Stuttering on some DVD players

[jerwood]

My DVDs I make will work perfectly on some players and will stutter horribly on others. Some players will play the DVD pretty well and stutter once or twice. These are DVDs that I have created [I shot the video, edited, and authored them].

My equipment:

P4 2.8Ghz
Pinnacle Edition 4.5 or 5 [don't remember]
Pinnacle Impression 2.2.2
Sony DVD+-RW 4x

Media I have tried:
Memorex 4x
Maxell 4x
No name brand 4x

Is it that Impression sucks? How can I make these more compatible. I have an order for like 25 discs. How can I make sure that they work on more players than they currently do? I am frustrated.

Contact me however you want:
Jeremiah Wood
wood.jer@gmail.com
435.862.7446

[Soopafresh]

My spirit guide says your encode rate is too high. Ease it back a bit. I mean, how good must Tony Danza look on DVD ?

Seriously, you'll tend to see stutters on either bad media or material that was encoded at too high a bit rate.

[thecoalman]

Some disc formats (+R or -R) don't work on some players. It's not going to happen no matter what you do. For example I had two discs of different format with identical content on each disc. One played the other didn't. Look to the left under DVD players for disc compatibility.

Having said that you can try the following it might help:

1.Make sure the software you are using to burn with is updated to the latest version. Which version you have can be found by opening the program and on the top click help>about (insert software title). Updates can be found on the vendor's site.
2.Update you DVD burner's firmware to the latest version. To find what version firmware you currently have see the manufactuer's site for details.
3.Try burning at a slower rate.
4.Last but not least use good media. Cheap discs are cheap for a reason. See the DVD Media section to the left for reviews and comments on media brands and see the media forum.

[jerwood]

okay:

My software is updated to the latest version.
My firmware - I have never checked before. That could be something to look into.

There are a lot of settings in the burning program. Which ones will be the encode rate? and how high is too high? What should it be at?

[jerwood]

Burn rate:
I always burn at 1x or 2x - should I burn at 4x?

[Capmaster]

Use different media

[jerwood]

As far as media goes... I have always heard that DVD+R is more compatible than DVD-R - is that true? On the media listing to the left, it seems that the most compatible DVDs are -R. Just wondering.

[Bodyslide]

DVD-R are more compatible. Go Here
A good bit of info on the different media types.

[mpack]

I don't think it can be bad media, because the disk is readable without problems in some players. Nor do I believe its a media compatibility problem (eg. +R vs -R) because my understanding is that the disk should be completely unreadable if the media and player are incompatible: you wouldn't just get a few errors. Finally, I also suspect that there is nothing wrong with the firmware in your drive, since the disk it burns is perfectly readable in at least some players: producing a working disk would be my definition of working firmware!

So, I would agree with Soopafresh. It is an encoding / authoring problem of some sort, quite possibly that you simply used too high a bitrate. I think the maximum bitrate allowed by the DVD spec is 9Mbps for the video (I don't have this memorized, since my projects are usually limited by disk capacity, not max bitrate), but generally you can use far less than that.

Your mpeg encoding software very likely has a template for DVD video which will set all the various options for complete compatibility, then you can tweak the bitrate to fit the video on the disk, keeping below the max allowed.

Is the source video very short?

[StupaFly]

I would think that if it was an encoding/authoring problem that it would be consistently bad. However, cheap media could work fine in some players but not others.

I have had some bad experiences with certain media (namely Memorex and CompUSA brand discs) and players, and the problem was NOT "all or nothing". Sometimes bad media would play ok, other times (the exact same disc/player) it would skip, other times it wouldn't read at all. In other players, the disc might play great, yet others won't even recognize the disc.

I started buying only good media (TDK, Taiyo, etc) and have not had a single problem since. Personally, TDK +R/+RW have treated me extremely well in every single player I have tried. The extra few bucks will save you a lot of time and headaches.

Just my 2 cents.

[doppletwo]

I don't think it can be bad media, because the disk is readable without problems in some players. Nor do I believe its a media compatibility problem (eg. +R vs -R) because my understanding is that the disk should be completely unreadable if the media and player are incompatible: you wouldn't just get a few errors.

I bought some LONGTEN once very very cheap. They only played correctly in the drive they were burned in and one standalone player (a Cyberhome). I tried them in about twenty different players. About 50% of the players would load the movie. 25% loaded then didn't play. and 25% played but skipped about once every 15 minutes.

He mentioned Maxell discs which are pretty good the other two, the no name and Memorex are most likely junk AKA coasters straight off the spindle. Open the shrink wrap set one on your desk and put your coffee mug on top of it. For the no name discs I would use at least two since they don't even make good coasters.

[mpack]

About 50% of the players would load the movie. 25% loaded then didn't play. and 25% played but skipped about once every 15 minutes.

So you had problems on 100% of players, which would be different from the symptoms that jerwood reports.

However, I take your general point. It's probably my own ignorance, but I don't understand how a disk (-R/+R compatibility issues aside) can be fine in one player, and fine except for intermittent problems in another player, if the problem lies with the media and not the player.

Eg. if the disk works fine in one player then it means that all the pits and lands are in the right place, and the disk is adequately reflects light of the correct wavelength, and the data structures on the disk are mostly compliant, yes? So if all of that is the case, then what changes when the disk is put in another player?

Or to take an analogy: If you took a USB memory stick, stuck it in PC A and was able to read all the files then you would conclude that PC A and the memory stick are both working fine, right? Then you put the stick in PC B and find some or all of the files to be unreadable. Back in PC A it is readable again. Clearly there is problem is with PC B - either a compatibility problem, or the USB driver is busted or something.

Why does the same diagnostic logic not work with DVD media?

[jerwood]

As far as bitrate, I have a spot in the editor [the encoder] that says IPB settings. The maximum video bitrate is 6.000 Mbit/s.
The GOP size is 12.

Is that too fast - or just right - or too slow?

I am going to try some new media, it looks like.

Should I use a different encoder?

I could export from the editor as an .avi [uncompressed] or something and then use another program to encode it to mpeg2. Is that going to give me more compatibility?

--Jer Wood
wood.jer@gmail.com
435.862.7446

[jerwood]

I forgot to say that yes, my video is really short - like 22 minutes.
the othr one that I am having trouble with is about 40 minutes.


ANOTHER THING:

Taiyo media is a name that I have seen thrown around and Stupafly recommended Taiyo or TDK +R. I want to know which is the best to start out with. I want to do this ASAP. Is Taiyo better than TDK? Should I use DVD-R? Should I use +R?

Thanks:

Jer Wood