DVD Player Compatibility

Jay Gladwell wrote on 1/14/2004, 3:48 PM

You're right. For the most part, it's the older DVD players that are causing the problems... overall. I learned the hard way that the burning of the DVD (too high of a bitrate) can also contribute to the problem. However, the new players don't appear to have any trouble whatsoever.

When we provide a client with DVDs, we also provide a disclaimer along with the suggestion that if all else fails, they can buy a new DVD player for as low as $29.95. Granted, there are no bells or whistles, but they do play just about anything you stick in them.

J--

farss wrote on 1/14/2004, 4:04 PM

Also in a lot of olders players the lasers are getting weak so they simply cannot read the lower reflectivity DVD +/-R. We had one that went that way, now it will not play anything.

TheWoodsman wrote on 1/14/2004, 5:09 PM

Do you refuse to accept returned DVDs for refund, and if so, how do you convince them that the disc is not defective?

craftech wrote on 1/14/2004, 5:26 PM

Search this subject on this and the DVDA forum. There are a lot of viariables and concern that the age of the DVD player is the culprit is not necessarily true. The arguments continue, but top of the list I swear is media type. Not BRAND, but actual ID recognized by a utility like DVDInfo or DVD Identifier. The companies are outsourcing all over the place. The differences show up when you are burning over 4GB. The better media such as Ritek G04 will play well at over 4GB. There are a lot of fake media around as well. Even fake Sony media.
The other variables are burner, burn speed, authoring software, amount of motion in the video, bitrate, encoder itself. How each variable singly or collectively affects the overall outcome has not been definitively studied. Many of us just know what works for us. It can be rather expensive experimentation.

I am getting my best compatibility using Vegas 4.0d for encoding (usually seperate video and AC3 audio streams)after first editing and rendering an AVI and dumping it back on the timeline., then importing it into DVDA for authoring, and finally burning to a Ritek G04 DVD-R using DVDA to burn it at 1x speed only. Afterward I either leave the back blank or print directly on it with my CD printer. It has played in every player so far regardless of age.

John

PeterWright wrote on 1/14/2004, 6:33 PM

I think you have to accept that for the forseeable future it's an imperfect science.

I was recently having problems getting a DVD-R to play on a client's player - tried different brands media, tried -RW - all failed.

I decided to "bite the bullet" yesterday and went to buy a -/+ writer. To my pleasant surprise there was no bullet to bite - it only cost around A$200 - about US$150 - and two hours later I had a +DVD which played in my client's machine.

What I am now doing is basically producing on DVD-R but adding a note on the cover that if it doesn't play, return it to me and I will replace it with a DVD+R. If that doesn't work then sorry, here's your money back or you can have a VHS tape version.

Footnote - also bought a Canon i865 printer yesterday (A$355) which has a carrier for printing onto discs - looks pretty damn good, and is the fastest, quietest printer I've ever experienced!

craftech wrote on 1/14/2004, 6:39 PM

Footnote - also bought a Canon i865 printer yesterday (A$355) which has a carrier for printing onto discs - looks pretty damn good, and is the fastest, quietest printer I've ever experienced!
------------------------
Peter,
That's the one I wanted to get. Do you have ANY idea why Canon will not sell it's CD printers here in the United States? I got stuck with an Epson R300 as a result.

John

PeterWright wrote on 1/14/2004, 6:51 PM

That's funny, I was looking at an Epson 900 or 960 a while back, but they don't market them in Australia! They claimed it was something to do with the type of ink, but I believe farss imported one or two ....

Maybe Canon and Epson had a territorial agreement. ("We'll take Australia and you can have the U.S - and we'll throw in the Middle East")
Joking of course - nothing like that could happen in a free market economy ;)

riredale wrote on 1/14/2004, 10:51 PM

Just a footnote--about a month ago, I burned about 100 sets (2 disks) of my most recent choir documentary. Two failures so far. Both were DVD players in physician's homes. Hmmm...

Let's see, high disposable income, probably early pioneer types, thus probably bought very early (and expensive) DVD players, which are often known to hate burned disks...

Sure enough, this was the situation in both cases. So, that means that about 98 disk sets played fine in 98 different players, and the failures were explainable. I'd have to say compatibility is not much of an issue any more.

Video was edited with Vegas, compressed with CinemaCraft, authored with Maestro, burned with Nero onto Ritek G04. Both Disk1 and Disk2 in the set were extremely full, about 99+% of maximum capacity. Disks were labeled with Meritline glossy labels printed with an Epson C80 printer, aligned with a Stomper tool, and "fixed" with my "rolling pin" technique.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 1/15/2004, 8:38 AM

If I can play a disc on any one of three different machines, I do not accept it as a return. Besides, I know in advance, before the disc goes out, that it plays.

As someone suggested to me, if at all possible, I show the client that the disc is working. After that, the ball's in their court.

J--

Mandk wrote on 1/15/2004, 9:11 AM

I recently did a project with 120 disks burned (DVD-R, 4x burning speed) and had about 15 returns/problems. Issues spotted were

Media - 6 of the returns were from a 2 disk set 1 memorex one ritek (I ran out of ritek because the orders exceeded expectations). Burned on ritek solved most of the problems.

Encoding - 5 of the problems were not with Media. I had originally encoded to MPEG2 directly from vegas and then burned with DVDA. These were encoded at an average bit rate (8 or so) which alloed the file to compress down to 95% of the 4.7GB disk. I redid the file as an AVI from Vegas and encoded in DVDA at an average bit rate of 4. This solved these people's problems.

User Error - 3 disks returned were fingerprinted so badly I would not put the nasty thing in my players to test.

Player Incompatibility - the remainder of the problems just would not work and got a VHS tape. One Play Station 2, Two Magnavox ultra cheap players,
and one APEX.

I also had an interesting thing happen when trying a DVD+R. It would not work in one of my cheapie players at home that played all of the other rejects - go figure.

johnmeyer wrote on 1/15/2004, 9:42 AM

My projects have been smaller -- generally 5-30 discs. I've had 1-2 returns, even though I follow almost exactly the procedures described by others (Ritek G04, Encode in Vegas; keep bitrates under 7, and usually closer to 6 mbs). In each case the problem was really old DVD players.

Interesting footnote (we're big on footnotes in this thread): Almost half the people were so interested in having the DVD, and wanting to avoid the inferior VHS quality (which I of course offered as an alternative), that they went out and bought a new DVD player so they could play the discs. In each case, they bought a basic player, and in one case only spent $50 (I was charging $20 for the discs)..

P.S. What do people charge for discs in small quantities when they do the filming, post-production, and duplication? I felt a little bad about the $20, since our local dup house charges $9 for VHS tape duplication, but they're only doing the duplication. Am I off base here?

Jsnkc wrote on 1/15/2004, 10:17 AM

We burn probably 20,000-50,000 DVD-R's a year at our facility (using Verbatim DVD-R's exclusively) and we have less than 1% come back to us due to player compatability. I know it's been a long time since a real compatability study has been done and there is a lot of old information out there on compatability that really need to be updated. I would bet it is now something like 5-10% of the players out today won't play DVD-R's.
I won't even talk about DVD+R's since they aren't really used in the professional DVD world as a means of distribution at this time.

Mandk wrote on 1/15/2004, 10:49 AM

My disks were done as a volunteer so none of my time was paid for (camera work and editing) we sold the disks for $15 each ($10 for each additional disk) with all profits above cost going to the organization. People still complained about the price. If there would have been a profit motive - the projects would not have been done.

The real goal I had in doing these was to provide a history of the season for other families to enjoy. Which has happened. I have received compliments from Grandparents that would not have seen their grandchild perform with out these videos.

A warm fuzzy feeling indeed.

craftech wrote on 1/15/2004, 11:18 AM

We burn probably 20,000-50,000 DVD-R's a year at our facility (using Verbatim DVD-R's exclusively) and we have less than 1% come back to us.
=================================
Which Verbatim's? The good ones made by MCC (Mitsubishi Chemicals) or the ones made by the cheap Taiwanese company CMC (CMC Magnetics). Or are they the ones made by Taiyo Yuden? Or perhaps the ones which are Ritek G03? Another classic example of the point I have been trying to make.
What's the actual media ID on the discs?

John

Jsnkc wrote on 1/15/2004, 1:19 PM

This is what I come up with when I run the disc through DVD Indentifier so yes they are the "good ones" as you can see from the Manufacturers ID.

Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-R:MCC 00RG200 ]

craftech wrote on 1/15/2004, 3:07 PM

This is what I come up with when I run the disc through DVD Indentifier so yes they are the "good ones" as you can see from the Manufacturers ID.

Unique Disc Identifier : [DVD-R:MCC 00RG200 ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disc Type : [DVD-R]
Manufacturer ID : [MCC 00RG200 ]
Disc Application Code : [Unrestricted Use : Consumer Purpose]
Recording Speeds : [1x - (2x)]
Blank Disc Capacity : [2,298,496 Sectors = 4,489.3 MB = 4.38 GB]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[DVD Identifier - http://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com]

========================================================
Great!

Hopefully your supplier won't start sending you the "other" Verbatim's. That's why we all have to start getting away from statements such as "I use only Fuji and never had a problem". The industry isn't set up that way and many of us are getting screwed as a result.

John

Jsnkc wrote on 1/15/2004, 5:03 PM

I know that a lot of people do get screwed. That is why it is good to find a reputable dealer that you can build a relationship with, at first the supplies will probably be a little more expensive, but eventually if they are a good dealer they will start to cut you some breaks. I have 2 places that I normally buy from, and every once in a while I check the discs to make sure I am getting what I pay for, and I have yet to have a problem. If anyone is interested in a good DVD or CD supply company the one I would highly reccomend is Techware, we have been in buisness with them for many many years and have never had a problem, they have always gone out of their way to make us happy.

www.techwaredist.com

And another one that I have mentioned before is Genesys DTP
www.genesysdtp.com

craftech wrote on 1/15/2004, 8:28 PM

I've dealt with Genesys DTP. Not bad for a one man operation.
http://www.genesysdtp.com/
If you click on "Established 1997" at the bottom of the homepage it will take you to the special coupons and e-mail discount offers. Shhh!!

I'll have to give techware a try.
Thanks,
John

lynj wrote on 1/15/2004, 10:15 PM

I have just order a 4X DVD duplicator (Octave Systems Copywriter). I see you all talking about 1X or 2X burning. Is this speed going to be a problem? I make the master on a 1X Pioneer. Also, I plan to use labels on the DVDs. Does this ever affect the way it plays? Am considering purchasing a printer but the automated ones are so expensive. Any recommendations? Thanks.

JJKizak wrote on 1/16/2004, 4:41 AM

I have burned about 200 DVD-R Verbatim 1x-2x discs and only one would not work and the problem was the machine. Either no label or printed with Epson 960.

JJK

craftech wrote on 1/16/2004, 4:54 AM

I have just order a 4X DVD duplicator (Octave Systems Copywriter)
=================================================
I thought that was a CD duplicator? That's what it says on their website.

John

riredale wrote on 1/16/2004, 12:02 PM

Lynj:

Do a search on this board. The label issue has been discussed many times. Some people have terrible luck; others seem to do much better. Personally, I do labels all the time and have never had an instance where a labelled disk wouldn't play while the same disk sans label would. I can't explain why others have different results, except that maybe label application technique is critical.

At this point I have produced nearly 400 DVD-R disks with labels. By using glossy Meritline labels and an Epson C80 (pigment ink) printer, the results are very attractive.

As for burning speed, this too has been bounced around a bit here. All 400 of my disks have been burned at 4X, but I think I "lucked out" by standardizing on just one brand of disk, the Ritek G04. Not only is it apparently an exceptionally good disk, but it's also cheap! I'm about to order an additional 100 today from www.meritline.com, and they go for about $1 each in quantity (hint: mention "mr10pct" on the order, and they knock off an additional 10%).