Are you using the high quality Taiyo-Yuden discs? They have a "Value line" that is just as bad as everyone else's. I use Taiyo-Yuden DVD-R47WPP600SK8 and haven't had any problems with them.

~jr

Is it Taiyo-Yuden Value Line or their Premium disks? Big difference.

Are these 8x or 16x disks? Big difference.

Which burner is in your PC? Big difference.

The tag on my stack of DVD's reads:

DV 001 0506
Taiyo Yuden White IN
KJET HUB 8X DVD-R

My DVD burner came with my Sony Vaio two years ago
HL-DT-ST-DVD-RW GWA-4082B

Does this help?
Burt

I have an external SONY burner, and only use Taiyo Yuden media, the expensive "glossy, waterguard" kind (I used to get the silver printable and other white printable), DVD-R 16x.

I burn all my discs at 16x.. they're usually 2-3 hrs. (yeah, I know... 3 hrs compresses a lot :( )

With the old white printable media I never had problems.
With the silver printable media I never had problems.

With the waterguard media, I *did* have a problem with one batch of discs, just like you describe. When the disc was burned to the max, the last few tracks would skip, then stall (back to menu)... I burned to a new batch and had *no problem* with the exact same image.

I recommend returning the batch and getting another one. Maybe some of the sticky stuff from the wrap got onto the media a bit, so stuff burned near the edges is having issue?

You have to read the media ID on the disc itself. Various software tools can provide this to you (DVD Decrypter, Nero Infotools, etc.)

I burn a lot of 2-hour DVD's as I do a weekly 28.5-min. TV show. I just switched to Taiyo-Yuden stock on advice from this forum. But I now get errors during the last half-hour of my 2-hr. DVD's. The start breaking up and then stall out in the last 15-mionutes. Does anyone have an idea as to what I can do to correct this. Never had this trouble before with my older DVD stock. Or. could it be my Sony built-in burner?
Burt
==================
Yes,
Create your DVDs in the normal way you have been. Then create an iso file of it from the folder containing your Video TS and Audio TS files. You can download the freeware program DVD Shrink and let it do a deep analysis first, then set it to create an iso file from the Video/Audio TS folder. It won't change the video unless the folder created by your authoring program is too large to fit on the disc.

Take your iso file and burn it to the same media using the freeware program Active@ Iso Burner which works very well. If you have Nero I think you can stay within DVD Shrink and burn the iso file from that although I haven't tried it because I don't have nor want Nero.

I bet it will play with no problems using the exact same media.

John

John's solution may be necessary, but before you go to all that work I suggest making sure you get the latest firmware update for this burner.

Do make sure to go to Sony's support site for the firmware though. Your drive is used by many different OEMs with different requirements, and there is no guarantee that a firmware update you get somewhere else will work for you here.

I'm very greatful for the advice you all have given me and I will embark now on a course of action.
Thank you,
Burt

hi John..

What do those tools do differently than DVDA does?

If you're willing to "bet it'd work with the same media" using a different process, you must have some knowledge of how the different tools are handling the burn process. And that also means that the Sony burning algorithm has room for improvement, yes?

Hopefully this is not the issue but I had a similar problem a while back. DVD's would not play in the last half and Plextools was reporting massive errors in the last half to quarter of the disks. I thought it was the media and tried other brands (Verbatim, Sony and TDK) but got the same errors in about the same place with all of them.

I replaced the drive and all the problems went away. I think the drive was going bad. It still reads fine and would burn the first half great but that last half...

FWIW.