I am not at home to check, but believe it was more than 4.3 gig.

If you have 1.5 hours of material, and "more than" 4.3 GB of disc usage, chances are your bitrate is something well in excess of 6 MBS.

Many older players simply will not handle higher bitrates and choke as you described. If I remember correctly the dvr108 is 5+ years old.

Try a 4MBS encode and see how it plays on your player. Also try a lower burn speed. I know you payed some $ for it back in the day, but with new DVD +-R/RW recorders in the $30 range, it might be time for a replacement. My Sony OEM (Optiarc) plays (and records) just fine at 9 MBS with single and dual layer media.

Yeah, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find that the laser on your pioneer drive is starting to give out. .... the symptoms as described certainly sound like it's either that or bad media. I've never had a probblem with Taiyo Yuden TYG02 media so I would try replacing the drive.

-Dan

It sounds like you are doing everything correctly.

The bitrate is not the problem because to fit that amount of time onto a single layer DVD (this is single layer, right?) will require a lower bitrate, not higher. Thus, I am quite certain that bitrate cannot be a problem for a disc with nintey mintues on it.

Your workflow sounds correct.

Thus, I would focus on these three things:

1. A bad batch of media.
2. A burner that is going bad.
3. The client DVD player is going bad.

To test #1, try to find a burner that can run CD-DVD Speed. This comes with Nero, but can be downloaded for free from the cd-dvd site:

CD-DVD Speed

Most LiteOn, Benq, and Plextor drives support this, as well as some Sony drives. The older Pioneer drives did not.

Test a disc that plays just fine, and then test one of the problem discs. You should be getting good quality burns with very few errors (it is normal to have some errors).

To test #2, you should try to find some of the same media that you burned on this burner at an earlier time, preferably as near to when you first had it as possible. You should then play that on the client machine. You should also do the CD-DVD Speed test on this older burn media and see how the quality numbers compare. The quality tests, when done on bad media, or on a burner that is going south, are dramatically different.

To test #3, you should try various other media and make sure it plays.

Finally, I have seen a few older players that will play +R media and not -R, and vice versa. Usually this is an all-or-nothing affair, but it is possible that using one vs. the other might help.

Oh, one other thing. I have a burner on one computer that, in Nero, insists on trying to burn 8x media at 16x. It actually will do this, but the results are horrific. So, make darn sure you you don't exceed the burn speed of the media you are using. Some people advise burning at a lower speed than the recommended speed for the media, but I have actually done this and then tested the resulting burns, and have never found any increase in burn quality whatsoever. This is not to say that it would never be better, just that my own tests on TY02 8x media have never once produced a better burn at 4x or 2x than I get at 8x.

ALWAYS do tests; otherwise you have to rely on Internet urban legends and rumors.

I hope you solve your problem.

**The bitrate is not the problem because to fit that amount of time onto a single layer DVD (this is single layer, right?) will require a lower bitrate, not higher. Thus, I am quite certain that bitrate cannot be a problem for a disc with nintey mintues on it.**
90 min = ~6548 Kbs, SL w/audio

Many older players of his vintage will choke at 6Mbs, sometimes even less.

My suggestion was that Billae purposely not fill the disc at the highest bitrate possible, but prepare at a lower bitrate such as 4Mbs to see if it will play. This obviously would not utilize the full space on a single layer disc. Lowering the bitrate as I suggested will either confirm or rule out one very common cause of stuttering, freezing, pixelating, or just plain choking on older players.

My other suggestion was that Billae try a burn at something less than full speed, another very common cause of exactly the same symptoms with older burners.

Ah, lowering the bitrate so the burn doesn't get as near to the outer edge of the disc where the dye is sometimes not as even, and the wobble is greater, etc. -- I understand now, and I can see that this makes sense. So it's not the bitrate per se (6,000,000 bps is not pushing the spec much), but the result of the lower bitrate, namely that the disc doesn't get filled to the edge. It certainly fits what he describes, namely that the disc only stutters near the end, which presumably is on the outer edge of the disc.

Still, having produced thousands of DVDs and not yet had one return, I tend to still think it is bad media, burner, or player. But it's worth trying a lower bitrate burn just to see ...

Ok guys, tried the lower bit Rate...and Notta..Stiil Locking up..I tested the DVD in 2 different DVD players and one laptop with DVD player. So I Authored the DVD again only this time in DVD Architect version 4 and guess what!!! It works just fine. I don't want to stop using DVD Architect 5, so, I will try updating my drives firmaware and try it again. Thanks all for your help.

So I Authored the DVD again only this time in DVD Architect version 4 and guess what!!! It works just fine. Now THAT is interesting! Do me/you/us a favour, can you now open the DVDA4 in DVDA5 - and see if THAT now plays? Please?

Grazie

For what it's worth, I had quite a few coasters with a batch of TYG02 bought in 2008. This is with the TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L632H drive in my Dell laptop. It seems to prefer Verbatim DVD+R. This has put me off the TYG02 a little bit.