More DVD Creation Tests

[Jerry Jones]

...I recorded another DVD tonight.

It played perfectly on my GE 1106P-B player...

Very sharp; color faithful to the original DV .avi.

I used one of my cheap $2.79 disks from http://www.meritline.com

Now I see Meritline has dropped the price to $2.29 per disk per 25-pack. Not bad.

(As far as I can tell, there's no performance difference between the cheapo no-brand disks and the fancy label disks.)

I did the "WALLY TEST" :-) and carefully scrutinized the 45 minute disk for any errors.

I caught only a half-second glitch in the entire 45 minute production.

It was located precisely 32 minutes and 27 seconds into the DVD.

Curious to know if it was on the original MPEG file, I turned my computer back on and inspected the MPEG file carefully.

1. Turns out it wasn't the DVD burner.

2. It wasn't the DVD player.

3. It wasn't the Ulead authoring software.

THE GLITCH WAS CAUSED BY THE LIGOS ENCODER!

THE ORIGINAL DV-MPEG TRANSCODE INDUCED IT AND I DIDN'T NOTICE IT UNTIL AFTER BURNING THE DVD.

For some reason, the encoder just decided to hiccup and put three tiny pixels on the video for a half-second while it was transcoding the DV .avi file.

I wonder what would cause that? Would electrical line noise do something like that? Voltage fluctuations? Processor hiccups? Not enough ram?

I'll repeat my observation made earlier.

The *only* WEAK LINK in my DVD creation efforts is LIGOS!

I look forward to testing the new Ulead MPEG.Now! codec to see if it can do long transcoding of DV .avi files without such hiccups.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

Even more reason to get MPEG.now into MSPro ASAP. That or for someone to make that frameserver

Dr. Mordrid

[Sciascia]

What kind of burner? Brand, model, DVD-R/RW, whatever. I am interested in finding somehting that makes DVDs that can play on a standalone and have heard too many nightmares about them not being compatible.

Thanks

[wkulecz]

Potentially good news!

I stated many times back in October that I couldn't determine if the glitches were caused by the authoring/encoding software or the burner. I'd be thrilled to learn that it can be fixed in the encoding software!!!

What if you use TMPGEnc on your DV source to encode and then author in Ulead DVD workshop?

I didn't try this because all four authoring packages I tried (MyDVD 2.3, MyDVD 3.0, MSP6.5 DVD plugin, and DVD Movie Factory Trial) made disks with glitches and I didn't have a 100% sure to be compliant template for TMPGEnc. Many people suggested I try this, but given the costs of the disk back then and the lack of a proven template, I passed on trying this. I also had a finite time window where I could return the burners.

Meritline cheapo was $6 a disk back in October. It was no better or worse than Apple brand. It does seem the A03 looks for specific "brand codes" on the blank and restricts burning to 1X if "approved" media isn't found. Your Panasonic only burning a 1X won't have this problem.

By the way CompUSA has the LF-D311 on sale for $250 after rebates (at least in some areas).

Meritline gave very good service, I'd buy from them again.

It'd be intresting to try your "one glitch disk" other DVD players, but remember I had no glitches on some players and more others! You are using a burner I haven't tried.

When I can buy the burner for <$200 (~same price range as top of the line CD-RW burner) and DVD-R media is about the same as a quality CD-RW blank then I'd tolerate the glitches and play with DVD-R the same as I do with SVCD. We're getting close. But I'd still much rather have disks without glitches on any player that accepts the media and a bit higher costs.

In terms of being accepted in DVD players DVD-R > DVD+RW > DVD-RW >> DVD-RAM. Playing back without glitches or broken FF/REV is a whole 'nother issue. The ~90% claim of standalone DVD players accepting DVD-R is probably true based on my tests, but I only saw glitch free playback on 5 of 30 players tested (I've tried my disks on a few more players). Whats curious is I had two different instances of the same model player (Sharp and JVC). In each case one instance glitched, the other didn't. These were Pioneer A03 burner disks, not the Panasonic LF-D11 Jerry has. These are different burners but accept the same DVD-R media and a different second re-writable type.

--wally.

[Jerry Jones]

Wally,

I'll be getting DVD WORKSHOP very soon and I'll test using the MPEG.Now codec (instead of TMPGEnc).

That will certainly be interesting for me.

Jerry

[wkulecz]

Great! That'd be the disk I'd like to get my hands on for testing.

DVD-R under $200 might not be so far away. The Que LF-D311 is on sale at my local CompUSA for $250 after rebate.

--wally.

[zeb7]

I just hopped over to a computer shop(websight) here in the UK .
The Panasonic LF-D311 is listed at £484.09 which yahoo Currency Converts to $688.57 U.S. Dollars
$250 Vs $688 Am i missing something out here ?
Or am I in the wrong country for video editing , No wonder all the films are made in the US
everywhere else is so expensive

[Dr Mordrid]

Wally,

CompUSA had a special recently of a DVD burner + rebate with an end price of $249 USD. Getting close.....

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob100]

Zeb7,

When this thread was first posted I thought it sounded good so I also checked prices in the UK and struggled to find it for less than £399 plus VAT. Crazy...

Rob.