My VCD keeps freezing up...why?

[dolphinboy]

I just made my first vcd for a complete tv show. I had practiced with music videos and the like to get the hang of it. There were slight glitches, but I compiled a 75 minute vcd of videos and other live music clips and it played fine right through.

This time I was making a vcd of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I used tmpgenc for mpeg-1 and it all seem to go well. I burned with Nero and began watching. The show was minutes long and for 35 minutes there were no problems. Then the video paused while the timer kept going. I was kind of stunned and thought maybe it was just a small glitch, so I tried to RW back and see if it happened again.

Boy, was that a mistake. It sure wasn't cooperating in scanning and it fought me all the way. Anyway, I just started the show over and, low and behold, the skipping problem happened quite often this time. In the beginning, middle, and the end. I was lucky to go 2 minutes without a freeze-up. All the times that it happened, the timer kept going (sometimes for a few seconds and for as long as 2 minutes) and then the picture would just "catch up" to the timer when it began playing again.

I never had this happen in any of the practice vcds of even longer length. I also watched the downloaded show on my computer before encoding it and it played just fine.

Can anyone suggest what the problem might be? Is it my player (which says it plays vcds and has done so before), it it the CD-RW, could I be doing something wrong in the encoding process? It played just fine for more than 1/2 the show and then nothing worked after that, even the things that played perfectly the 1st time through. I don't get it and the problems were bad enough that it made watching the show impossible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[defense]

dolphinboy, are you talking about playing the VCD on your standalone player or your DVD Rom? If it is skipping on your standalone player, it could very well be your player. I am new to this as well, but I had a similar problem with skipping or freezing after it initally appreared the VCD would play fine. If it is your standalone player, try it in your DVD Rom and see if the skipping/freezing still occurs. If not, you have your answer. Even though a standalone says it plays VCD's, sometimes the majority of the VCD's are not supported. Check the compatibility section for your dvd player on this site.

[defense]

here is the link. http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers

[puertorican138]

It could also be a framerate problem. Check your source file and see what framerate it was/ :P