DVD Mass Production Problems
 

I had some DVD's mass duplicated (1000 copies) by a company for a film I made (glass mastered, D9). I'm having some issues from people that have bought the film and I wanted to see if anyone on here could help.

I sent the company an uncompressed AVI with these settings (PC / VEGAS PRO 8):
NTSC DV 720 x 480 Uncompressed / 29.970fps / Lower Field First / 0.9091

The duplication house then used FCP and compressor to render it for the master. I actually had to send them a WAV file along with the AVI cause their software couldn't read the audio on the AVI. I'm guessing a PC / MAC compatibility issue...

Most people that have received the film already have said it played fine and works great BUT some people have the problems listed below (about 3 out of 100 had issues that I know of):

1) the DVD shakes / jitters, or has a ghost like quality on movement (pans and tilts mostly).
2) the DVD wont even play or the disc tries to play but just glitches out the whole time.
3) looks weird on a computer but looks fine on a TV (I tried the disc myself on a computer and it's almost like I can very faintly see vertical 1 inch bars going up and down all the way across)

The company says I either did something wrong when I exported the film to the AVI and it has something to do with an interlacing problem on my end OR they said that some people have old or cheap DVD players that cannot deinterlace the footage correctly. Something about progressive scan.

I have a copy of the final glass master and it looks fine on my home setup. No ghosting or jittering but I tried it on an old DVD player and it had some problems.

Anytime I pause the DVD playing on my computer I get this effect on movement, and it does it on my Samsung HD TV also:
http://i591.photobucket.com/albums/s...ow/problem.jpg


Can anyone help shed some light on this and help me pin point what went wrong?

What did you shoot on? I presume NTSC, not HD?

Letting us know your whole workflow will establish whether interlacing artifacting was introduced at your end or theirs.

Unfortunataly your situation creates the perfect scenario for finger pointing. They say your master is to blaim, you say they messed up the compression.

In the future, you will be better off creating the master DVD yourself, testing it on all the players you can possibly test it on, and only then send it off for duplication... actually with a quantity of 1000 they should have replicated it! Oh wait, you say you have a glass master, so they did replicate it [you said duplicated at the beginning].

They might have messed up the field order.

Well...

#3 sounds like interlacing issues which means it was not de-interlaced before you created the master.

#2 and possibly #1 sounds like the disk might have been mastered with too high a bitrate. That's not your fault, but would be a question for the mastering company.

A tip off was that they couldn't read the audio file. That either indicates a problem with your file, or their capabilities. Not sure what company you used but that would have been a red flag for me.

#1 also sounds like it could be a problem with the shutter speed as it was shot. But then it could also be the interlacing (or poor attempt at deinterlacing).


Lots of places to toss blame around on this one.

Yes, for me also the image is as it is not deinterlaced... But the company you work with has to know that I guess and they need to check some of the output-dvd's.

Craig, yes NTSC

Should I have de-interlaced on export?

I don't even know how to do that in Vegas. I don't see an option for it on the render setup screen.

Whenever I shoot interlaced footage (which is rare) I deinterlace before I ever bring it into Vegas. I use Virtualdub to do this work, but there are other options.

Sorry for my ignorance Perrone, but I don't know if my footage is interlaced or not. I shot it on an XL1s and then just captured it in Vegas and started editing. I had no idea I had to deinterlace it before I started....

How can I tell and is there anything I can do to fix this at this point?

Well, if they have already made the 1,000 I don't think there is anything you can do now. After having several thousand DVDs replicated I have never had a "failure to play" that I am aware of. Here are some guidelines I have followed:
- Total bitrate (audio and video) not to exceed 8200.
- Play master on about 6 different players for compatibility.
- Produce master myself for replication house.
- Keep master in as pristine condition as possible ( don't touch surfaces).
- Use high quality DVD-R media.
- Reputable replication house should examine master for data errors.
As a side note all my DVDs are output interlaced with no issues. Have always used discmakers.com for replication and retail packaging.

If you shot it on the XL1s, then I'd bet money it's interlaced. While this is not a problem when producing footage for TVs (broadcast TV is interlaced so this works out fine and you don't see it), computer displays are NOT interlaced, and the interlacing shows up as those lines you describe. Shooting progressive footage eliminates the need for deinterlacing and it's why you see so much talk here about progressive formats.

In order to "fix" this problem, you'd need to go back to your final .veg file in Vegas and either deinterlace in Vegas (File > Properties > Deinterlace method: interpolate) which gives reasonable results, or render the file to a lossless .avi format, deinterlace using a program outside Vegas, then send that to your mastering company.

It seems the mastering company could or should have done a few things:

1. Given you the specs of how they were creating our discs including the bit rates

2. Sent you a proof DVD so you could test it on your DVD players, including on a few computers.

3. Warned you of any potential issues.


At least, that is what I would have expected.

Mark makes many excellent points, however, some are only pertinent if you are making the master yourself. I reputable house should be able to better make Mpeg2 encoded files, unless you've got significant knowledge or software.

Also, interlaced DVDs are fine. Until you put them in a computer. If your computer based player can't deinterlace on the fly, you WILL see the interlace lines.

Mark, true but I'm not going to sell anymore of these DVDs and I am in the process of finding the BEST replication house I can. Any suggestions from anyone?

Perrone, I wouldn't worry about the interlacing on the computer so much but I can also see this issue on my HD TV. When I pause the video it looks the same as on the computer screen and when I try it on an old CRT (glass) TV it sort of shakes when paused but looks fine otherwise.

I about to try again (with another company) and it would be nice to not only take cause of the faulty DVD issues but at the same time do what I can (if needed) about the interlacing issue.

*On a side note* I have a DVD that when you pop it in the computers DVD player it says "This DVD has special enhanced features for viewing on a computer, do you want to apply the enhanced feature now?", and then you just click yes or no. I wonder if that means it has a deinterlacing feature on the DVD....and where the hell could I find a place to do that to my DVDs?

Oliver,
Give discmakers.com a call. The last job they did for me was 1,000 replicated DVDs, retail ready with bar code for $1246.00 which included shipping. This was the "inflation fighter" special with turn-a-round in 12 business days. Also, talk to them about your last problem, they might be of help. I recommend you read thier help pages on artwork and disc preparation. You can do your own artwork with their templates and the trial version of adobe illustrator if you don't have the software.

Mark, thanks for the info and I already spoke with discmakers and they are very helpful. I already have all my artwork etc so that's no problem.

This might be a dumb question but discmakers does supply "real" DVDs right? Like the ones that are silver on the back and not purple like the ones I would buy at walmart? I don't know what to call that...."glass mastered"?