Erratic Menu behavior on older DVD players

helixboy wrote on 5/9/2006, 12:12 PM

I've been using DVDA for 2 years now for mastering my DVDs and sending them to a duplicator with no problems. Lately I am having an abnormal amount of returns due to non playable discs from customers. I got a few different DVD players to test try to find out what is happening, and found that their was a real problem with the way the menus and chapter selections behaved on certain players (these players are older, but can play any other store bought DVD without a problem, and can also play my older DVDs).

Here is how I make the DVDs and what I use:

Avis prepared in Vegas 6.0d
Using DVD+R DL
Using DVDA for compressing the single AVI with imported markers
The media have a 2 level scene selection menu structure (Root Menu/4 or 5 Episode Selection/4 Chapters per Episode Scene Selections)
I load the rest of the available space with previews to other DVDs.
I use Nero 6.x to burn the DVDs where the DVD writer setting was set to DVD-ROM Booktype

Final product will run ok on most newer players we have, but on some, the menu items will all lead to the last chapter of the movie which is the credits, or stop altogether. Some of the DVDs wont even let you press the Play movie from start button. Again, that makes it Stop the player. But when I play the DVD in a new Toshiba player for example, there are no errors or crazy jumps. It all works just as it did when I preview it with DVDA.

I cant seem to find any article about this in the forums, does anyone have a clue what I might be doing wrong?

Comments

ScottW wrote on 5/9/2006, 12:54 PM

What did you author your older dvd's with? DVDA 2.0?

Frankly, this sounds like something that DVDA is generating in terms of commands to the player that is causing your problem. and since there are multiple ways to accomplish the same task, DVDA may be using a method that the older players aren't interpreting correctly.

You might try a different authoring utility - DVD Lab Pro has a 30 day fully functional free trial (actually you may be able to get by with DVD Lab since it doesn't sound like your stuff is overly complicated).

--Scott

johnmeyer wrote on 5/9/2006, 1:23 PM

Send tech support one of the DAR files (the DVDA project file) and see if they can spot something.

plasmavideo wrote on 5/10/2006, 10:43 AM

I've found some strange menu behaviour problems that show up on relatively new Panasonic players, but not on the Sony or Toshiba players that I've tried the DVDs on. The problems are not exactly like yours, but they are related to menus, looping background stuttering in menus, and other erratic menu behaviours when selecting scenes.

I've been unable to pin down exactly what's happening yet, and tech support could not reproduce the problem.

I guess each manufacturer's players have some quirks, but I authored an identical type of project - same files, etc - in one of the Ulead OEM packages and everything worked fine on all players.

johnmeyer wrote on 5/10/2006, 10:58 AM

I have a player that used to play DVDA menus just fine, but now won't do so. I have a very similar model that I just inherited (both Pioneer players) and it plays them fine. My conclusion? Something may have happened to the player over time. This doesn't make sense to me, but that's the only thing I can figure. In my case the problem is that the player doesn't return to the menu when it is finished playing a titleset. It just sits there showing the last frame of video and freezes.