impossible to find, so I may be forced into this soon enough.

[jabbo5150]

just as an extra thing, it is almost always the last chapter that is problematic

[albloom]

It actually probably *is* your player. Or your discs. The software
fixes you applied could not possibly (well at least not probably)
have an impact on your problem.

Reading commercial discs is easier than DVD-Rs. They are pressed,
with a stronger signal than burned discs. Less chance for the read
head to be confused.

Try a CD/DVD cleaner disc. Cheap and readily available.

If that doesn't do it, replace the drive.

Yes, I've found Pioneer drives quite good. You don't need to flash, but
DVRFlashX works fine in Terminal. You probably need Patchburn to get
the system to see it as supported.

[jabbo5150]

Thanks for the info. Which Pioneer model is it?

As for my DVD player, it is an older Sony model. Maybe it is finally going?

[gslrider]

You maybe right about your burner coming to it's last legs. But I would say it's the DVD media.

It's normal for spindles to have a few bad discs.

Memorex has never been the best media to use, at least in my opinion. On more than one occassion, I've had half the batch go bad. And it wasn't my burner. I bought Maxell, and I only had 1 bad disc of the 100. TDKs are okay too.

I would try to avoid using the new 16x DVDRs. Older burners, tend to have issues with the new faster 16x media. If you can upgrade your firmware for your burner, to the latest version, you should be able to avoid this issue. Otherwise, it's probably a good idea to upgrade to new burner. I would go with either Pioneer or NEC/LaCie.

[jabbo5150]

i am using 8x and generally have had no problems with memorex before. it is in my set top tv dvd player that I am having the playback issues

[gslrider]

Are you burning ripped DVDs, or a DVD you've created (through DVDSP)?

If it's the first, how are you going about ripping a DVD? If it's not ripped properly, you will get the results you are experiencing.

If it's the latter, what type of video files are you using? If you are converting MPEGs or AVIs to MPEG-2, what maybe happening is you are getting dropped frames. This will account for the choppiness. MPEG2 Works is a pretty good app for converting MPEGS or AVIs to MPEG-2 files you can use in DVDSP. No drop frames and pretty good quality (depending on the original).

My suggestion, by a five back of Maxell, or even Sony DVD-Rs. And duplicate the process you are using for the other DVDs that are problematic. If it doesn't freeze or get choppy, then you know it's the media. If it does, than it's either any of the 2 above, or worse case scenario, your burner.

Hope this helps.

[jabbo5150]

Both. Discs I have created in DVDSP and some I have saved as disk images in toast. Aslso, for ripping, I use mac the ripper and toast to burn