Bride Keeps Damaging DVD's... and blaming ME!

[Heather Darling]

We've had the same problem here. I'll burn a disc and watch it on our dvd player. Sometimes it will play fine, other times it will skip. When it skips we rewind it and play that section again and the skip is gone. Not really sure what the problem is. Our player just might suck. So it may not be the b&g's fault, it just might not play correctly in their player.

We've started sending our masters out to a company and have them dup them. Just make sure you don't have any copyrighten material in them!

[Greg Boston]

Just another suggestion if you're not already doing it. Burn everything at 1X regardless of how fast the media says it can be burned. This results in a much more reliable product. I know, it takes longer, but it beats having an angry bride and potential bad word of mouth advertising.

-gb-

[Jon McGuffin]

I'll throw in my two cents here..

#1) DVD -R is more reliable than DVD +R

#2) DVD's made with burners are not typically as reliable as ones made in duplication warehouses.

#3) Stay away from Dual Layer just as everybody here has said, they are MUCH more suspect from scratches etc.

#4) The top side of the disc can have almost as much to do with the reliability of a disc as the surface area. When light hits the disc, if it finds its way through the top surface you'll get errors.

In the end, I doubt she's calling you just to bug you and I'm sure she's not exactly scraping the discs across the carpet floor either considering its her wedding. It's probably a pretty reasonable combination of her having a some cheap DVD players, her not taking the "best" care of the discs, and your duplication process being limited.

I bet if you fix the things people have suggested in here you won't have many troubles at all.

Jon

[Sean Kiely]

Thanks a million, you guys! Really appreciate the feedback.

[Tim Harjo]

I have a cheapo dvd player in our bedroom. Although it's only a year old, it does not always play burned discs very well. I bet her player is a cheapo piece of junk like mine. I think a different format should do the trick as others have said.

Also, I don't think there is anything wrong with verbabtim. I don't know of another brand that has white glossy hub printable dvd's.

[Adam Hoggatt]

What if the video was split into separate tracks on separate layers (is tha possible), like have the ceremony on one and reception on another. Then there would be no layer change during playback. Just a thought.

[Terry Esslinger]

Just my 2cents:

Had a client where dvds would skip and freeze. Reburned to +R and they played fine. Who knows?

Also have found that copies made in my duplication tower appear to be more compatable than the 'master'

Have an expensive dvd player that may or may not play a burned dvd. have a cheap Cyberhome that has played EVERYTHING. I think I could play a saucer on it.

My impression from A LOT of research is that TY and Verbatum are very good discs.

[Tom Hardwick]

I always present a long wedding as a 'Two Disc Set'. The dual DVD case is but pence more to buy and the second DVD-R likewise, but the perceived value as the couple open the case is a surprise and delight feature.

Of course you have to print two discs and find a suitable fade-out point, but that's no real problem. I tell them that using two discs enables me to keep the image and audio quality high. Oh, and with my Pioneer burner I always use Verbatim DVD-R 16x burnt at 4 or 8 times.

tom.

[Mark Holland]

Originally Posted by John C. Plunkett

...I've learned to stay away from all +R DVDs and anything made by Maxell, Verbatim and Ritek...I usually try to stick with Fuji when making DVD-R discs...

Funny isn't it? I've had just the opposite experience. Now I use Maxell exclusively!

[Jon Omiatek]

Taiyo Yuden White Thermal Hub Printable 8X DVD-R Media dvds work flawlessly. It's worth the money not to have to reburn due to poor quality dvds. I also recommend staying away from dual layer dvds, most dvd players will not play them. I usually hand out two dvds if I need over 1hr :30 min. in a case that holds two dvds. Usually, the Pre-Ceremony and Ceremony are on the first dvd and the reception is on the second dvd.

[Matt Headley]

You could also try transcoding your footage at a lower bit rate. Some of these dvd players I guess just don't have the processing power as the others.

[Jim Fields]

Wow, I am shocked.

Not only do I use +R only media, but I use Verbatum DL discs as well.

I found a few tricks with Burning the DL discs. I try real hard ( I use Final Cut Studio 2) to make sure that the ceremony will work on the first layer, by keeping it within a SL size, and the same for the reception. The smaller files wont matter. That way when it's playing a service, it does not need to skip to the 2nd layer to continue playing, and there is no pause, skip, or hickup.

I have not had a single DL come back at all.

I use cheap on sale DVD +R media that is on sale from Fry's Electronics. 24.00 for 100 discs kind of cheap.

[Jack Walker]

Since I have done hundreds into thousands of disks of dance recitals and public education distance learning I will contribute my observations:

--Dual Layer burned disks are a mistake, and the one time I tried to use them, hours of effort got my one disk that would play in one of of four players I have. (On this this, I just bought burned DVDs from of a dance competition. Both disks were dual layer. One of them won't play after half way through (I just sent an email requesting a replacement a few minutes ago) and the other disk has a spot that freezes sometimes, but I was able to get extract the video and reburn the disk myself... the first disk I couldn't read on any of my burners. We have bought these disks from this company for the past 6 years, and this is the first time there was a problem, and this is the first time we received dual layer disks.

--As I'm sure most know, +R disks have to be bitset to play on most players, telling tyhe player they are DVD ROM. This isn't an issue with -R. Most name brand burners do this abutomatically.

--I routinely put 2 hours of video on a DVD with no loss of quality. I don't use a Mac. I use Procoder 2 (now 3) to encode. Bit rates down to 4000 look great. Using AC3 audio frees up a lot of space if you aren't using it.

--I have found that two disks are better than one, sometimes even when everything might fit on one. Dual Disk set seems to have a special cache. It just doesn't feel right if your whole life will fit on a single DVD. Also, the double case and the extra disk costs just pennies, but the general perception that there is considerable added value since commercial sets cost almost double single disks in many cases.

--Single layer disks will play on almost anything still out there now, and I have only had one case where +R wouldn't play and -R would.

--The disk is most vulnerable on the top side, not the bottom side. The white ink on the white disks add a layer of protection not on silver disks.

--I have found a tower duplicator very reliable. (The current one we are using is a premium model from supermediastore.com) I would use a premium model, with the better burners. I think some comanies may have better software than others, but I don't know.

--At the schools we first started using sale DVDs, store brand, silver to save money. After throwing a couple hundred in the trash because I had to bring a burner from home to get them to burn, we now use only premium white Taiyo Yuden. They cost more but there is no problems anymore.

--Different software will burn disks differently and some more reliably. Since I use PCs, my comments here won't be of value.

--2.4x burning is more reliable than 1x burning. My applications won't burn at one time. (Similar is true for burning CD masters... burn at 2x, not 1x.)

--I have found that some of the cheap players will play more types of disks and more junky disks than some of the more expensive name brand players. The player I use the most at home is a $30 Coby, it only runs on the remote because it doesn't have any buttons on the front, but it plays everything, and it plays both NTSC and PAL. I have an expensive Sony that balks at a lot of disks everything else I have plays.

--I have found that there is nothing gained by raising the bit rate very high, and many times a high bit rate will cause problems.

My general advice is if there is a problem with a DVD, work it out in a positive way with the customer. There's a good chance they had dear friends visiting from across the country, they are going to show them their cherished moments on DVD, and the dang thing wouldn't play, there were excuses and a lot of uncomfortability.

It's possible to burn a DVD that can play in almost all players and be used as a frisbee in the meantime. My wife drags stacks of them around for months, using them dailies, never putting them in cases, going from studio to studio, and they play fine until they just won't anymore.

A problem should be able to be taken care of. Don't give them another the same, in any case (unless it was some kind of accident.) At least try the single disks.

If someone is playing the DVD you made so often that they keep wearing it out, that's got to be a source for referrals. If you gave them a new DVD every month for 5 years, it would still be the cheapest advertising you'll every get.

Most DVD get played once, thrown in a drawer or shelf and never touched again.

[Noa Put]

Great info Jack, I started using verbatim dvd+r's a few months ago and allways burn at 4 speed and untill now (Knock on wood) they played fine a various brands of dvd players, the biggest problems I had before that was with Philips dvd+r's causing problems with skipping and freezing images, they were also burned at 4x speed, I also had very bad experience with TDK-R which I used as a demo and wouldn't play on 50% of the players when I visited clients.
Since I was having problems with the philips dvd's as well I bought a new dvd burner (Lite-on) and verbatims +r's and that solved the problem. Before that I was using a 2 year old philips dvd burner. Strangest thing was that the philips dvd+r's didn't even start up on the very first philips dvd players with a harddisk.

Originally Posted by Jack Walker

Most DVD get played once, thrown in a drawer or shelf and never touched again.

Usually when it's a wedding dvd it gets played again after a year, I sometimes get a call from clients after a year with a request to add something on the short version (When I supplied a long uncut version to them as well)
After that I don't here anything again.

[Glen Johnstone]

I have read dozens of posts regarding what "brand" of DVDs to use or avoid. They can almost become religious wars. However, there are only a limited number of manufacturers regardless of the branding.

Years ago I took the advice of my friend and started checking the DVD's media code against the lists on videohelp.com (Chris, delete this post if I'm not supposed to mention them)

By purchasing disks that have favorable ratings with my burners I have had success. (to me, success = <2% coaster factor)