DVD Studio Pro DVD's won't play in home unit

F

francheezie

Active member
Wow, today's been busier than sh*t. I'm working on this documentary, trying to get the footage through compressor and into DVD Studio Pro 4. I compress it using one of the MPEG-2 two pass presets, dump it into DSP 4, and it burns fine. It plays fine on my mac, and pc dvd players... but it won't play on my home unit. It's skips the menu and hobbles along playing the 15 minute video but super glitchy with funky squares all over the screen. Anybody else seen this from the front lines?
 
Yes, and it has little to do with DVD Studio Pro. Home-burnt DVDs are *notorious* for not playing in all players. I've been through the ringer on this more times than I can count. I have like five different DVD players here, and a home-burnt disc will usually not play on all five.

Sometimes using better media can help. I've been using Taiyo Yuden white injket-printable DVD-R's, and I'm finding a pretty high compatibility rate with those. Lesser DVDs have been much less compatible with different players.

And computer DVD players can play anything. It's only the standalone home units that choke on the home-burnt discs.

If you want to distribute something widely, to a mass audience, the only way to go is with glass-stamped DVD replication. Home burning is just too incompatible; you're just begging for returned discs if you go that route.
 
What Barry said.

Some players just don't handle DVD-R. However, most newer players do. My smal-time clients aren't going to pay for glass mastering so DVD-R is the norm over here. I put the DVD-R caveat on every contract so it's known upfront. That said, I've burned hundreds over the last couple of years with only a few that didn't work.

I'm using Ritek 4x White Inkjet Printable and they've been very reliable as well.

Take your disc to Best Buy or some place like that and try it out on some other players. I bought my parents a $50.00 off-brand player last year and my discs work fine in it.

BB
 
I agree with all of the above...

But the ONLY time I've ever had issues with dvds and home units is:

1) If the unit is 5 years old or more -- almost 6 now.
2) My bit rate was set too high.

That combo of this kills older players. SOMETIMES --- MAYBE I'll agree that it was bad media - but often I'd have had problems on my machines too.

IF you are using Compressor -- are you using the audio that compressor gives you or are you doing a.Pack for audio? The aifs that compressor gives you WILL increase your bit rate. If your video is cranked (which it shouldn't if you are using the presets) then you might get issues.

Also depends on what's on your Menus. Audio again... AND moving video?

Anyway -- take it to BestBuy and stick it in every machine before sending off to master.

Good luck,

CaptM
 
Thanks for the advice dvx brothers, i'm buying some new DVD-R's as we speak.

I finally got this sucker to play on my home unit, had to take a 40MB wav file out of the first menu though. The only other thing in the first, and only menu, is a small JPEG that I left on there. Also, I bumped the bit rate down on Compressor (Maximum bit rate 5.0, average bit rate 4.2), and used the Dolby .ac3 for my audio.

Anyone have any type of file size maximums they'd recommend for stuff in your first menu? Like, don't put more than 100MB of video/stills/music, or something like that?
 
My experience with home dvd players is that most of them made within the last 4 years will play burned dvd's so long as they are DVD-R.

Right now theirs a few different types of DVD media you can buy, the two main differences are DVD-R and DVD+R .... DVD+R is not as nearly as compatable as DVD-R with home set top boxes. Its all just a marketing ploy to make it harder for the consumer to distinguish the differences between the media so that they buy the DVD+R (plus means better right?) instead of DVD-R so that they will have a harder time making "home-burned" DVD R's.

Its also a bad idea to burn video DVD's at too fast of a rate. I've never had any problems burning at 2x and 4x... but 8x might not be advisiable. "They" say anything faster than 1x will give you problems.
 
.. i think like cap'n mentioned.. the bitrate being too high is a real killer for this issue. too many people who are not familiar enough with DVD encoding just crack up all the settings for the encoding to tryand squeeze the "best" quality the encoder can output thinking that since its encoding for DVD it should work. but players arent meant to ingest too of a high bitrate, and will choke on it.. then the DVD will seem to skip or jump and pause and have all sorts of issues.. perhaps not play. try not to exceed an average bitrate of 7.4
 
I agree with everything above, plus I have found:

• The cheaper the player, the more compatible it will tend to be. Reason is than most cheap players use PC DVD drives inside a metal case, which aren't very fussy at all.
• Old Sony's are very fussy.
• Old Panasonics choke with high bitrate.
• Good DVD-R media is worth the extra. Grade A only.
• ALWAYS encode sound separately in Apack. I have also found that exporting a .wav from FCP is best and using that in Apack. Disable all the "extra" Apack features if you aren't using them. This includes menu sound and music!
• Resize menu pictures to the right size (720x576)
• Basically don't be lazy - don't leave anything up to DVD SP, it is better to do everything yourself.
 
What is this elusive "APack" or "a.pack" I keep hearing about, and how do I export my audio like that? I didn't see that option in Compressor...
 
"A.pack" is a stand alone program for Mac. You open it as a separate program and simply drag in your audio files ( I recommend uncompressed 16bit .wavs). It can encode to surround/stereo/mono .ac3 files. .AC3s seem to be the best audio format to import into DVDSP.

The more recent DVDSP versions have got better at dealing with different media formats, but I strongly recommend doing everything the long winded, manual way still.
 
A.Pack is not part of DVD Studio 4 anymore. You can now make AC3 sound in Compressor 2. This will significantly lower the bitrate. I had close to no problems using 2.0 dolby AC3 sound and 7,5-8,5kbit/s 2-pass vbr mpg2 on decent (not the cheapest) DVD-R in most home players.
 
francheezie said:
Thanks for the advice dvx brothers, i'm buying some new DVD-R's as we speak.

I finally got this sucker to play on my home unit, had to take a 40MB wav file out of the first menu though. The only other thing in the first, and only menu, is a small JPEG that I left on there. Also, I bumped the bit rate down on Compressor (Maximum bit rate 5.0, average bit rate 4.2), and used the Dolby .ac3 for my audio.

Anyone have any type of file size maximums they'd recommend for stuff in your first menu? Like, don't put more than 100MB of video/stills/music, or something like that?
Click to expand...


Well, file size in the sense you use it has nothing to do with it... the issue to watch is bitrate. Your DVDSP manual has lots of information for calculating bit rates.... Max of 5 is a bit low... up to 7.5 should be fine with a single audio track. Be careful, as multiple audio tracks all contribute to bitrate whether currently playing or not...

Try the media first, it does seem the likely problem...
 
Also, just got these two messages in the log while building/format/burning:
1. Warning: The file 'example.layout' found in the VIDEO_TS folder will not be included in the final disc.
2. Warning:The file 'VOB_DATA.LAY found in the VIDEO_TS folder will not be included in the final disc.

Could this be f-ing something up?
 
moebius said:
A.Pack is not part of DVD Studio 4 anymore. You can now make AC3 sound in Compressor 2. This will significantly lower the bitrate. I had close to no problems using 2.0 dolby AC3 sound and 7,5-8,5kbit/s 2-pass vbr mpg2 on decent (not the cheapest) DVD-R in most home players.
Click to expand...


Really, I haven't got DVDSP4 yet. Is Compressor as good as A.pack was though? I have come to trust A.pack with my audio.
 
The error msgs are fine. It won't be installing layout information on your DVD that DVD Studio used but is of no use on a video DVD.
 
mmm said:
Really, I haven't got DVDSP4 yet. Is Compressor as good as A.pack was though? I have come to trust A.pack with my audio.
Click to expand...
I haven't done a DVD project since updating to DVDSP4 yet, but Compressor 2 has the same options for AC3 that A.Pack had and since it's both Apple Software I suspect it'll be the exact same thing ...

(btw. I kinda came to trust A.pack to abort with an error message halfway through encoding most of the time so I was quite glad there is a change ...)
 
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