Stutters playing DVD in DVD Player after DVD Authoring.

[jksmurf]

Well there have been quite a few prior threads on this topic and I was so excited about reven's new MyVideos, I thought about buying an updated version of NERO to make it all more automagic (although I understand you CAN still use the batch files to the free progs). Reven's RC3 of My Videos appears to now use NERO 6 and above.

My NERO version is v5.5 OEM, (and burns DVD's fine manually) so before I shell out for all teh bells and whistles, I wanted to find out what folks thought of NERO7 and if there were other alternatives they preferred. Simplicity is good. Able to be integrated (like reven has done) is good. Cheap is always good too.

ConvertXtoDVD was prev DivxToDVD. I used the old freeware VSO DivXtoDVD v0.5.2b (Freeware) to make the VOB files, then chucked that at NERO 5.5.

It burnt a CD OK at 4X, but when I played it on my DVD Player, it was stuttery. I will try at 2X.

There are a lot of things used in this process it seems, so before I shell out for whiz-bang NERO7 or other software like ConvertXtoDVD (the latter which to be honest has overall MUCH better USER reviews than those for NERO7), do I also need to upgade my PC and/or Burner, or are these "unlikely" culprits:

1. Original recording - OK. Played fine so that is probably not it.
2. DivxToDVD conversion on my PC. Is it the v0.5.2b version causing stutter or my low PC specs (See sig.)
3. NERO 5.5 Burning software.
4. DVD Burner. It's quite an old NEC ND1300A 2x/4X but does both DVD+/- R and a lot of media (with f/w).
5. My Player. It's a PIONEER DV-533K and is supposed to play everything, so I don't think it's that.

Which is the most crititcal component, or is it the combination?

Oh, one more Q too . I note that DivXtoDVD can convert both AVI's and MPEG to DVD (VOB). Is it better (reduced chance of stuttering) to transcode the MPEG to another format AVI? MPEG4? first, to make it smaller and then run it through. A two hour game was 900MB in the AVI format and 5 GB in MPEG2. BIG Difference!

Any suggestion / comments / recommendations welcome. I haven't done a lot of transcoding thus far, but a friend wanted me to burn a DVD of a recent rugby game for him and I told home I'd have a crack at it.
k.

[jksmurf]

Best bet is to try it in a proper DVD player, if it's fine there you have to blame your computer.

Sorry about that, yes it is stuttering in a "proper DVD Player" (i.e. I was not referring to the one in the PC).

In that case it could be the software, I have seen MPGs copied directly to DVDs that stutter badly, however, when 'authored' to DVDs they don't. So there is definitely a difference in the 'process' that could be 'created' by a software bug.

That is excellent information, I guess what I was hoping to hear. (Any s/w recommendations?) I know it's a realtively low spec machine, but I would like not to upgrade the box at this point in time, and I intend to schedule all (most) of my transcoding in the wee hours in any case. If the s/w can do it, keep it smooth and in sync and change priority etc. then great.

k.

[jksmurf]

This is one for the YMMV department. A 'true' AVI should be much LARGER than any equivalent MPG as AVI is supposed to be a RAW (i.e. uncompressed) format. My DVC produces 250mb / min raw AVI. However, many other formats have an AVI extension these days....

Yeah I was a bit puzzled about that too. It was a game I missed so I downloaded it from somewhere. It IS the whole game, and I checked the properties in VLC and it said XVID and Audio is MPEG Audio Layer 3. I thought DivX/XVID had an MP4 extension, but it runs OK with an the .AVI extension. This page says "Common codecs inside AVI files are: Xvid, DivX, MP4, H.264. AVI videos are typically between 700 and 1400 MB". So that sounds about right.

All too confusing!

k.

[jksmurf]

You could try the latest 'ConvertXtoDVD', there's a trial version available. It's my current favourite. DVDSanta also looked good, but it loses sync very badly (general Internet consensus says it's a 'PAL only' issue)

I'll give 'ConvertXtoDVD' a whirl. Maybe reven can even tie it into MyVideos... . I use PAL I here, so bye bye Santa!

k.

[ShiningDragon]

.AVI is only a Container-Format, not a CoDec like most people think. You can put very much different Formats and CoDecs within this Containerformat. DivX, XviD, .h264, .h263, .h262 and a lot of other CoDecs too.
So don't worry about this; you could even rename the Extension to ".riff" or ".au" or ".mpeg".
It has not much to say (one exception is MP4 within PowerDVD and co), because most programms reading the Container-Head, which CoDec is used.
To see the used CoDed just use a tool called "GSpot" and open the Videoclip. You'll see the Video- and Audiocodec and can look if this one is installed on your machine.
The different CoDecs in the .avi differs strong in Quality, Performance and Size.

[nitrogen_widget]

In my experiance burning at 1X was the only way my DVD player would play back burned DVD's perfectly.

According to MaximumPC the slower you burn the deeper the burn point on a DVD. (or something like that)

This means a settop box will have an easier time reading off the DVD.
Also, my DVD player doesn't like the DVD-R format.
A lot of forums said it did but I had no luck.
It could of just been that particular brand of disc though.

I was getting a lot of problems with it when learning to burn DVD's.
Switching to the DVD+R format worked so much better me & so did changing disc manufacturers.
I've found the best DVD's that work with my settop box are the cheap officemax brand.

I found that verbatim DVD's would cause my DVD player to lock up & stop responding until I un-plugged it. :eek:

[jksmurf]

Cheers, I'm going through a heavy duty learning process. So far I have made 3 coasters :o ... it's relatively cheap education, only very time-consuming!

k.

[nitrogen_widget]

Well, Like I said, it's what I read.
I can't say why burning slower fixed my problem.
I do know that my burned DVD's worked correctly after I switched to 1x burning.

It is more likely my particular model of old DVD player.

[gEd]

When you burn a cd at a lower speed, the pits are more clearly defined, more rectangular. At higher speeds, the edges of the pits become drawn out. With audio cd's, disks burned at high speed can cause a regualr cd player to mis-read the pits, resulting in excessive data correction/interpolation which can mess up playback quality, most obvious on a good hi-fi system.

It is possible that this is also the case when burning dvd's.

OP: Try playing the dvd in a friends dvd drive/player. Perhaps try a different type of dvd +/-. I can;t remember which one is supposed to be the most compatible with dvd players (I thought it was - ).

btw: I am running MV RC3 with nero 7 and it works fine (john on reven;s forum). I am having a lipsync problem with some disks but I suspect that this is the recordings as when I splice them up in womble, they appear fine. Still experimenting with this atm.

[jksmurf]

Cheers gEd, I tried Video redo to do the simple cuts on the original MPEG to shorten to 4.4GB (after compskip) and MyVids RC3 burned its first disk for me last night..but now my PC can't read it :-( arrrghh.

I discovered why my DVD player couldn't read the first one though (the one that was good on the PC). I had to enable Dolby Digital AND DTS. DTS did it. It has options for DTS/Dolby/PCM etc etc but it was set for only Dolby. So I'm happy about that!

k.