DVD writing problem

[jcargill]

Hi,
I have Roxio Creator 7 and a NEC ND 3520B writer. I have a new Dell Dimension 4600, P4 2.8 ghz 768 mb RAM. Hard disc is 120GB.

Using a Radeon 9250 graphics card I have successfully captured video from a VCR. Creator has let me edit it and playback on the PC is fine.

After writing to DVD the result on a regular DVD player is a good picture and sound but interrupted every 5-7 seconds with a pause in the picture.

I've tried shutting off Norton Systemworks/Antivirus during writing but this doesn't seem to help.

Any ideas? I've got a mound of home videos to transfer!

Thanks

Jim

[Bodyslide]

Sounds like this is a media issue. What brand of media are you using? And at what speed are you burning at? And Welcome to the Forums.

[steve2713]

Media used? DVD Player used? Most will probably say a bad disc, but if it is doing it consistently every 5-7 seconds throughout, I'm going to guess that the DVD player may be more likely to blame, having troubles reading -R or +R discs.

There's another possibility, if you used a high enough bitrate the player may be choking from too high of a bitrate for it to handle. I've got a Pioneer DVD recorder, and I just recorded one disc at 70min., VBR. I put the disc in my Apex 1200 dvd player and it would stutter and skip every few seconds. The bitrates on such a short disc can get very high in certain spots, and with VBR it can peak out very high. What was happening was it was stuttering on the very high bitrate spots of the disc. It played back perfectly on another player.

[winifreid]

When you say playback on the pc is fine, do you mean you can watch the dvd on your pc and it is fine or what?

[jcargill]

Hi,
Thanks for the prompt responses.
Firstly, playing back the clips on my PC from the hard drive works fine.
Media - I've tried Infiniti 8x and Bulkpaq 8x. Both had the same problem.
Regards
Jim

[steve2713]

What DVD player? Also, how much content is on the disc? Like I said, if you have a very high bitrate, it could be an issue.

Also, download DVDInfoPro or DVD Identifier, and get the media code of your discs. Although I'm really thinking it is an issue with the player more so than the media at this point, it may have problems reading burned discs or high bitrates as I suggested earlier. AGAIN, what is your DVD player?

[jcargill]

Hi,
The problem exhibits itself on a Sony Home Cinema DVD player, on a Scan DVD player and on my Dell PC when playing back the disc.
Regards
Jim

[steve2713]

OK, sounds like the disc(s) then. I would do a transfer rate test of the discs with Nero CD-DVD Speed, it will tell you if the drive is having troubles reading the discs. If you have any large spikes in the test, that would indicate problems reading the disc.

It would still be good to check the media codes as I mentioned, to see who actually manufactured the discs. And what program did you burn the discs with? That can be the cause as well. I've had the most trouble free burns using DVD Decrypter, but you have to burn as ISO images, which may require you to convert them to ISO images - can be done with DVD Shrink and other programs.

Edit: oops, I didn't see that you posted that you had Roxio. I'm not a fan of Roxio at all, but I would HOPE that it would burn the discs properly, especially if it is a recent version.

[jcargill]

Thanks - I'll spend some time checking all this out. / Jim

[mcbit]

I have exactly this problem which, for me, is confined to the use of DVD-R media. On my new Samsung P246M and on my aging Pioneer DVL-919 every 7-10 seconds playback pauses and restarts. However on my 2 year old Akai DV-PX7000E the discs play OK.

The problem is generally confined to discs produced on my desktop computer which has a Sony DRU 510A and an LG GSA 4160b burning under "ROXIO" which, in 7 or 8 years use in Adaptec / Roxio guises, has never presented me with a problem which I can attribute to the software!!. My Toshiba Satellite Pro M30, also running Roxio, with built in DVD-R/RW writer does not exhibit the problem, but then it is a 1x writer.

Incidently, I know that the data integrity is fine as I can copy the problematic disc back to a DVD+RW and it will play fine on all machines.

I never get this problem using DVD+R/RW no matter how supposedly good or bad the media. For this reason I have restricted my use of -R media to when I am travelling with my notebook and for general use in "data" back-up.

[jcargill]

Hi again everyone,
Well I'm reporting back with success after all my efforts and your kind input.
I tried other media and DVD+ but none of these things made much difference.
The guy in my local computer store (where I bought my writer and graphics capture card) seems quite clued up on these kind of problems.
His opinion was that there was probably some software issue in Roxio Creator 7 that led to the problem output.
As an alternative he recommended Ulead DVD Movie Factory and I downloaded a trial version to see how it worked.....and it basically worked right out of the box!
So, thanks again and if anyone else is having similar problems I hope this wee exercise will be of use to them.
Regards
Jim

[steve2713]

For future reference, if you are doing DVD backups, consider using DVD Decrypter to burn the discs. It works flawlessly, gives the most compatible discs, and is free. Only thing you need to remember is that it burns only ISO images, not actual files. DVD Shrink and other programs can output as an ISO file instead of individual files though, so that's not a big issue.

Try it, it it works better than anything else for trouble-free discs.