DVD authoring

[ArcticTrout]

Im having some serious problems getting my DVD-R's to playback on a standalone player. I have the Pioneer DV-343 and it starts with the VIDEO_TS VOB file then stops. The player keeps searching the disc until it finally shuts down. I am wondering if maybe its the DVD menu. Would the DVD still work if I cut out the menu and went straight to the movie? Anyone have an knowledge of what im doing wrong.

[Darkbird]

If you are using a Pioneer DVD-RW burner, I would advise you to invest in a DVD-RW disc that you can practice with before commiting your first project or two to a DVD-R.

In my earliest attempts at creating DVD video, I managed to create a project that played fine in the authoring software's simulator and the disc played fine on the PC, but the menu navigation didn't work correctly on my set-top dvd player. I had to change the way I was authoring the menus to fix the problem.

Yes, you can cut out menus all together. Make your First Play item/command go directly to your video.

It's also remotely possible that you have a marginal or defective disc. Trying another disc or player may help with that kind of problem.

If you still have a problem, post what authoring software you are using and what burning software.

[alkieman]

This can happen if you have just copied the movie VOB files directly to a blank DVD-R. You will need to either us authoring software that supports VOB files, or split the file into its component mpeg video and mpeg/AC3 audio parts then use some authoring software.

I have had few problems ripping to my hard disk, re encoding at lower bit rates and then re authoring DVD movies. Got quite a few test discs now that all work fine.

Smartripper is generally used to rip the files to my hard disk (I use Win2000 so don't have the 4Gb file limit problems).
VOB2MPEG to split the streams.
ReMPEG to reencode at a lower bit rate without affecting quality very much.
DVD Virtuoso to author the DVD and burn directly to DVD-RW.

Once I am happy the disc works, then I'll commit it to DVD-R