DVD from Master not playing in all DVD machines

bassam wrote on 12/6/2007, 10:22 AM

Hi:

a master of my documentary film shot in the Himalayas was mastered with DVDA3 onto a DVD -R . I gave that to the DVD manufacturer where a glass master was made - they told me there would be no difference between a DVD master or a DLT - I got the DVD back from the reputable manufacturer and mailed the DVD to those who had pre-ordered - I was just contacted by a customer who said the DVD would not play in his player (he has not had any problems with his player) -

When the DVD is put into the player, the automatic 8 second logo graphics come up - then the menu choices of "Introduction" "Play" and "secene selection" appear as normal - when they press any of the naviagation - they are just taken back to the 8 second logo sequence - The customer plays it on his computer ok.

I used DVDA3 to make the master - this leads me to believe there is a glitch somewhere or a settings problem - My understanding was that from a glass master all players would be able to play the DVD in any player.

I have a new film master to complete before Christmas on a new documentary and don't want the same problem - Would any one be able to shed some light on this situation - is it the master on DVD? or is it the manufacturer? or something else? I also noticed in other posts members of the forum taling about ROM masters? All suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated.

regards

Bassam

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/6/2007, 10:26 AM

could of been a mess up in the authoring somehow, duplication, the DVD player for the client. I just bought a DVD (burned in a burner though) that has the menu messed up on my DVD player but works as expected in Windows & Linux.

Does every copy you received do this? Could be that one got borked somehow. Did they send you a proof first to make sure everything is ok & was that?

bassam wrote on 12/6/2007, 10:52 AM

It was Duplium that made the disks - they run the DVD master through a copy right and Navigation checker before making the master - it is just that the DVDs don't play on all machines and I need to correct this

farss wrote on 12/6/2007, 11:50 AM

I believe there is an issue with the DVDs that DVDA 3 authors. Some players have an issue with the unreferenced audio stream in the menu.
Was discussed at some length here. One workaround was to use PGCEdit to remove the audio stream after authoring the DVD.

Bob.

bassam wrote on 12/6/2007, 12:50 PM

Does any one know if the problem was fixed and offered in an updated download?

MPM wrote on 12/6/2007, 3:15 PM

Every DVDA DVD I've opened in PgcEdit still shows an incorrect number of streams notice, so if it's a problem it hasn't been fixed AFAIK in the latest versions. SCS normally doesn't offer patches or hotfixes but releases new versions/build etc.

"the DVDs don't play on all machines and I need to correct this"

If the alleged error was on one player out of however many disks were produced, I'd humbly suggest that maybe the problem was with that particular player? If not, it could be a defective or damaged disk as easily as anything else. IOW I wouldn't jump on DVDA quite yet, but pursue some sort of diagnostics or troubleshooting -- things like sending the customer another copy, and requesting the originals return so you could test it.

If a 2nd copy still won't play, re-doing your DVD (re-using your original material) in a trial of Encore or DVDLab Pro would tell you if DVDA had any part to play. Of course you might have to offer the customer something to keep them happy, but that's biz.

As far as DVDA doing anything different, there's not really a lot that it could do wrong. There's no one way to write the scripting that makes DVDs work, and if you look at the results of 7 authoring programs, chances are all 7 will produce something slightly different in the way of coded instructions to the player. PgcEdit complains about DVDA's non-existent stream, and hitting the menu buttons on the remote while viewing menus can produce wrong results... Those are the only 2 idiosyncrasies I can recall being reported for DVDA.

bassam wrote on 12/15/2007, 8:03 AM

I got another call with the DVD arcetecture not working in another machine -

when the play or scene selection is played - it just goes back to the 8 second automatic introduction - I wonder if it is this auto intro that is causing the problem - if leaving that out on future DVDs would be the answer? I don't want to but when you send out 1000 DVDs and start to get returns with the same problem then it is good to find a solution.

Does every one who sends masters a DVD with DVDA3 go throught the extra steps of having to run it through another program to make it work ok?

MPM wrote on 12/15/2007, 1:46 PM

If there's a problem with the intro video, my guess would be it's with the 2 cell menu if you used one rather than a separate intro video. If I remember correctly I read something about DVDLab Pro having compatibility problems with Sony players when the DVD was authored with multi-cell main menus; later I read that this was fixed. I know DVDA & DVDLab Pro are separate, very different programs -- my point would be that it is possible to have something go wrong with multi-cell menus I guess. I normally don't use them [feel the lag when the menu repeats is longer with DVDA DVDs that do] so I can't give any real-world experience one way or the other. A separate intro video OTOH is quite simple as far as DVDs go -- not really much of anything that I'm aware of to muck up.

Do you disable the remote buttons for your menus? Could it be that the customer is pressing the button for scene selection or menu or title etc. while viewing menus? This has been discussed and there have been problems noted in other threads. You don't mention, and perhaps the customer didn't say, whether they actually clicked on the menu buttons or used the buttons on their remote.

Otherwise, FWIW, don't know if anyone (SCS included) can comment too much more without specifics, like which players had the problem etc., so that there's some hope of duplicating it and tracking any potential problem down. In the absence of that, perhaps you could send those customers having problems a version of your DVD with a separate intro video, or authored in another program? If it worked after being authored in another program, that would point to something re: DVDA. IF it worked with a single cell menu, that would point to problems with using menus with 2 cells in DVDA 3. Either way you'd probably want to disable most buttons on the remote for any menus -- no big deal since there should be no reason for the user to do anything but navigate and press enter.

"Does every one who sends masters a DVD with DVDA3 go throught the extra steps of having to run it through another program to make it work ok?"

IMHO, and in the sense that I think you mean it, no. Do many DVDA users also use other software preparing their DVDs? Probably. Speaking for myself, I'm reluctant to spend the extra cash for top tier DVD authoring software like Scenarist, or get a MAC to run Studio Pro. Using other software along with DVDA, I don't have to.

bassam wrote on 12/17/2007, 3:49 PM

Thanks for replying -

The problem is that when the people (the ones that have contacted me) press "play" or scene selection they are directed to the auto play 8 second company logo that should come up only once when the DVD is put in the player - The main main menu consists of 3 cells - The filmmaker giving an introduction to the film - the main play buttom and the scene selection button -

The one customer did say they tried both the remote and the Players buttons and it happened both ways - after contacting me one of the other customers tried the DVD on his computer and it worked fine - which was a major relief to me - but still he can't watch it on his TV. One of the big supporters of the Film had the problem so that is why I;m really looking for an answer on what to do as the next film I have I have to authour over the Holidays and I don't want to have the same person who has supported this second film to have the same problem - it's not good for keeping there support and I really need to be able to say the situation is fixed -

Would leaving out the 8 second company logo that appeart automatically when the DVD is put in the player correct this?

or using the latest version of DVDA instead of version 3?

or perhaps you might be suggesting not to have the intro from the film maker as one of the "cells" in the main menu?

The other thing I was thinking of was you mentioned the unscripted audio causing the "play" button to not work - how likely is that the problem and could it be caused by the audio render selection I used in Vegas 6 - In Gary Kliener's "The Vegas Companion" which I used to learn Vegas - and was very good - he recommend after one has done the audio to make a template "don't mess with my audio" so vegas won't change the audio on the preset render choices - it makes sense to me and I did it that way - would that cause the audio track to be read as unscripted and hence not play? just wondering?

Thanks again for any assistance you can offer - I really like Vegas and it integrates so well with DVDA that I don;t really want to learn another program and would like to find a solution for further projects - I;ve booked 1 feature doc to edit and authour for Feb and one for April so it's a little nerve racking not knowing how it will work as the one that was just made was my first long form project at 157 mins.

regards

Bassam

MPM wrote on 12/18/2007, 12:50 PM

It's great that it doesn't seem to be a problem with turning off remote control buttons, though that might have been the easiest to solve. You might contact SCS customer support to see if they've had any similar reports or experiences; if not, and if you can't find anyone else who's had similar problems, you might be stuck in the position of having to do the troubleshooting yourself, trying different things to see what works in the problem DVD players.

If you can get the make/model of the 2 DVD players, maybe you can find out if there are any common problems with the players themselves, by googling & checking the database at videohelp.com. There are players that have or later developed problems working properly, and many different brands share identical electronics, so time spent searching might turn out to be well worth it.

I should have explained better about the intro -- apologies
On a DVD visual content is video, and this video is divided up into cells, though the actual video files are not altered. A cell can last for 1 frame or for a complete video file. Cells are like the Markers in Vegas -- the start of a cell just represents a time, a location in a video file that the DVD's scripting can reference or point to. Each chapter you set creates a new cell, though cells do not have to have chapters assigned to them.

Since the menus you see on a DVD are video files, they can have cells too. The intro video is one cell, the actual menu is the 2nd, and the third cell is the exit transition -- DVDA can only create the first two cells. Since you only have one, continuous video file, transition from the intro to the menu is seamless. In DVDA you create this 2 cell menu by using the loop-point on the menu time-line. Anything before the loop-point is the intro in cell # 1 -- anything after is the menu in cell # 2.

The catch is that when you reach the end of the menu video, if/when you want the menu to loop, scripting has to direct the player to the 2nd cell, rather than just repeating the menu video like you could if the menu video was a separate file -- not merged with the intro. Solely my own, personal opinion based on observation: the loop/restart at the end of the menu video I *think* has a longer pause when you use the loop-point in DVDA. To *me*, that might be because the player has to parse the extra scripting DVDA sticks in there to make the 2 cell menu work.

If what I read about DVDLab Pro was accurate, it is possible for the scripting for a 2 cell menu to cause some players to have problems. Maybe it's because the problem players don't handle all the commands necessary when displaying menus, or maybe their memory is filling up or whatever...

If you created a 2 cell menu by using a loop-point, using a separate intro file instead might eliminate potential scripting causing problems. Leaving out the logo (intro) entirely *might* cut down on the scripting -- there's some boilerplate stuff the player would probably still have to parse. Instead of having the logo appear when the DVD's inserted, you could have it as the target for the Play button on the menu, then have your title as the intro's end action. Or you could add it to the start of the title video -- merge the 2 files together.

I say *might* because DVDA like many other DVD authoring programs inserts "boilerplate" scripting to handle most of the options you can enable in your project. Much of it sits unused until you enable whatever options, but it's still there to be parsed by any player. And whether you used a 2 cell menu or not, or an intro or not, the problem could be elsewhere in the DVDA scripting -- the only way I can think of to eliminate DVDA's scripting entirely (to see if that's the problem) is to try another program. There are trials available for several, including the latest version of DVDA, which should open your current project without any problems (save a copy first) if you want to see if that makes any difference.

As far as audio goes, the only widely reported problem I'm aware of is that audio and video durations should match as best possible, especially for menus. Bob posted about the problem with DVDA DVDs causing an "unreferenced stream" notice in PgcEdit. How much of a problem this is, or if it effects only certain markets etc. I have no idea -- just mentioned that it still does it. ;-) My personal experience is that PgcEdit threw the error message up the 1st time I used it on a DVDA DVD, I clicked OK to fix it, and had problems with that DVD afterwards -- that was years ago & I've not bothered with it since & haven't had any problems *reported*.