Thank you musicvid for such a prompt response and advice which I will follow as I have to re-burn and re-send to some people. The discs were TDK Gold but will switch to Verbatim. Also, which is preferable DVD+R or DVD-R?

There is virtually no difference in the quality or compatibility of DVD-R and DVD+R discs, Chris.

The very oldest players may not play DVD+R, but that is a rare exception.

Thanks again guys for the feedback. BTW Steve I have ordered your book on DVDA from Amazon and look forward to receiving it some time next week.

Wonderful, Chris! Hope it helps you out. (I actually still use it for my own personal reference!)

"2) Turn back the burn speed a notch"

This should fix 90% of the "My DVD won't play" complaints. Never, ever burn a DVD at the highest possible speed.

In the years of burning and distributing hundreds of DVD's, I can count the number of unviewable DVDs on one hand. Not including my thumb.

I'm raising this topic again as I'm still having issues - or I should say others are still having issues with playing back my dvds.

I followed the advice given i.e. lower the burn speed and don't run background applications but haven't switched to Verbatim discs yet, wanting to finish up my stock of TDK Gold.
After checking that the discs played without any problem on my computer as well as dvd player, I sent replacement discs to all those who had had problems with my first lot of discs and in most cases I got a favourable response - finally!!. However a couple of people are still having problems i.e the discs play fine until the 3 or 4 last scene/chapter when they freeze. In one instance the discs play back on computer but not the dvd player which is relatively new. (Trouble is the person wants to view the video on their TV not their computer!).

So my questions are:
1. Could this problem be attributed to the type of disc (TDK) I used?

2. If they are playing without a problem on my equipment, should I just throw up my hands and assume its the other party's equipment?

3. Could it be something in the individual videos (12 per disc).? All were edited and rendered in AVI format, converted to MPEG and then sent to DVDA via SVMSP9 "Make Movie' wizard.

4. Can you think of ANYTHING else that's causing these playback issues please?

Many thanks

Note to Steve Grisetti - I now have your book "Guide to DVDA 4.5" - what a great reference tool to have, very comprehensive & easy to follow.

1. Yes
2. No. You must accommodate. My burns have played on thousands of players with no returns, except for a couple that needed to be burned on -R.
3. If properly rendered for DVD, Movie Studio should have rendered them at ~6Mbs. Any player should handle that.
4. Get a small quantity of Verbatim discs. Try burning with ImgBurn. Try another burner.

Thanks for your response musicvid - its back to the drawing board for me then. Will work by process of elimination & report back in a few weeks.

"1. Could this problem be attributed to the type of disc (TDK) I used? "

Yes, but no.

Never buy your blank media at a big-box store.

Blank disk media is a commodity item, and except for few sources you cannot determine who manufactured your blank media based on the logo on the box. In fact, your Verbatim disk could very well be manufactured at Sony, JVC, or any of dozens of media manufacturers. You need to find and run a disk ID program and read the manufacturer data hard encoded in the hub of the disk. This is the only way you will know what is really in the disk.

I have been extremely pleased with Taiyo-Yuden lately.

Whilst I have purchased the Verbatim discs as recommended above I haven’t burned the video to them.

In the meantime, however I have been reading quite a few threads on this forum as well as the SVMS forum and in addition bought a “Complete Guide to Home Video” magazine and I think I’ve had a light-bulb moment. I’m sure my problem lies with the fact that I have SD & HD formats on my disc.

It would seem that burning HD to discs is fraught with problems & involves Blue Ray discs & players etc – a fact I was woefully ignorant of when I started out.

My project consists of both HD & SD videos. In some of the scenes or chapters, 3 video cameras were used – mine which is HD and 2 others which are SD.

My videos are filmed in HD on a JVC Everio and the file format is a .TOD which SVMS accepts and I was told to use the HDV1080-50i (1440 x 1080, 25000fps) template in the Project Properties.

For the SD videos I’ve used the PAL DV Widescreen (720 x 576, 25,000 fps) template in the Project Properties.

For the videos where I have used 3 cameras & combined both the SD & HD formats I've used the HDV1080-50i (1440 x 1080, 25000fps) template in the Project Properties.

Disc 1 consists of the first 4 scenes / chapters in SD then the next 4 in HD and then numbers 9-12 consist of both HD & SD combined (3 video cameras used). Nearly all the feedback I’ve received from those who’ve had problems with playback say the disc freezes at #9 .

I ‘m quite puzzled as to why my project actually burns successfully to disc when on reading the other threads some people clearly cannot!?

The fact that my discs actually played quite successfully for myself and some others in our DVD Players as well on our computers was answered for me in the video magazine I purchased - apparently some DVD Players are capable of playing DVD discs containing HD video, and others not.

So, if I am correct and my problem is the HD format please tell me what template I should use in the Project Properties and what should other settings be?

All advice, recommendations & suggestions would be much appreciated. I have more projects to do and I would like to get them right first time round and not go through the hassle (& embarrassment) of some people telling me they can’t play my video - it must work for everyone regardless of their brand of DVD player.

Many thanks



To re-cap - the settings & steps of the ‘troublesome’ project are:-

In SVMS my Project Properties are HDV 1080-50i (1440 x 180, 25000 fps) for the HD videos (as well as those combining both HD & SD) and PAL DV Widescreen (720 x 576, 25000 fps) for the SD videos.
Full Resolution rendering quality = Best
Deinterlaced Method = Blend fields

After editing, I rendered the project as:
Type: Video for Windows (.avi)
Template: PAL DV Widescreen

I then converted the video from .avi to MPEG2 and using the Make Movie wizard in SVMS sent it to DVDA, selecting Disc type as DVD & ‘use widescreen DVD format’.

There's a common component in your posts on this topic: the video that you're feeding to DVD Architect is MPEG-2, which is the correct format for DVDs.

While I have limited experience with HD source files, I don't see the relevance. Once you render it out, it becomes PAL DV Widescreen (720 x 576, 25 fps) and the HD portions take on the same resolution as the SD.

One question: You mention rendering to AVI, then "converting" to MPEG-2. Aside from a seemingly unnecessary render to AVI, does this mean that you're not doing the MPEG encoding from Vegas? If not, perhaps that's an area worth investigating.

Thank you for responding cbrillow.

In response to your question regarding the rendering to AVI, then converting to MPEG2, you are correct in assuming that the MPEG encoding was not done from Vegas – I used the AVS Video Converter vs 6.

I agree that on the face of it, it does seem unnecessary to render to AVI and then convert to MPEG. When I rendered directly to MPEG I had a problem with the Colour Gradients overlays (from Media Generators) not quite stretching to fit certain sections which had been stabilized using NewBlue Stabilizer yet when I rendered in AVI the problem disappeared. I didn’t want to render that again into MPEG, hence my doing the conversion instead.

However since finishing this project I almost accidentally stumbled on what was causing the problem with the colour gradient overlays so any future projects would be rendered directly as MPEG2 files via Vegas.