New comer - Experincing trouble with DVD quality

[kishore]

Hi,

I am new to the forum. I just burned a DVD using UVS 11+. The movie is about 28 minutes long. When I played back the DVD I find that the DVD seemed to get 'stuck' or 'struggle' to play. It was fine for about 20 minutes or so and then the problem started with increasing intensity towards to end.

I used Windows movie maker to edit the movie and imported .avi file to UVS11+ to burn the DVD. I use Sony VAIO with P4 2.7GHz and the output DVD was on Sony DVD-R format.

I checked the Devise Manager in my system and found that the Primary and secondary IDE are set to DMA. I spent few hours searching on the forum to see this issue was discussed earlier, but I could not find any. I am not sure what I am missing.

Can anyone help me identify what I may be doing wrong?

Thank you in advance.

Kishore

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums!

First, I am not clear why you are editing using a relatively basic program like Movie Maker, and only using VS to burn. Why not edit AND burn in VS?

But leaving that aside, we need more information. If you edited in Movie Maker and imported the resulting AVIs into VS, then I am assuming the AVIs are really DV/AVIs, which is a good thing. But it is not clear whether you just put the DV/AVIs into the burning module (Share > Create Disc > DVD) or follow our suggested procedure of first putting the AVI into the editing timeline, then choosing Share > Create Video File > DVD. This will convert the AVI into DVD compatible mpeg-2 as a separate step. As a result, when you insert the mpeg-2 into the burning module, no further conversion is necessary and the already complicated burning procedure has one less demanding thing to do.

Note also that after you produce your new mpeg-2, you go to File > New Project. Don't worry about giving your new project a name. The objective is just to clear the timeline of your current project.

Once that is done, you select Share > Create Disc > DVD. The burning module will open. Use the Add Media button at the top to insert your new mpeg-2 in the burning timeline. Then go to the middle of the three icons in the bottom left of the burning screen. There is a little box beside the words 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files'. Make sure that box is ticked (it usually is by default). That way, your already compliant mpeg file will not be re-encoded. Then build your menus and burn.

The other thing I would note about your situation is that you probably did not alter the burning speed used in the burning module. As a result, the default setting of Maximum is used. While some users argue that this is OK, a lot of us here recommend you do not use the top rated speed for a DVD to burn it. In other words, if your disc is rated 16x, don't burn it at 16 x but instead use 6x or 4x if the burner will allow such a low speed for the disc. It might take a few minutes longer to burn, but seems to embed the signal more firmly in the disc. As a result, a wider variety of home DVD players have a greater chance of playing the video rather than skating or skipping, as yours is, on a poorly embedded signal.

[DVDDoug]

the DVD seemed to get 'stuck' or 'struggle' to play. It was fine for about 20 minutes or so and then the problem started with increasing intensity towards to end.

That sounds like a "bad burn". As Ken said, a lower burn speed may help. (But, it also could have been a bad blank... Once or twice, I've had a whole spindle of flaky blanks.)

I assume the problems happen when you play the DVD on computer and when you play the DVD on your stand-alone player???

You can test the DVD with Nero CD-DVD Speed (FREE!!!!). If this program shows any problems, you've got a "bad burn". If it doesn't show any problems, the data got burned OK, and the pyhysical DVD is OK, but bad data was written. ("Bad-data" is usually more difficult to diagnose and fix than a "bad burn" problem, but following Ken's suggested workflow might take care of it too.)