Please Help! DVD-R disc are freezing/breaking up and pixelating.

[elove]

I am having problems with my DVD-R discs with movies on them. They are broken down by chapters, etc. The disc will play about 2 chapters, then it will start freezing up and the picture will pixelate and it will stop playing. It will not play the later chapters. If I try and skip to say chapter 12, the disc will freeze up and not advance. The same thing happens with the disc in all of my DVD players, so it's not the players.

Is there anyway to fix the disc. I tried cleaning the disc with a microfiber cloth, but no go.
Will a DVD disc repair kit help?

Thanks!

[Baldrick]

Can you play the dvd on your computer with a software dvd player without problems? If it works it's probably just bad media, www.nomorecoasters.com .

[oldandinthe way]

As Baldrick says the problem is probably the media you are using in your burner.

However, your burner may be a contributor to the problem. You should determine whether the firmware in your burner is up to date and if it is not you should upgrade it. If a proper write strategy is not present for the media you are burning, you will not be properly burning the DVD even if it appears to go to completion.

The media reccomended on www.nomorecoasters.com yields good results on the largest variety of DVDwriters, but there are DVDwriters which have success with the lower grades of media as well. If you can limit your purchases to TaiyoYuden and Verbatim you may have good success with an obsolete or out of date DVDwriter, if your buying habits prevent this, you should test your writer with updated firmware, and if necessary replace it with a drive which is more tolerant of lower grades of media.

In general a new DVDwriter costs about the same price as 2 50 dvd media spindles.

[Bjs]

Welcome elove

A little more info on how these discs where created originally would help .

Burner brand , and model
Media brand , and type
Where the content originated
If authoring product used , which one
Burn speed used

[elove]

Thanks for all of the replies. It looks like I am screwed and there is no way to fix the disc.

[hech54]

Thanks for all of the replies. It looks like I am screwed and there is no way to fix the disc.

Discs are cheap(no pun intended). You can most likely rip them without disastrous errors and re-burn them to better quality media.....IF they still play well on the computer that is.

[videopoo]

Just curious....Why doesn't anyone here ever question bitrates? What was your bitrate and what kind of audio did you use?

[hech54]

Just curious....Why doesn't anyone here ever question bitrates? What was your bitrate and what kind of audio did you use?

In this case it is fairly obvious that bitrate is not an issue IMO.....AND the OP appears to be somewhat of a newbie. No use spewing bitrates to further confuse the issues that he has.

[videopoo]

How do we know..he never stated what bitrate he was using. I admit it odd why it skips at a certain chapter and points to bad media but It's definitely worth looking into. If he's a newbie at least give him all options.

[elove]

Sorry guys, I didn't burn it myself, so I don't know the bitrate or the burner brand, or model,
media brand, and type, or the burn speed used. Also, I am new to this stuff. I was hoping their was a way to save it. Actually, I have several discs that are doing the same thing.

The discs are about 4 years old. It's wierd, the discs will play the first few chapters with no problems, however, they won't play the last ones at all. All I get is pixelating video and freezing and finally it stops.

How do you burn the disc to the computer and then to another disc. What type of software do you need? I have Windows XP.

Thanks!

[lordsmurf]

Just curious....Why doesn't anyone here ever question bitrates? What was your bitrate and what kind of audio did you use?

Because it's one of the least likely causes for his problem.

[videopoo]

Hmmmm...not in my experience. Then again I've never used cheap media....I guess you get what you pay for

[lordsmurf]

Hmmmm...not in my experience. Then again I've never used cheap media....I guess you get what you pay for

That's not really true either. Crappy media is quite often more expensive than good media.

If you're using good media, then the player is next in line.

If both of those are fine, it would come back to compliancy and authoring, and bitrate is one of those considerations.

[videopoo]

That's not really true either. Crappy media is quite often more expensive than good media.

If you're using good media, then the player is next in line.

If both of those are fine, it would come back to compliancy and authoring, and bitrate is one of those considerations

Sorry...I don't agree. Good media meaning reliable media from a reliable source, not expensive. Sorry - should have been more clear on that.

If you've set your bitrates high and use PCM audio ( like many people do for both ) and your disc skips, you'd suspect the player to be faulty before considering maybe its a bitrate issue? That's kinda weird but whatever.

[Delerious]

Sorry guys, I didn't burn it myself, so I don't know the bitrate or the burner brand, or model,
media brand, and type, or the burn speed used. Also, I am new to this stuff. I was hoping their was a way to save it. Actually, I have several discs that are doing the same thing.

The discs are about 4 years old. It's wierd, the discs will play the first few chapters with no problems, however, they won't play the last ones at all. All I get is pixelating video and freezing and finally it stops.

How do you burn the disc to the computer and then to another disc. What type of software do you need? I have Windows XP.

Thanks!

DVDInfoPro and DVD Identifier should be able to tell you the media brand. ISOBuster and ISOPuzzle may
be able to extract the files from the DVD depending on how much / what kind of damage there is. There may
be some other tools that don't come to mind right now (CD/DVD Speed might tell you media brand too).

J

[lordsmurf]

Good media meaning reliable media from a reliable source, not expensive. Sorry - should have been more clear on that.

Won't disagree there. Buy from a reliable online or offline store only.

If you've set your bitrates high and use PCM audio ( like many people do for both ) and your disc skips, you'd suspect the player to be faulty before considering maybe its a bitrate issue? That's kinda weird but whatever.

I rarely see folks using PCM anymore. The assumptions have to fall to the stereotypical errors when a person is 100% lost on what the problem is. This is classic process of elimination, where you discount the most likely scenarios one by one, gradually narrowing down until it's solved or you end up with some obscure reasons. #1 is always the media, and #2 is always the player, then #3 and beyond get into other areas of how video is encoded.

And again, this applies to the statements being made by the poster. If it plays fine for a while, then halts, it's going to follow the media>player>other listing.

PCM/video combo would have frozen far faster than originally stated, as bitrate fluxuates far faster than most people realize. The only way to have a bitrate spike be the cause, with that much delay, following what I've read from the OP, is if the screen barely moved, and then suddenly jumped into the middle of horse race or a shaky/running handheld camera. It's not impossible, just not as likely. Video spikes (unrelated to PCM) might happen that way, with a really crappy encoder (Panasonic DVD recorders in XP, some versions of TMPEnc, a number of freeware/cheapware encoders, etc).

Given the most recent OP posts, read more info at www.nomorecoasters.com on discs, see what you used. Maybe try some repair methods (ISO Buster Pro, using UDF recovery mode). Remember disc readability depends on the drive some too. Few drives read as good as is possible. BTC is one of the best reader drives made.

[videopoo]

Sorry...I thought you were talking in general.

Sure..in this case media probably will be an issue..maybe the player. If someone comes to me with a disc that's skipping the first question I always ask is: What's your bitrate and what kind of media did you use? I do many concert disc's so I use PCM often..

For me:

1. Bitrate /Audio
2. Media
3. Player

[hech54]

If someone comes to me with a disc that's skipping the first question I always ask is: What's your bitrate

If I create a high-quality Taiyo Yuden DVD with video I took from YouTube (video that looked like crap from the start)....that DVD will not skip....it will just look like crap for the entire duration of the DVD. Looking at bitrate first is a complete waste of time....not to mention talking about bitrate to what appears to be a newbie with 2 or 3 posts.

[oldandinthe way]

I feel that pinpointing the one source of this problem is a waste of time and impossible.

The goal should be "make it work".

The easiest thing for most people to do is change media. Using "quality" media will most frequently solve the problem.

The player is of course an issue, if you have a three or 4 year old player it is more likely to be picky about the DVDs it reads. Also pretty cheap to replace if you don't care about brands.

The burner sure can cause this as well. Out of date firmware with wrong write strategies can get these results. I feel it is a good idea to keep burner firmware up to date in most cases. Some brands and models of burner will never get acceptable results on lower grade media, others will burn to completion and read on a regular basis. I do not get unsuccessful burns on my LG drives unless the media is so low quality that I can see the flaws. The last coasters I got were from housebrand disks and I haven't gotten a coaster from name-brand disks in many months - in spite of a variety of manufacturers.

As for elove's disk, I'd try it in a software player. If it works there I'd copy it to better media.

[videopoo]

If I create a high-quality Taiyo Yuden DVD with video I took from YouTube (video that looked like crap from the start)....that DVD will not skip....it will just look like crap for the entire duration of the DVD. Looking at bitrate first is a complete waste of time....not to mention talking about bitrate to what appears to be a newbie with 2 or 3 posts

Right but many newbies don't know that a high bitrate couple with PCM audio will often cause discs to skip and stutter.