What musicvid said -- generally, freezing and pixelation (especially if not in the same spot each time) are an indication the player can not read the data off the disk fast enough to keep up. I have had excellent results with Taiyo Yuden Premium media (I have seen a couple of people comment that Verbatim is T-Y, but not sure on that). I also just recently ran into a problem with both my DVD burners and my DVD-ROM drives in my system having problems with DL media I had purchased from Digital Juice -- they could all read the first layer just fine (10 seconds for a 150 mb file), but any file on the second layer was more like 10 minutes. 3 different drives had the same issue (all several years old).

mikey

Yep, my problems started on the second layer. I'd rather not compromise the quality by lowering the bitrate, so I'll try burning at a lower rate and getting higher quality media first.

digitalfaq has TDK listed as excellent. i have some memorex around so will try that next while i look for verbatim.

I will be making a master and giving that to others to make copies. I want the master to be as error-free as possible, but the question is, will all the copies made with cheap media still have this problem eventually anyway?

Ah, I didn't notice you were burning DL..

The sad fact is, some home players won't handle burned DL at all, no matter what the bitrate or the media brand.

That being said, TDK is a good media, just that Verbatim and T-Y are recommended more often. I certainly wouldn't bet my luck on Memorex.

For widest compatibility with home players, I either burn two discs or live with the quality hit of burning at a lower bitrate.

The Memorex test was a failure. I will try TDK again at a lower burn speed. It's at 8 bitrate now. How low can I ago to get a more reliable burn without compromising quality too much?
I don't want to keep spending lots of money on blank media just to get the same results, so I might have to abandon the project.