non-compliant DVD or bad media??

[shardy]

Hi, I'm fairly new to making DVDs , I've been making VCDs and SVCDs successfully that play on my standalone DVD player for a while, but I'm having no luck wth DVDs. I'll give as much detail as I can below, then any help would be gratefully received.

I'm trying to back up some of my old VHS on to DVD, in particular some comedy series (Black Adder). Each series has six episodes of 30 min, so ideally I wanted to get one series per DVD (Making SVCDs would take far too many CDs and too much time). I re-encoded each episode to MPEG 2 using TMPGEnc and VBR (2-pass). To ensure I could fit all six episodes on one DVD I encoded them at half D1 (352x576) in PAL format , which I was under the impression would be DVD compliant. The bitrate was about 2500.

Next, I tried to author my first DVD using DVD-lab. I imported the six episodes, but left the format of the project properties set to D1 as this was what DVD-lab reccomended (I also followed the guide on this site about using DVD-lab to the letter). I encoded my MPEG2 menus as full D1, then burnt everything to DVD-R. The resulting DVD plays fine on my PC, but my standalone 'Panasonic DVD S-75' comes up with the message that it cannot play this type of disc.

I thought that the problem may be because the movies were in half-D1 whereas the menus were in full-D1, so I started again, and this time encoded the MPEG2 menus at 352x576 to match the movies. I burnt the project to another DVD-R, which again plays on the PC, but the panasonic player again says it can't play this type of disc.

I have done as much research in the guides and on the forum as I can, but cannot find a reason for this. Do standalone players not cope well with DVDs at a resolution of 352x576? Or could it be bad media? I have looked up my player on the forum and it seems to suggest that the S-75 can play almost anything! This media is generic DVD-R, as I didn't know any better when I bought it, but I'm surprised that the player doesn't play it at all.

I think that's all the information I can give, sorry if the solution is obvious, but as I say, I'm a bit of a newbie, and this is getting very frustrating. Thanks for your help in advance,

Sam

[SLK001]

Nothing that you are doing is non-compliant. Maybe your Pany doesn't play any DVD-R disks. Maybe it is having problems with the 1/2 D1 resolutions (even tho it shouldn't).

I don't know what the quality of the original VHS tapes are, but I've had success in putting four 50 minute episodes on one DVD-R at full D1 resolution. Just put in a lot of "noise" filtering. I use CCE and I used the CCE NOISE filter at 15 (out of 25, IIRC).

[reboot]

Are you burning to +R or -R? (i know you said -r above, just checking to make sure).
Some models of that player cannot read +R disks, and it seems to depend on who Panny bought the decoder chip from.
Try burning to a RW, and/or a -R if this is the case.
If not, I have NO idea why it shouldn't work, because even some commercial dvd's are HalfD1 encodes.
Try burning at half your normal speed (2x). Try different media.
Does the Panny do anything? Does it report "no disk", or does it attempt play, and there's no picture/audio?

[shardy]

Thanks for the reply, the manual states that the Panasonic only plays DVD-R, not DVD+R, although other users all say it plays both. I might have a look at CCE instead of TMPGEnc and see if I can encode them at full D1.

Sam

Sorry, didn't see the second reply, the disks are generic -R...

[shardy]

The second time I burned at 2x using Easy CD and DVD Creator 6 (my writer is a NEC 2500 btw).

The player tries to read the disk, then after about 20 seconds it gives a message on the screen along the lines of:

'The player cannot play this type of disk, please insert another disk'

[reboot]

First, I would never use EZCD for anything. Get the Nero demo and try burning with that.
Second, I would grab some different media, or try your compilation on a dvdrw (+ or -) or both.
When the player says "this type of disk" I assume it's meaning -r and not the HalfD1.
Do a test write of a full D1 (just menus or something you already have), and see if anything plays. If you get the same error msg, then you know it's the media that's the problem.
Try Mainconcept for encoding at full D1, it's faster and easier to use than tmpgenc and CCE.

[shardy]

Thanks for all the advice, I'll give all that a try before I buy a whole new batch of media

[shardy]

Hi

Thought I'd let you know that changing to Nero seems to have done the trick, 3 generic DVD-Rs have all been recognised by my player now Guess this means I'll have to pay out for Nero as well ! lol

On a seperate note though, the complete beginners guide to DVD-Lab has been really useful, I'm able to make some fairly decent DVDs now, thanks for that.

I do have one issue though, I don't seem to be able to use the search buttons on the remote control for the panasonic s75 to scan through the movies. When I try I get a 'no entry' sign in the top right corner of the TV. Is this likely to be an issue with the player, or am I missing something obvious? Do you have to program the remote buttons somewhere in DVD-lab?

Thanks again for the advice,

Sam