Video slowdown on DVD-Rs. What's to blame? VCR or DVD Recorder?

[ministry88]

Alright. Despite everyone's generous and wonderful help on this forum (really guys, thanks. I'd be lost without you!), I still can't seem to get a straight answer about this problem I see with all kinds of DVD-Rs. The best way to describe it is a split-second slowdown of the video that can occur every few minutes in various DVD-Rs I've viewed.

Now, I was told once on the forum that it's the tape (or VCR) momentarily failing to track that causes it. But, I've seen this happen on a variety of DVD-Rs that were made with a variety of setups (some of which were quite professional, using a Panasonic AG-1980 and a nice DVD Recorder) and still that annoying slowdown persists. I NEVER see this slowdown on the actual VHS, just the DVD-R transfers of them.

And now it's happening with DVD-Rs I make. My setup is a Toshiba M684 VCR that has had light to moderate use in its 10 years. I'll admit the rewind function is starting to get flaky, but playback is still rock solid and this thing tracks WAY better than the AG-1980 and, from what I could see, has identical picture quality (which is why I ultimately returned the AG1980). I really think this is an excellent VCR and has great build quality (it's a 1998 model and weighs 10 pounds and has aluminum on the case, not cheap plastic).

I should also note the bulk of the tapes I transfer are nearly virgin VHS (played maybe four times tops and stored in a climate-controlled environment).

My DVD Recorder is a Pioneer 340H.

**I have 3 questions, with all this in mind:
1) WHAT IS this video slowdown, and is it an unavoidable phenomenon of VHS to DVD-R transfers?
2) If my VCR IS to blame, would it be worth having a diagnostic done on it and having any of the parts replaced (like the belts)?
3) If the VCR can't be fixed to alleviate this problem, what VCR do you recommend that is a REASONABLE price (that is, no more than $300) that won't present this slowdown problem?

THANKS!

[ministry88]

Hey! I reply to my own topic :P

Anyway, I just had an idea: I tried playing some DVD-Rs with the "slowdown" problem on my Pioneer DVD Recorder and voila, no slowdown! So the problem must be with my other DVD player! My other DVD player plays every other type of DVD fine (factory made ones as well as DVD-Rs of DVDs), but for some reason it chokes with DVD-Rs transferred from VHS!

Does anyone know why that may be?

[johns0]

Most likely problem is the media that cant be read fast enough by the dvd player where the dvd recorder can read it better,try better dvdr such as ty or a different dvd player.

[Bix]

I'm guessing bad player, I've seen it happen a few times.

[jman98]

My guess -

Bad media.
Bad player.
Both.

At no point do I see you mention what brand of media you are using. Unfortunately the majority of media sold in the USA is crap. Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden (you'll have to order Taiyo Yuden online) are the only consistently reliable brands sold in North America now. Sony can be good or bad, depending on which company they used to make it (they use both very good and very bad manufacturers). Everybody else now is basically crap. Four or five years ago just about everybody that sold media in the USA used the best quality manufacturers, but eventually almost everybody switched to cheap, low quality manufacturers because the marketplace here demands low price over quality.

Your problem still could be media. Pioneer makes good quality DVD players/recorders and they are very tolerant of crap media. I'd advise you try using better quality discs as that's always the right thing to do and if that's your problem, it will solve it. If your problem is really the DVD player, then you haven't gone wrong in using better media, but you'll just have to replace the player.

[samijubal]

Clean the spindle with a q-tip wet with alcohol. If the player has a cheapo DC brush motor, it's probably bad.

[robjv1]

I've seen this before too with my players/discs. In some cases I think it has to do with the way the disc is burned. I have a bunch of old discs I recorded in my LiteOn LWV-5000 that play very funky in most of the players I've tried. It's one of the reasons I decided to only record with DVD-RW's on my DVD-Recorders and rip them to my PC to burn using a program (DVD Lab Pro) that enforces proper DVD-Video specifications and pretty much all of my problems of this nature went away.

[ministry88]

I actually am using Verbatim 8x DVD-Rs. And yes, I have narrowed it down to my player (which really isn't a cheap one but it is almost five years old now).

*Robjv1: I'm intrigued about DVDpro, but the price tag ($250) is too hefty. However, I see they have a DVD Lab Studio software, which seems to be similar but with less features. Would I be able to do that DVD specification tweaking you speak of with the DVD Studio software? And, most importantly, WHAT exactly do you do with that software to get it to a DVD specification so that it will play smoothly on all players?

Thanks!

[orsetto]

This problem used to be more common, before the majority of DVD players were updated over time to be more tolerant of burned media. Theres almost as many different ways of recording video to DVD as there are DVD recorders, each mfr insists on some sort of "secret sauce" method until the disc is finalized. Even after finalization, depending on the recorder they can still leave tiny glitches that will cause sub-par playback hardware to stumble. Pioneers as a rule have been more stable than average at creating "standard-spec" DVD-Rs, especially the model series your 340 dates from. If I'm not mistaken the 340 was a "global-market" variation of the USA model 640, if so it has a hard drive. Are you recording to the hard drive and then burning to DVD-R? That usually results in a better disc than direct-to-DVD recording. I've transferred hundreds of VHS to DVD-R using Pioneer 540, 640, 450 and 460 models and never had a glitch aside from the expected slight hesitation at edit points during playback (common to all recorder-produced discs.)