Apex doesnt like playing me VCDs right (hope it isnt my play

[Marxs]

OK i gotz me az Apex-500a (BTW its damn good for 100 bucks unles this VCD thing is because of my player) OK i Ripped one of my DVDs i had and encoded it using TMPGEnc and using the VCD template. OK teh mpg is flawless but when i burn it (burned using nero 5.5 using Video CD option with 1x just to make sure it burned good i guess) and played it at some parts its blocky and skips a little and teh sound will stop for 3 seconds then start agian. Now em i burning it wrong i dont think i am so i think it might be my Apex ( i seem to come across this with my DVDs sometimes when i bump the player while its playing or in the Tray (thing i move it or something). So is it my player or does this happen to more people other players or whats up? This is the only thing that has turned out wrong about my first DVD to VCD conversion.

[Marxs]

Sorry if this is a repost iv been searching around and i found something semi similar to my problem im guessing that its teh CD-R im usings? im usning Office depot CD-Rs my favorite!!! maybe ill cahnge to a better CD-RW brand. or something like that maybe sony or memorex wonder why other CDS play fine too about 1:4 dont play right hmm weird.

[Marxs]

Ahh ok i think the CD-R was the problem or it was good luck. I used a TDK CD-R with a dark blue color instad of my usuall office depot light green/blue color CDs. It worked fine i did the same thing with both and watch the one on teh TDK with no problem

[SiNXation]

I had the same problem with vcds I burned som time ago. Its basically 2 things thats causing you problems. See the laser in the Apex 500a - w are very weak. So your burn has to be very good. I burned the exact same movie on the exact same brand of blanks with a Panasonic 7503 & a Plextor. The Pana sonic came with the same results you have. The Plextor played perfectly. If you don't feel like geting a new burner I would try severval things that I wold other people about.

1. Burner the movies at half the speed you currently burning them at. On the panasonic I used to burn at 8x but slowed it down to 4x, it made a big difference. slowing down to 2x gae me the same results as the 4x.

2. Depending on how light the cd is you may want to place a label on it. I found that this helps by making the cd heavier.

3. Clean that cd. since the laser is so weak, cleaning the cd also helps but not that much, the other 2 help alot more.