DVD- Pixelization/blocky - comes and goes... Very odd...

[rob1]

I have an odd problem. I'm converting VHS to compliant DVDs- 352x480, VBR- 2300 ave (7000 max, 1750 min) authored with DVDLab- .ac3 via softencode. Putting them on Samsung BeAll media via RecordNow. The disks all play fine on the computer, BUT a few of the disks have problems with serious pixelization/blockiness. Really bad blockiness to the point of sometimes generating choppy play.

What's odd is that sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. I mean- same exact disk, sometimes when I play a scene it will disolve into major blocks and other times the exact same scene on the same disk plays just fine. The disks this occurs with consistently play fine on the computer. Sometimes they play fine in the set top- and sometimes they don't.

It's just irritating- particularly because it makes it almost impossible for me to figure out why it happens. I can usually tell when it's going to happen because the DVD player makes a barely audible high pitched whine when it starts to happen. Any ideas WHY this might occur- and why it might occur sometimes but not others, even with the same disk and same scene? I'm almost hoping it's just my DVD player is crap because I can't figure out what might be going wrong with the disks themselves. (DVD player is a Samsung p231- not many reviews of it, but none mentioned this particular issue.)

Any hints greatly appreciated.

[Tommyknocker]

How about the media, have you tried different brands? And often burning at a lower speed has solved this problem.

[rob1]

Hm- good advice on the media. I'd already started burning a Ritek 4x (only burns at 2x in my Sony) and it works fine on the set top- same files and scenes that were giving me trouble using the BeAll show no pixelization or glitches with the Ritek.

I'm going to try burning the BeAll's at 1x (they're only 2x certified and that's how the Sony burns them) and see what happens. I'm actually sending about 10 copies of these disks out to other folks and so looking to be as compatible as possible. That's why I went with the BeAll's for this little project- I figured they were generally better quality than the Ritek's I'd been using and I like the branded media.

Anyway- like I say, I'll see what happens at 1x- but MAN, an hour per burn sucks! Thanks for the advice, though. And I will post back about the 1x in case anyone was curious.

[chazzie]

I'm familiar with this problem, I've had it on some CVD's I've produced (yeah, produced, NOT ripped). My guess is that there's something in the encoding procedure that goes wrong. Try to change the B and/or P pictures in the GOP structure, but don't exceed the limitations of the color system you use (PAL/NTSC). This worked for me, well it minimized the problem. I also have a theory that it might be because the structure of the analog signal when it get's converted into an AVI at capture (I use HuffYUV, Intel Indeo 5.10, 5.11 and PicVideo).

As I have no direct sollution to this problem, I can only advise you to "fiddle" with the MPEG settings and with the compression on the capture file.

Good luck!
Chazzie

[Oliver]

The problem can also be the min. bitrate in your VBR encodes. I've read some DVD players don't like playing discs with bitrates that drop below 2Mbps. Try bumping up your min. bitrate to 2000 and see how that works.