Prob. with dvd-r pausing every 15 sec near the end of movie

[krazyscotsman]

I just purchased Black Hawk Down on dvd and i was backing it up on a dvd-r. I had to lower the bit rate to get it to fit on a dvd-r. The original bitrate was at an average of 4400. I lower the bitrate to 3650 with rempeg. Everything looks great until the last 25% or so of the movie. THen the movie starts to freeze and then continue, freeze and then continue. I tried on a friends dvd player and the same thing starts to happen but after 1/2 the movie has played. Anyone know what the problem might be? Here's the steps that I went through to author the disc.

1) Ripped audio 6 channel ac3 and movie with Smart Ripper.

2) re-encoded the video with ReMPEG to a bitrate of 3650 (or near that), Rempeg said the original had an average bitrate of 4400.

3) Remux the ac3 and m2v files with DVD Maestro.

4) burned the dvd-r with Nero.

I hope someone can help. I don't want to waste another precious dvd-r before finding out what I did wrong.
Thanks.
Scotsman

[VidGuy]

Unfortunately, this is typically the media. I've had this same difficulty with no-name cheap media. The problem goes away if you reburn it on a different (i.e. better) media.

Also, you're computer will be able to read it fine, so you can just drag-and-drop copy it to another DVD. The problem seems to be that it takes several reads to read the data, which is fine when copying it to your hard disk, but not so good when playing the video (I presume that they don't even bother to retry).

[krazyscotsman]

Strange thing is that I've backed up other movies on the same media and they worked great? The movies that worked great didn't require any re-encoding, could that be the reason?

The media I was using is cheap, very cheap. Anyone have a suggestion that is relatively cheap but doesn't suffer from the pausing issue, or similiar issues. I will be using these disc strictly for dvd backing up. Thanks.
Scotsman

[leebo]

Unfortunately, what works for one person very well might not work so great for another.

Recordable DVD is still in it's infancy. If I tell you brand X works great for me, you may find it's crap for you.

There's an article on www.dvmagazine.com about recordable DVD. I suggest you read it (don't wait too long as it's rumored to be pulled in another 9 days).

Basically, try to stick with major brands (Apple is $5 a disc).
Try not to fill the disc (your out of luck on that one).
Burn only at 1X.
Keep the bitrate low (supposedly will help with your freezing problem).

[Faustus]

Also how much space did the other disk that worked take up? I have a pack of supercheap stuff that works great long as you don't go over 3gb on disk, after that its pause/skipsville.

[krazyscotsman]

Well, I have a Phillips dvd player and I've found out that you have to have more than 4 Gigs to have the player detect the disc. So, I always add more data to the disc if it is under 4 gigs but overall I would say the movies that I've played successfully are around 3.5 Gigs +. Thanks for the replies.