Testing final DVD for compatibility and errors

craftech wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:00 AM

I thought I would post this to see if the rest of you are as neurotic as I am when it comes to checking a final DVD before you duplicate them in large numbers.

Most of mine are at least an hour per DVD and there are usually two. My current project consists of one hour and 1 minute DVD and one 58 minute DVD.

Each time I think I have edited and authored it the way I like I check t by creating a rewriteable DVD and watching the whole thing to check for errors and / or glitches.

Then I create a master and put it onto my duplicator. Then I duplicate a copy and watch the entire thing on two different DVD players all over again.
If there are no errors or glitches i duplicate the order I have.

It drives me crazy. By the time I get to that point I hate the whole show and can't wait to get rid of it.

Someone please tell me you do the same thing and I am not insane.

Thanks,

John

EDIT: I have also never gotten a return or complaint from any customer.

Comments

The Kid wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:08 AM

Your not crazy you are just making sure it all looks good I do the same

bsuratt wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:11 AM

Unfortunately, I don't know of a better way than what you describe.

I use Verbatim 94854 Discs exclusively and Pioneer drives and watch the master only once on one player and never have any problems.

rs170a wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:11 AM

No John, you're not insane :-)
I've always said that the biggest drawback to the computer NLE world is that we have the ability to jump instantly from segment to unrelated segment.
In the days of videotape, the project was built (for the most part) in a logical/linear order.
We also had pre-roll so that we HAD to watch every transition from shot to shot.
For the most part, this no longer happens.
I find that I have to force myself to periodically sit back and watch what I've done from beginnig to end - without interruption - or there'll be something that needed fixing that I completely overlooked because I was in too much of a hurry.

I skip the rewriteable part and just burn a DVD of it.
I don't have a duplicator so I have to trust that my tests were OK, send it off and trust that the duplicator won't screw up.
In addition to me watching it, I have at least 2 others watch it as well, being particularly careful to check for spelling errors as this has caught me more times than I care to remember :-(

Mike

craftech wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:13 AM

I use Verbatim 94854 Discs exclusively
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That's exactly what I use.

John

rs170a wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:15 AM

I tried Taiyo-Yuden Watershield discs about a year ago and now I don't/won't use anything else.

Mike

craftech wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:16 AM

I have at least 2 others watch it as well
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That's great.

I used to bribe family members to do this as well, but that doesn't work any more.

It is good to see that several of you are doing the same thing in terms of sitting through these things.

Thanks,

John

craftech wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:18 AM

I tried Taiyo-Yuden Watershield discs about a year ago and now I don't/won't use anything else.

Mike
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Yes,

Riredale told me about those over a year or so ago, but I still haven't tried them yet.

Where did he go? We miss him.

John

rs170a wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:20 AM

John, I'm fortunate in that I work for a community college and most of my work is for various instructors.
They're the ones (plus any "lucky" colleagues) I make watch AND sign off on it as they're the ones who will be using it.

Mike

Dale7 wrote on 5/21/2009, 6:36 PM

DVD compatibility (playability on various players) has been a major concern for me for a long time. Standalone DVD players have built-in error correction... a disc might play fine on your player, but not on someone else's... I think the most reliable method of testing is to use a utility like Nero DiscSpeed.

I've had excellent results in the past with Ritek G04's, but they're no longer made; TY Watershields look fantastic but don't burn too well on one of my burners (I have 4 different brands of burners); currently I have the best success with TYG02's...they generally give a 97-99 Discspeed quality rating with all of my burners.

There's a lot of info on DVD drives/compatibility issues on the forums at
http://club.cdfreaks.com/

UlfLaursen wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:25 PM

I use the TY watershield too, and I think they are great.

I use only imageburn (after recommendation here) to burn, and I burn at 4 or 6x only - also to ensure compatibility.

If I make a lot of copies, I FF through 1 for every 10 or so and test menu's too. I still once in a while have people having trouble viewing, mostly because it's an old player or slow laptop etc. but in general it's fine.

You are right - you get tired of a show in the end :-)

/Ulf

NickHope wrote on 5/22/2009, 12:15 AM

Looks like the Nero DiscSpeed guy is finally charging for the program. Now it's called Opti Drive Control.

Besides watching DVDs on a variety of players, I've done a lot of quality scanning with DiscSpeed and its predecessors. It's a good idea to also scan discs on a different drive from the one that burnt them.

johnmeyer wrote on 5/22/2009, 10:26 AM

I thought I would post this to see if the rest of you are as neurotic as I am when it comes to checking a final DVD before you duplicate them in large numbers.John, I know exactly what you are talking about. I do the same thing (am doing the same thing right now). What you didn't mention is that when you sit and watch the thing, looking for some glitch, blank frame, bad cut, mistake, etc., and then you actually find one, you have to go back and fix it, hoping not to screw something else up. It's a little like regression testing software, where you often take two steps forward, but then also one step back.

So what to do?

Here are things I have done or developed to try to make this process faster, and also to reduce the number of things I have to look for.

I developed all sorts of audit scripts that I run on each project before I render. Every time I figure out a new way to screw something up in Vegas, I create a new audit script. So, I now have scripts which look for tiny gaps or tiny overlaps between events (which are not as common since "snapping" was added); an audit script that looks for accidental "nudging" of the opacity or volume levels (you know, you grab an event near the top, and accidentally move the invisible slider down a fraction); track header level/volume nudges (which if you use the keyboard arrow keys to move on the timeline, can easily get moved if the track header instead of the timeline has focus).

I also have an audit script that looks for no final keyframe in any event that has more than the initial keyframe. I run this when working with still photos, where you usually do not want the photo movement to cease before the end of the event. If, after you have created your "moves" on the photo, you later make the event longer in length, the keyframe that WAS at the end of the event stays at the same time location, thus creating a problem.

I have many other scripts like these.

I also have developed software that runs under Virtualdub which scans the video for one or two blank frames in the middle of good video. This is mostly a response to the mysterious m2t HDV "blank frame" problem that plagued Vegas for so long. I think this is now fixed, but I still go back and forth between 7.0d and 8.0c all the time, and so I still see it. Having this script allows me to "blink" while watching playback (it is very easy to miss one or two blank frames).

Something that can help, especially when you have to go through the darned thing a second time (if the first viewing turned up a lot of problems) is to play it in a DVD player that has smooth 2x playback. This is certainly true of software players on the computer. While there is nothing that replaces actually playing the disc on a DVD set-top player on a "real" TV (whatever that means these days), the 2x viewing will generally let you see most problems in half the time. Audio, obviously, cannot be checked very well at 2x, even with pitch compensation enabled.

Oh, and one BIG GOTCHA to watch out for when doing these final iterations: make sure to ALWAYS check the end of each timeline, in DVD Architect, for every piece of media . Why? Well, if you make an edit in Vegas which makes the media shorter than the original, much like the keyframe problem in Vegas, DVD Architect will make the endpoint shorter if the media becomes shorter (good), but if the media gets longer, it will retain the same endpoint (bad), and the end of the media will be truncated. I can't tell you how many times I've done that final playback, only to have the last few seconds abruptly cut off.

Many people have asked for FAQs and "stickies" and polls and other features found in other forums. This would certainly be a topic that could make great use of that feature because I'll bet that other people could contribute mistakes they commonly make and have to look for when they do this final run-through, and perhaps they too have developed ways to make it simpler to ensure they don't happen in the first place, or to more easily and reliably catch them.

And one more: you have to check the navigation. I spent one day of my life (yesterday, in fact) trying to figure out why subtitles worked fine in DVD Architect, but not when the DVD rewritable (I do that same thing as you with the DVD+RW) was played in my Pioneer DVD player, I couldn't turn them off. Turned out to be a PIA bug in DVD Architect, but one for which there is a workaround (see my post in the DVDA forum).

Anyway, John, I feel your pain, and the things above are what I have tried to do for myself to somewhat minimize this annoying part of what we all have to do.