Can't Read Burned DVD

petroid wrote on 1/8/2005, 4:54 PM

I have rendered MPEG-2 with Vegas 5.0 and authored DVD with DVD Architect 2.0b. Burned DVD with DVDA and the drive that burned it as well as DVD-ROM on another machine can't read the disc at all. I then burned the same project using Nero and still nothing. I have update the drive's firmware to no avail. I don't have a set-top player available to test with. Any suggestions. If it is a media incompatibility, why can the drive that burned the disc not even read it?
DVD-RW: AOpen DUW1608/12x
Media: Maxell DVD-R 2x
DVD-ROM: LG

Comments

bStro wrote on 1/8/2005, 5:07 PM

Faulty media?

What happens when you put the disc in a drive and check it in Windows Explorer? Is it blank or do you get an error message? Or have you only tried opening the disc with DVD player software? If so, do other DVDs work okay?

Normally, I'd blame DVDA, but if Nero fails also...

Rob

petroid wrote on 1/8/2005, 5:48 PM

In both drives, explorer freezes and must be ended. They show no files and will not explore the disc. Only once, the DVD-RW drive showed VIDEO-TS and AUDIO-TS directories on the disc, but then locked up.
I just can't fathom why the disc can't be read on the drive that burned it. No errors were encountered in either of the burn processes. Can the media be to blame? I actually purchased it some time back for use on a set-top burner. I only just recently got the internal drive.

petroid wrote on 1/10/2005, 6:42 AM

I have now tested the disc on both a brand new Sony DVD player and a 2 year old Symphonic DVD/VCR combo. The disc plays perfectly on the Symphonic but on the Sony it skips and jerks horribly. I guess more testing is required to see which media will work best.

ScottW wrote on 1/10/2005, 7:11 AM

What bitrate did you render at? If you went for the max bitrate thinking that it would improve your video quality, you're going to find that a lot of players simply can't handle things that high.

petroid wrote on 1/10/2005, 10:03 AM

I used the default 8mbps bit rate. I will try some other media to see if it makes any difference.

ScottW wrote on 1/10/2005, 11:40 AM

In addition to other media, use VBR and set the average a 6,000.

petroid wrote on 1/10/2005, 5:53 PM

Does setting the bitrate lower help some players read the disc?
Also, does it affect the quality of the video? Doesn't lower bitrate mean lower quality?
How you set use VBR? Under "Optimize DVD" I can change the bitrate but it appears to be CBR only.

petroid wrote on 1/10/2005, 6:17 PM

After some looking around in Vegas I found the "Custom Template" option which allows for VBR encoding. Is this what you mean? I have been using the default DVD NTSC template which is single-pass VBR Max 8mbps Avg 6mbps and Min 192kbps. Will lowering the average bitrate make more compatible DVDs? Will 2-pass encoding produce more compatible or higher quality video? And does this have anything at all to do with DVDA and its bitrate values? I have some experience using 2-pass encoding with DiVx codecs. I suppose the basic theory behind it is similar. The first pass identifies what bitrate to use during which scenes and the second pass does the actual encoding.

J_Mac wrote on 1/11/2005, 4:18 PM

'I don't have a set-top player available to test with'.
Do your PC's have DVD playind software? John.

petroid wrote on 1/11/2005, 5:08 PM

Yes, both PC's have PowerDVD and Windows Media Player and read commercial DVD's just fine. I have used the DVD-ROM drive before to read a burned data DVD and it worked fine as well. I'll be able to do more extensive testing this weekend to see how things work out with different set-top players and media.