Burning Compliant DVD's - Help requested please

[coolbone]

I am trying to burn playable DVD's in my HP740b litescribe DVD burner that will work in my Durabrand STS98 or Symphonic SD200E DVD players. My research into this is vast, and some of it is displayed below to give some insight to whoever may have an answer for me. I have more information if needed, i just did not want to over do it and have people think "no way in hell im gonna read through all that trash". lol

I have tried making playable copies of my old movies, tv shows, and copy's of discs but all either play incorrectly showing a vsync scroll or an error that displays "incompatible disc error, please remove disc". i managed to burn one working copy of part 3 of the lost room and dont remember what settings i had to use to make it so(used Nero 6.x with NEROvision 3). some of the discs i burn that will not play in my dvd players will play nicely in my neighbors expensive dvd player/home theatre set, and the one that did work in my home player does not work in his. however, professionally made discs that i rent will play fine in my players, as well as his.

I have tried using NERO 6.x (various attempts with differant versions of "x") with NEROvision express 3, Convertx2DVD, even tried making the VOB files myself with another package from gordianknot and burning the disc as a data disc with the proper structure. still unable to make a working copy. (the old school "nero burning rom" is not available on the program list, and express doesnt seem to offer a button to use it even tho i am pretty sure its a primary component to nero burning)

Media that i am using is a value pack of Memorex DVD+R[RW] discs. according to the following pages from this site, this media type is compatible with the above mentioned players. already made half a stack of coasters, and ill never again have coffee stains on my computer desk!

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.php?DVDnameid=6171&Search=Search?comments
https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.php?DVDnameid=4397&Search=Search?comments

I did update the firmware for the HP740b itself with the manufacturer. The drive works fine for burning data discs, and can even read its own "dvd" burned discs, as well as for burning normal 700mb CD's

my thoughts are that the settings with the burning software mentioned above are burning discs that involve bit rates that my dvd players are not able to read, tho i am not entirely sure how or why. maybe in the burn settings of the software used or the settings used to convert from file to VOB or prepare the file to burn as dvd from avi. I am hoping someone can tell me exactly what it is i need to do to get this right. The file structure i am using is one i found online(most likely on a page here at videohelp) as follows.

AUDIO_TS (undefined) DVD Audio
VIDEO_TS VIDEO_TS.BUP
VIDEO_TS.IFO The first video play item, IFO, usally a copyright notice or a menu
VIDEO_TS.VOB The first video play item, VOB
VTS_01_0.BUP
VTS_01_0.IFO Title 01, IFO, usually the main movie
VTS_01_0.VOB Title 01, VOB 0, the menu for this title
VTS_01_1.VOB Title 01, VOB 1, the video for this title
VTS_01_2.VOB Title 01, VOB 2, if larger than 1 GB it will be splitted into several vobs
VTS_01_3.VOB Title 01, VOB 3
VTS_01_4.VOB Title 01, VOB 4, up to 10(0-9) VOB files if necassary
VTS_02_0.BUP
VTS_02_0.IFO Title 02, IFO, usually movie extras
VTS_02_0.VOB Title 02, VOB 0, the menu for this title
VTS_02_1.VOB Title 02, VOB 1, the video for this title
VTS_xx_x.BUP
VTS_xx_x.IFO And so on
VTS_xx_x.VOB
VTS_xx_x.VOB
VTS_99_9.VOB Up to 99(1-99) titles with max 10(0-9) VOB files each


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My Computer
Proc: 1Ghz AMD Athlon
RAM: 512SDRAM 133mhz
Video: GeForce 4400MX 64MB V-RAM
Sound: Soundblaster Live 5.1
Hard Drives: 80GB IBM IC35L080AVVA07-0 7200spin (master w/ windows xp pro SP2 installation and program files directory)
40GB Maxtor 4D040H2 5400 spin (slave used for storage)

as you can imagine from the specs, each attempt at this takes the better part of a day to encode. ive averaged one or two attempts per day and have enough coasters to give christmas presents next year, ill have my kids paint them up pretty with water paints!
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Default Settings for Durabrand STS98 dvd player.

Language: English

Video
TV SHAPE: 4:3 Pan Scan (other options include 4:3 Letter Box and 16:9)
Video Output: CVBS (other options include YUV)
Brightness OFF
Edges OFF


Audio
Digital Out: Raw
L/R Speaker: small
Subwoofer: on
Surround Delay: 5/20ms
Centre Delay: 0ms
Pink Noise: off

Rating
Password: none used
Parental Lock: 8. Adult
Factory Set: No

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Default Settings for the Symphonic player unknown

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Please if anyone here knows what it is i am doing wrong, or what settings i need to change or set, if you need more information from me about configurations or my hardware, or if i just simply need to try a differant software to burn with, please either post here or email me at Coolbone@hotmail.com

Again, thanks for the awesome site and if you actually read this far, a huge thanks!

[Tom Saurus]

coolbone: I assume you have already captured these shows and now they are in DVD Mpeg2 files. I am thinking you are using a capture card to bring in what you have on vhs tapes. What are you using to Authorize these files?

I think what you should do if you have a DVD Authorizing Program you should allow it to create the Video TS and Audio TS folders, then use the "Build" feature in a program called ImagBurn to build an ISO file. Then using the "Write" function in ImagBurn allow that program to burn your ISO. Make sure you have "Verify" checked in the ImagBurn program, this checks your disc to see if it has burned correctly.

I am not very good at giving instructions, so I appologize if I ended up getting you confused. I watched "The Lost Room" on the Space Channel here in Canada and it was an interesting mini-series.

[coolbone]

Authorize? or Authoring?

a friend of mine does the capturing, i just bring him the VHS and he gives me avi's back. my dvd player wont play avi's tho. Do i need some kind of "authorization" for that?

one of my projects is an old home video collection for my grams, and im tryin to get a disk made so she can watch it without the VHS degredation over time.

ive tried authoring the files into dvd's with nero vision 3 (part of nero 6 install), convertx2dvd, and a few others as mentioned above. i get a successful burn message on most all the discs, they just wont play in the players. the nero vision is suppose to do most of the 'building' automatically, i tell it what video files to use, and build the menu's and set chapter marks and its suppose to build the dvd vob's etc for me. im wondering if my error lies somewhere in the nero configuration settings under "Default Video Options". defaults settings are as follows:

Aspect Ratio : Automatic
Quality Setting: Super Long Play
Sample Format: Automatic
Bit Rate: (grayed out, unable to change. its also blank)
Resolution: (grayed out, unable to change, says 352x480 half d1)
encoding mode: fast encoding(1-pass)

the only way to change the bit rate and resolution is to either change the quality setting, or use "custom setting" on the pull down menu.

i just got done workin down in the basement cleaning and stacking firewood, so after i shower (bet you can smell me from there) ill look up imagburn.

I heard through another channel that while my player supports dvd+r, it does not like the memorex dvd+r discs. but that doesnt explain why the discs wont play in the other players here at the house. im going to try to remake another disc (coaster) tonight.

Ive also learned that i have to double check my format to use NTSC and not the PAL

Yes, thats where i taped the lost room from was on SCI FI channel, awesome show and my favorite channel! I also have Earthsea im tryin to make a back up of for future viewing here at home :/

most of the time im content watching them on my granulated, outdated, 21inch (450pound) moniter, but occassionally i like to replay them on my tv with home theatre and sound lol

[dnix71]

If you have a set of ripped vobs you can use ifoedit to rebuild a complete set of simple ifos and bups. Ifoedit is very fast, but there is a bug in the programs UI. Drag the progress bar offscreen when the program is running. That will make it finish 4 times faster.

Put the real movie vobs (not the menu vob) in a folder and point to that folder in ifoedit and have it make one pgc and one chapter for each cell. Choose output destination same as source for the ifos and bups.

Name that folder VIDEO_TS
Create a folder next to it called AUDIO_TS Leave it empty.
Put those two folders in another folder named DVD_MOVIE
Burn the DVD_MOVIE as a UDF compliant disc.
If that won't play, then check your media. Try playing the disc at a friends house on a different brand of dvd player. Some players will only play +R, some -R some RW+/-
Some players are picky about the brand, too, for no apparent reason.

If you rip a movie and remove UOP's that can break the menu, leaving the disc unplayable without rebuilding the ifos and bups.

[Bjs]

I'd be doing a nero cdspeed scan on one or more you have already burnt to before going on and see what it shows up .

Stick with dvd-r
Burn at 4x
Watch the brand you use ... me personally it's verbatim's

Burn with imgburn .

Your actually using tools that combine both authoring and burning in one ... and most of these suck ... they normally do one thing really well , and mess up the other .

Technical issue : updated burner firmware ?

[GKar]

Authorize? or Authoring?

a friend of mine does the capturing, i just bring him the VHS and he gives me avi's back. my dvd player wont play avi's tho. Do i need some kind of "authorization" for that?

If all you have is an AVI, I think you need something to first encode it to MPEG2, then use something like TmpGenc DVD Author to create a burnable DVD compliant file structure...You probably get can get all the tools you need thru TmpGenc (Pegasys) that will handle all this properly, it did for me..I wouldn't use Nero's stuff for this, I had spotty luck.

If your friend would capture as a compliant MPEG2 instead of an AVI you could go straight to DVD authoring.

I would personally just buy a decent hardware MPEG2 capture card and have fun doing it myself. It's not that hard.

I would recommend a Dazzle DVC II card (extinct except on Ebay, $30 or so) but the software sucks and I ended using 3rd party capture apps to do it right. So for a new user it wouldn't be the way to go.

[Tom Saurus]

If you have avi files, you could purchase a Phillips Divx Player and you might be able to play them on your tv. You won't have menus though, like with a regular DVD.

Perhaps when your friend is capturing these videos he originally has them as Mpeg2 files, and then converts them to avi files. You might have to decide do you want to cram a whole lot of video onto one disc and not have the convenience of a conventional DVD, such as menus and chapters or do you want to have anywhere from a 90 minutes to 2 hours 20 minutes on a disc with menus and chapters. There is such a thing as Ultra Divx, but as far as I can tell it is just in its infancy and there isn't alot of programs to design menus for Divx files.

When it comes to the Lost Room, there is probably a chance that will be made into a series. The equivalent of the SciFi Channel in Canada is the Space Channel.

If you had a bigger hard drive I would suggest you get a capture card and record stuff into your computer, but you wouldn't believe how fast video files eat up hard drive space.

You came to a good place for advice. There are alot of people at videohelp.com that can give you advice to get you on the right track.

[MysticE]

ive tried authoring the files into dvd's with nero vision 3 (part of nero 6 install), convertx2dvd, and a few others as mentioned above. i get a successful burn message on most all the discs, they just wont play in the players.

Although twitchy at times if Nero NVE3 completes the task the files should be good to go. Are you saving to your HD as files (VIDEO_TS folder)? If not then try one (do not burn directly to disc). Then find the newly created VIDEO_TS folder and click on the VIDEO_TS.IFO file (or use a 'play from folder' option in your software player) to see if it's working/playing correctly... test chapters, menu etc. If all is well then it would appear to be a media and or burning problem. You burn these files to disc with Nero Express, choose DVD-Video Files and burn.

That +R discs are compatable with your set top doesn't mean that your specific brand are compatable (a good match/write strategy) with you burner. The suggestion to try Verbatim -R is a good one as the MCC ones seem to work well with almost anything.

Your 'Super Long Play' half D1 setting is not going to produce a very good looking DVD. Is there a reason you chose this? Are you trying to pack over 4 hours on your blank? Using the 'Custom' setting allows you to set the bitrate to maximise your blank's size. You can use this site to determine the bitrate.

https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm