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Can't get burned DVDs to work!! Sucks!

K

kannonbal

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 20, 2006
64
0
So, all I am trying to do is burn a 12 minute image sequence to DVD. 2.16ghz Macbook Pro, 2 gig ram, external hardrive as the scratch disk.

-open image sequence in Quicktime pro.

-save both as a reference and a self contained mov for experimentation (14.5 gig self contained)

-used both toast 6 and Visual hub for encoding. I choose to create disk images so I can test before burning.

-open disk images and play in DVD player and all is good, though the Toast quality is awful and certainly unusable in a professional environment.

-all the VIDEO_TS folders have the expected files in them with no apparent weirdness.

-burn to DVD in 3 4 different ways. Using disk utility, using a burn folder in finder, straight burn from Toast, and straight burn from Visual Hub.

All resulting DVDs play perfect in DVD player; they also all work on various XP and Vista peecees, though Vista had to use a HP player for it to work.

HOWEVER, none of the disks will work on any of the 6 different standalone players I have tried them in. 5 of the players won't even load and just say "no disk" The other player actually plays the DVD, but it is unbeleivably corrupted with crazy horizontal lines, supperimpossed images from 2 different points in the video (WTF!), and stuttering. These are all between 1 year and 1 month old.

I am pulling my hair out on this one. So far, my Macbook Pro has not burned one single DVD that has worked properly on any standalone player.

I have searched the internet to no avail.

I am begging for help.

Cheers, Chuck
 
I might have skipped this information, but do you burn the project as a DVD video? If not and you're doing it as a data disk, it won't be read on standalone players.
Otherwise, you can also try to use different blank media. Sometimes that's the reason for this.
 
I am both authoring and burning direct from Toast and Visual Hub. I am also authoring disc images and using both Disk Utility and Toast to burn the dvd's.

To make it even more peculiar and frustrating:

Trial disks number 10 and 11 work! On everything! But 12 and 13, exact copies of 10 and 11, but done the next day, don't work. Crazy.

And I am using Memorex which, word on the street, suck and should not be used. But the two that work, from the same stack, are Memorex.

:confused:

Cheers, Chuck
 
Thanks for the link.

Could it really be possible that all of this weirdness could result from lousy DVD's?

I did try one Pioneer but it was unsuccessful, too.

I am trying a few more iterations and I'll try some high end disks and post the results....
 
kannonbal said:
Could it really be possible that all of this weirdness could result from lousy DVD's?
Click to expand...

Yes, it could be. On the other hand, it might not be. Are you pretty much
leaving the machine alone with no other applications running while it burns
the DVDs? Even with the buffer under-run protection turned on, if the system
is too busy, strange things can happen. Or if the system is low on free
memory (check Activity Monitor.)
 
And I don't see how you can burn just the folder from Finder and expect it to work. You might be doing the same mistake all over. Just because you're burning a VIDEO_TS folder doesn't mean it's going to be playable on a DVD player. It has to be authored as a DVD Video disc, otherwise it's just another DATA disk.

Burn the VIDEO_TS with Toast but after reading the instructions on how to make a DVD Video disc from a VIDEO_TS folder.

For Toast 6 for example:
o add an individual title from a VIDEO_TS folder:
1. Launch Toast and select the Video tab.
2. In the drawer, select "DVD-Video" at the top.
3. Open the VIDEO_TS folder on your hard disk and drag and drop any .VOB file into
the Toast window.
4. Now you can add additional data content or burn the disc.
http://kb.roxio.com/content/kb/Toast/ET6000098?set-locale=en
 
based on what you said...

it seems as though everything you have done is right. From my experience, media is the usual suspect, though sometimes slow burns can help that. My general rule is not to burn above 4x unless it is a test disk. I have found that -R is more compatible, but a friend of mine swears by +R, so that will really depend on your players. I've had good luck with Taiyo Yuden media, and really bad luck with memorex. Had a stack of 30 disks, I think I made about 7 good disks. Good luck, and let us know.
 
sndcj1 said:
I've had good luck with Taiyo Yuden media, and really bad luck with memorex.
Click to expand...

Matches my experience exactly. I usually by the Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-R
white inkjet printable disks from SuperMediaStore.

I have no affiliation with SuperMediaStore other than being a very
satisfied customer.
 
Update: Out of 23 disks burnt so far, 3 work. So, I did manage to make my deadline and everything was well received, so that's good!

Unfortunately, Even repeating my steps exactly from the successful burns generated non functioning DVDs, which is annoying.

Lighthouse man, Good point about burning from finder; that was a waste of time.

I never thought that I should quit all applications while burning. That could definitely be a contributing factor as I continued to work on other things with many things open during all the burns. I will be trying this hint today.

I will also get some decent media; I won't be buying Memorex any time again, that is for sure.

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to help. I'll post results from my new experiments.

Cheers, Chuck
 
Interesting read here, from an OP who has apparently done his homework. The constant though, in all the various experimentation, is that Memorex media has not worked well as stated by several posters. I have a pile of Memorex coasters which testify to that.
 
Well, I've got some Taiyo Yuden's on the way! I got the 8x's and I will start out burning at 2x speed with nothing else running on the computer and see how that works out.

Thanks for the disk recommendations. Very interesting to hear that I'm not the only one with a bunch of Memorex coasters. At least they will work for data backups, since they seem to work fine in my computer.

Thanks again. Cheers, Chuck
 
Well, I am happy to announce SUCCESS!

I tried three things together and everything works beautifully on standalone players!

Step 1: Buy high quality DVD's. Based on some research online, I went with Taiho Yuden 8X DVD's

Step 2: Shut off all other programs running while burning; I only had the Dashboard running. (saved as a disk image authored as a DVD and burnt with Disk Utility.

Step 3 Don't change the aspect ratio from what the DVD default is! (Thank you, Tyler, Visual Hub support guru!) I was trying to keep my aspect ratio of 1024 x 768 and this was screwing up the standalone players but the computers could handle it no problem.

I have burnt 5 disks so far and all of them are perfect, no failures of any kind.

Thanks for the help! I really appreciate it!

Cheers, Chuck
 
I'm having the same sort of issue burning a DVD for my daughters class. Using iMovie to create a 42 minute movie/chapters and then sending it to iDVD. 20 % of the time the burns fail (under-write errors), at least 50% of the DVDs burn properly, but will then not play properly, some won't even mount.

Using Maxell DVD+R media. Would I be better off using -R media?

Thanks
 
Will these DVD's not even play on the computer? Your computer almost definitely should play both.

If you are talking about stand alone DVD player compatibility, then -r has the best chance of working on the most players.

I have never used iDVD, so I am sorry but I can offer no help about that.
 
They seem to play fine on my iMac and other Macs, are dicier on PS, and really flaky on DVD players.
 
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