Samsung HT-TX75 not playing my Divx & Xvid files

[danimaltron]

I have many DVD-R discs with .avi files that are divx or xvid format. I had a very cheap Sony DVD player that played them without any issues, ever. Tonight I purchased the Samsung HT-TX75 which is a home theatre in a box system.

It plays some files, but not many. The wierd thing is, the player doesn't seem to even see some of the files on a particular disc. When I check the disc contents they just don't show up. This didn't happen on my Sony.

So now I want to track down why the Samsung doesn't like these particular files so that I can fix them.

I have attached two screenshots: avi_notworking.jpg is 1 of the files that is burned to a DVD-R that doesn't work. avi_ISworking.jpg is 1 of the files that is working absolutely great and is also burned to a DVD-R.

Can anyone shed some light as to why my Samsung player may prefer the one file over the other?

I have burned these discs with Nero, and I believe all of them are multi-sessions. The disc with the problem file - I tried re-opening in Nero and unchecked the "allow multiple sessions" and hit burn. It did something (I was hoping it would close the multi-session) but it didn't fix any issues for the player. Multi-sessions worked fine in the Sony player as well.

Thanks

Edit: file uploads dont seem to be working here, so here are the images:

is working


is NOT working

[jagabo]

Do all the ones that don't work NOT have packed bitstream (PB in GSpot) and 2 consecutive B frames (BB 2 max in GSpot)? If so, try remuxing with packed bitstream with Mpeg4Modifier.

The other possible problem is the 96 kbps mp3 audio in the file that doesn't work. Some players don't like low audio bitrates, especially if it's stereo, not joint stereo. If this is the problem you'll need to reencode the audio with a higher bitrate.

[danimaltron]

At first I was thinking the same thing, then I realized one of the non-working files showed these specs:


This file is not working, but has a PB, and higher bitrate audio. Unless the player simply doesn't like the LAME MP3 codec - is that a possibility?

Any other ideas?

Thanks for your help!

[jman98]

I have burned these discs with Nero, and I believe all of them are multi-sessions. The disc with the problem file - I tried re-opening in Nero and unchecked the "allow multiple sessions" and hit burn. It did something (I was hoping it would close the multi-session) but it didn't fix any issues for the player. Multi-sessions worked fine in the Sony player as well.

I want you to understand that almost no DVD players will support multi-session discs. You got lucky with your Sony. It might be the only player out there that supports them. Until I read your post I honestly that thought that there weren't any players that supported multi-session discs. What happens is that ONLY the first session gets read and everything else gets ignored. Please don't burn multi-session discs in the future. If you don't have enough stuff to fill up a disc, wait until you get enough and burn everything in one session. Also, for best results NEVER burn "track at once" but always burn as "disc at once".

You know know WHY your Samsung can't see the files and I told you how to fix it. The choice is yours. Either you take my advice and fix your problem or you ignore it or argue about how "multi-session should work" or "track at once should work" etc. Yes, they SHOULD work in an ideal world, but in reality they don't work at all on almost every player out there. If you burn single session, disc at once, it WILL work.

[danimaltron]

I'm not looking to argue! I appreciate your advice, I didn't know that. I just assumed it was fine since I always did that with my Sony. I would keep adding stuff to a disc until it was full then start a new one.
And another wierd thing to note is that the Samsung player does play some of my multi-session discs just fine. But I realize it's quite inconsistent.

I'll try what you said and see if it works.

My question now is: Is there any way that I can go back and fix those multi-session discs that don't work in my Samsung? Is all hope lost for them? Can I open them up and do burn something into them to make them not multi-session?

[jagabo]

Is there any way that I can go back and fix those multi-session discs that don't work in my Samsung? Is all hope lost for them? Can I open them up and do burn something into them to make them not multi-session?

Any disc that you didn't create with "no multisession" selected in Nero is multisession.

When you create a multisession disc a temporary table of contents (TOC) is written to the disc. The master TOC, what most players use to see what's on the disc, is left empty. This is because the master TOC (any part of the disc really) can only be written to once. Each time you add more files another temporary TOC is created. When you finalize the multisession disc the master TOC is written. Apparently, all the temporary TOCs confuse a lot of DVD players.

When you create a non multisession disc no temporary TOCs are created and the master TOC is written along with all the files.

If any of your multisession discs aren't finalized, finalizing them may or may not help your new player read them. For any that can't be read you will have to copy all the files off the multisession discs and burn them to a new disk without multiesession.

[danimaltron]

Thanks for the help. I tried burning some non-multi-sessions discs and it worked. Glad I came here as I had no idea that was the issue

It has a USB port, so I might just get a USB thumb drive to watch stuff that needs to go on a disc later on.

Thanks again

[jman98]

You can try jagabo's suggestion, if you have any non-finalized discs, and perhaps you will get lucky, but usually multi-session doesn't work at all. Your Sony player is definitely the exception to the rule in supporting this.

I probably should apologize for heading off any attempts at arguments, so sorry about that. You'd be surprised how many people around here get told "Don't do X and it will work" and then they will argue endlessly about how X should work no matter what and the arguments go on and on.