DVD-R plays in PC but not standalone player

[Tim Borek]

DVDs I burn (both -R and -RW) play in my PowerDVD software but my Philips and CyberHome standalone players can't read the discs. Any general advice?

I edit video in MediaStudio Pro 7 and burn discs in Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 SE. The MPEG2 files are encoded @ 8000 kbps (single pass), 29.97 fps, lower field first, with audio as Dolby AC-3 2 channel, 192 kbps, 48 KHz.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

T.J.

[Rob Lohman]

Either your player does generally dislike -R discs or something is
not liking your media. I would try a different media brand or +R
if you can. How old is your DVD player?

[Lorinda Norton]

I had the same thing happen yesterday--with two dvd players. Although I've got something else going on (Nero gave me two warnings but I burned anyway), when I burned another disc at a really slow speed I got it to play on a set player.

If you've got a pile of -R discs you'd rather not throw away, maybe try that as a temporary fix? But Rob is right; players, especially older ones, can be quite picky about brands. If yours is a little older I'd stay far away from +R, but then that's just been my experience.

[George Ellis]

What media (brand)? The media may be your issue here. The Cyberhome should play it, so it probably is the media in this instance.

[Tim Borek]

I'll pick up some Memorex or TDK discs on the way home and see if switching brands makes a difference. RIght now, when I pop in a Ritek 4x -R, the players spin the disc and display a "Loading..." message until I eject the disc. Sometimes the Philips will say "No disc" after a minute.

I suspect a software problem because my 2002 Philips machine DOES play my Imation -RW media, but stopped only recently after I installed Ulead's Service Pack 2 for MediaStudio Pro 7. My system's become a steaming pile of crap since I "upgraded." I tried reverting back to version 7.01, but Windows doesn't let me install Service Pack 1 without a bunch of memory errors. Seems my only option is to reformat my hard drive and a start from scratch. Any other suggestions, aside from purchase better software?

[George Ellis]

A 2002 Phillips may not support anything but RW and +R media. Try www.videohelp.com and look at their compatibility list. 4x Ritek should be OK. Strange. Who's burner?

[Jeff Donald]

I think Phillips was a big backer (one of the originators?) of the +R format.

[Gints Klimanis]

Ensure that your disks have both and AUDIO_TS and a VIDEO_TS
directory, even though the AUDIO_TS may be empty. I've found
a number of compatibility issues have been solved by this, though they were on the PC side.

A number of standalone DVD players have rejected my -RW discs when I tried them out on just about every player at GoodGuys and Circuit City. Though, other than an early Sony DVD player, I have never run into a DVD player that rejects DVD-R.

[Lars Siden]

Hi,

I had an exciting discovery a few days ago. I've burned like a 100 DVD-R video DVD:s. Most of them plays just fine on my stand alone DVD player. BUT when I try to copy them again on the computer - I get massive CRC32 errors ( tried 3 different computer DVD readers ).

Then I did a quality check in NERO(CD-DVD Speed) and my DVD-R medias was really BAD - especially at the end ( lets say the last 20 minutes ). So I switched to DVD+R Verbatim and after that I haven't had any problems at all - neither in my stand alone player nor in my computer.

Did a google on "DVD-R problems reading the end" got quite many results. ... And after some digging a found a notice on Pioneers homepage that said "there are known problems for highpspeed DVD-R medias" - and highspeed was everything not 1x.

So now I have like 100 movies that I can watch - but not share with my friends.

// Lazze \\

[Rob Lohman]

I did a few burns recently with Imation (ricoh) which always went
fine. I've tried some Sony's, also okay. Last week I got a couple
of TDK's and I've been having muchos trouble reading those DVD's
and nero already failed a verify round on two discs (data DVD).

All discs are +R (since that is the only thing my burner burns).

[Thomas Kendrick]

It may be your burner. I have had similar problems with a
BTC 1008M. I found a comment on www.videohelp.com that indicated a problem with this burner with DVDs burned above 2x speed. I burned disks at 2x (rather than 4x ) and that seemed to solve the problem. I was burning DVD-R disks.

You can do a search on videohelp.com for your particular burner and see what, if any, problems others are having...also recommendations on which media works well with your burner.

Tommy

[Tim Borek]

First, thank you all for your responses. I'm sure this problem will rear its ugly head for someone, so maybe this thread will be of help to them.

Another post in anothe forum gave me an idea. The problem videos were encoded at 8000 kbps VBR. When I re-encoded at 6000 kbps VBR, the problem was solved for my -R Ritek 4x media. Lucklily, I had made only four or five coasters before fixing the problem. Oddly enough, the same 6000 kbps VBR movie wouldn't play from the imation -RW. I hope that will change when I upgrade my burner (Lite-On LDW-451s) firmware.

When experimenting with DVD menus, etc., I like to make test burns on -RW media before burning multiple copies on DVD-R. Encoding <6000 kbps isn't worthwhile, IMO.

[Dan Euritt]

the dvd spec is for a max total bitrate of ~9800+kbps(?).

if a dvd player can't handle that bitrate, it is defective.

if the media causes problems at that bitrate, it should be replaced with another brand.

what i do is set the max video vbr at ~8800, but the average total(video and audio) vbr is sized to fit the length of the production, or ~6000 if space isn't an issue.

even if you set the average bitrate at 8800, it still should have worked, depending on what the peak vbr was set at.

[Rob Lohman]

The 9.8 mbps number is for the VIDEO track only, the total rate
(with audio and subtitles etc.) is higher. Although I agree with
Dan all players should support the bitrate and all burners should
work it just isn't that simple unfortunately. As I said, I bought TDK
(which I would not expect to make bad discs) and it didn't work
great at all. If a player has problems reading discs it will not be
able to sustain the high bitrates ofcourse.

Unfortunately compatability is still far away, the best suggestion
indeed is to try different media and see what happens.