VCD burning/playback problem! Inadequate computer setup???

[AnitaPeterson]

Hi there,

I have worked hard on putting some old laserdiscs in MPEG1 format, (thanks TMPGEnc!) to burn them on VCDs, so that they would work on my Panasonic RP-56 player.

The quality is as good as VCD can get, since my machine would not read SVCD.

However, although the resulting files will play just fine and without any glitch on my computer, once I burn them to CD-R, at some points in the film the image becomes pixelated and stutters.

The same thing happens when I play the VCDs on a computer, using PowerDVD...

Thinking that I'm using the wrong media, I tried several CD-R brands, from no-name to Maxell, Sony, Fuji and Verbatim, and burned the VCDs using two different programs: Nero and VCD Easy. Always burning at 2x - the slowest available on my CD-RW.

It did not help.

*** This might or not be related, but I also discovered that a couple of Divx - this time! - movies which were playing without any trouble on my machine while they were stored on the hard drive will similarly stutter badly when burned onto a CD and played back on the main rig or the secondary one.

Could it be that my setup is faulty? As you can also see in my profile, the computer contains the following:

900 megahertz Intel Pentium III
Creative Technology Ltd. M003 Intel i440BX AGPset
384 Megabytes Installed Memory
Promise Ultra100 IDE Controller with two HDs: a 40 GB Maxtor and an 80 GB WD, both @ 7200 rpm
Creative SB Live! (WDM)
LITE-ON LTR-16102C [CD-ROM drive] as Master on IDE 1 (PIO Mode)
CREATIVE DVD-ROM DVD6240E [CD-ROM drive] as Slave on IDE 1 (PIO Mode)
ATAPI 48X CDROM [CD-ROM drive] as Master on IDE 2 (PIO Mode)

I'm running Win2k Professional...


Has anyone else encountered this kind of recording/playback error?

P.S. I tried to ask this on Anandtech, but they said this is the best place to ask ...

[Nelson37]

Take a small MPG file and burn it to CD as a standard data disk. Play back file in same software that can play it from HD. If stutter, you may want to try it in someone else's CD-rom to confirm, but that would indicate a burner problem.

If the file plays OK, then its your VCD authoring process.

Try DMA set both ways, remove slave drive so burner is alone on channel, also look for a firmware update for your drive. UDMA cable, R and R all connections to drive may help.