Why is my DVD+RW not playing on Apex 703 player ?

[ssaibal]

I need help from the best Forum on DVD and authoring. Thanks in advance.

My Apex 703 DVD player is not playing the DVD+RW sample DVD I created. It just goes into "loading...." loop. It doesn't play on other Apex single disc DVD players that are in my company either. It didn't play on a Samung DVD player either.....sorry I didn't note down the model numbers......however, it plays well on the RCA progressive DVD player (the ultra low cost one available now in Fry's).

My enivironment:
P-III 733 Mhz, 128MB RAM, 100GB HDD, Win 98SE, 1394 card, HP DVD200i
JVC DVL9800 mini-DV camcorder (PAL version)

I used VideoStudio 5.0 SE for capture in PAL AVI format. Then, edited and created the DVD-NTSC format mpeg files (16 sec and 8 sec clips as samples). Then I used HP MyDVD from Sonic to author it into two menu accessable chapters.

After that I burnt one DVD+RW (from HP) using MyDVD and another with Nero 5.5.9..........Arcsoft Showbiz that came with the drive produced a crappy video (I think the transcoder that converted the PAL AVI file to NTSC mpeg produced very poor quality video).

Can anyone help me with the following:

1. How do I make my Apex 703 play the DVD ?
2. Is there a better set of tools which can help me do better editing (VS5 editing is crappy.......controlling the markers needs the skill of precision machine, unless there is a better way to do it).
3. Ideally, a single tool that can do capturing, editing, authoring and burning would be great........but is there one around ~US$100 ? PC Magazine recommends Pinnacle Studio v7, but that doesn't have authoring and burning.

Sorry for the long post...........

Thanks, Saibal.

[jeg_jason]

Please read the Apex AD-703 reviews under the "DVD Players compatibility & user comments" on the far left side of the screen. Quickly the DVD+RW media probably does not have enough reflectivity to let your player read the media. The fact that it plays on another player leads me to believe that you probably created the disk fine. If you burn to DVD+R, it should play on your player due to the increased reflectivity of the media allowing the player to read the disk better. If you can't burn to DVD+R, you are out of luck with your AD-703 and will have to use your RCA instead.

[ssaibal]

jeg_jason,

Thanks for the inputs. I had read that earlier, but thought maybe this is not the reason as the dvdplusrw.com lists this dvd player as one of the compaitible models for DVD+RW and DVD+R format.

I am editing and building the content for a home video now. Once that is ready (that really takes a lot of time with VS5), I will cut a DVD+R. Didn't want to waste a +R media with sample clips.

Thanks, Saibal.

[Fredrick]

It also can be the brand of media. I have some rw brands that play and other brands that don"t.

[ssaibal]

Thanks, Fredrick and jeg_jason and the spirit of this forum!

I finally could play a DVD on my Apex 703. It was a HP DVD+R media. I thought I should experiment with various brands of +R and +RW media, but I could find only 5 packs of Memorex +RW media in Fry's which are more expensive than HP. So, have tested with only the HP +RW and +R media. And as jeg_jason pointed out, the +RW doesn't work with most players due to the low reflectivity of the media.

I had other problems with burning +R media on my system. I contacted HP customer support and with their help, I could resolve the issue in 30 minutes. My Win98SE had too many "ghost" drives (you can see them when you boot up in Safe mode and look at the resources). These are remnants of all the drives that I had installed earlier on the system (CD-R/W drives, DVD drives, etc..). This problem doesn't happen when I used +RW media as the closing mechanism for +RW differs from +R. This is what the HP support guy told me. I think I read about that in the "newbie" section on this website, but don't remember the accurate technical info.

Lessons here: This forum is great and HP customer support was great too!

Thanks, Saibal.