how to reduce dvd read errors?

[redss]

I routinely burn 2 or 3 movies to 1 dvd with dvdshrink using maximum compression with no noticable degradation on my cheap standard definition tv screen. So 2-3 movies per dvd seems like an economical solution both in time and money.

However, I'm having a bad problem that sometimes my dvd player will not be able to read a portion of the dvd, and the movie will freeze until (and IF) the laser reads past the bad portion of the dvd.

I believe the problem is due to subtle incompatabilities between the dvd burner in my pc, and the standalone dvd player (alignment and tolerances perhaps?) I believe the problem is NOT with the dvd burner or the dvd brand because I no problems re-ripping the dvd back to the harddrive.

I'd like to minimize this happening. When the dvd player hits an unreadable sector, I wish there was a way to make the dvd laser advance rather than stay frozen.

My question: Does compression in dvdshrink actually lower the "bitrate", and will using higher compression increase the likelihood of hitting bad data? I thought that maybe using lower compression would mean less of the data would be stored in unreadable sectors?

[borax]

No, I don't think it is compression related. Try better media. The DVD burner will be able to read crappy media much longer than a SA player...

[guns1inger]

Compression of the video has absolutely nothing to do with errors on the disc. Yes, some players do seem to have problems with very low bitrates (although the spec allows for 0 kbps), but your problem sounds to be most likely media related.

[redss]

How can I find out the bitrate of a shrunk movie? Is it as simple as dividing the filesize in bits by the total number of seconds running time?

A recent movie I shrunk at max compression (~40%) was 1:30 long, 1,846,646,784 bytes, which would be 2.73 megabit/sec, is that correct?

I wonder what the minimum bitrate would be for some of those problematic dvd players that exhibit problems at low bitrates???

[TooLFooL]

another vote for media.. before you waste a bunch of time re-encoding etc.. simply burn it again on another brand of disc and see how it works. you may be surprised.

[guns1inger]

If you can't tell the difference in quality at that level, I'm surprised you can see the glitches.

[redss]

When a movie freezes up for a minute, that's more than a "glitch"