Dual layer DVD burned on PC, problems with play on MAC

[cdoughertycd]

Hi: I am able to burn dual layer DVDs with new more power computer and new video card. They play fine on my PC but a friend told me it took him four tries to get it to play on his Mac.

Anyone else ever had this issue or problems playing PC home burned dual layer DVDs on a Mac.

If I have to I will burn the project on two single layer (4.7 GB) DVDs for the Mac and see if that works.

I have never been able to play my home burns dual layer DVD projects until I got a better computer. On old computer they would freeze half way thru play.

thanks,
Candy

[skier-hughes]

Burning DL discs has always been problematical, lots of compatibility issues with players.
I advise customers against them, advising if they insist, then they need to pay me to make the single layer dvds in place if it doesn't work.
I'd stick with single layer, and work on trying to get the movie down to a size that will fit on just one disc with some heavy editing if possible.

[cdoughertycd]

Thanks Graham for your answer. I thought my new computer DL burns were working, but tonight I burned one. It had a menu with four videos and on the last one it froze about 3/4 the way through, urgh. I tried it two times. I give up on dual layers, too bad. It would really help me to be able to get classical music concerts I am doing video for on one DVD. Oh well, now people will get a 2 DVD set and they'll think they're getting a lot for their money (lol).

Another question and maybe this is for another thread but still on burning. With single layer I set the burn speed slow to 8x. It burns ok and before I close down the burn I am just curious to see if it stayed at 8x and when I check it it says 32x. Do you have an idea why it does this? Maybe it resets itself when the burn is finished to 32x? I'm not trusting the burn speed indication dropdown.

One more question on DVD labels. I really like the label making function, but I get it all set up and tell labels to print and what happens is when I have a white font they comes out black or don't print at all. I end up having to hand build them in Powerpoint that gives me no printing problems but takes lots of time to line up. Could it be Corel's label function is weak in terms of communicating to printers?

Thanks for your help.

Candy

[lata]

Hi Candy

For what its worth I also gave up on using Dual Layer discs.
Don’t know if it’s a Video Studio issue or the type of disc.

As I mentioned on the other post I do not use DVD Labels but burn directly to disc.
Labels have the tendency to throw the disc out of balance causing playback problems.

But I will run through the process to see if I can print from VS……..

Update

Have you set the printer to display a print preview prior to burning.

from the print label window--Output options
Adjacent to the word “printer” is a printer symbol this opens your printer settings/properties window.
From here you should be able to set your print options, one being Print Preview.

You should be able to view what the final print should be. Before printing.
Does the label and text look correct?

[cdoughertycd]

Trevor, thanks for your help with label printing.

I adjusted my printer in print output to Print Preview and the label looks good and it printed ok on plain paper. As I do more projects I will try the label printing feature again with the preview. So for some reason doing the preview and it looking ok could cause it to print ok? Interesting.

Just for the record, I have had good luck with Avery labels adhering to the disks and haven't had complaints about disks not playing due to unbalance, at least so far. I have had a rare complaint of the disc not playing correctly so I burn it again making sure the burn speed is slow. I find I have to watch the burn speed and not set it before I put the disk in, otherwise it defaults to maximum and before I found this out they would burn at max speed. Would be nice if that were a little more secure.

I tried Lightscribe DVDs once and it took forever to burn and the printing quality was too faint. I haven't taken the time to do research on a better method not using labels. The project I'm working on right now involves burning 100 DVDs of a concert so I'm turning into a factory and joke about getting one of the thousands of dollars automated burn machines (lol) and turning my big family room into a DVD burn factory.

Anyway, thanks again. You are always so helpful.

Candy

Candy

[skier-hughes]

Candy,

That's how I ended up with my dvd copying and printing facility.
I got larger and larger videoing jobs requiring more and more discs and got fed up of being up all night burning one disc, printing one disc.
Now I do lots of duplication and printing for other small videographers who can't be bothered to spend all night burning their discs and don't want to invest in the equipment and so a new business was born!

[cdoughertycd]

Graham, your DVD burning and copying facility, that means you have equipment that goes beyond the 2-layer capacity, special equipment that can burn long movies etc.?
I am to the point of needing that but know it would be big investment.

thanks,
Candy

[skier-hughes]

No it doesn't.
If you want Hollywood times and quality on your dvd you need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars just on a computer(s) to do all the rendering. This is the important part. They may make tens if not hundreds of passes as they render the movie from the recorded file to an Mpeg2.
Whereas we make one maybe two passes each render.
Their computers will analyse each and every single frame and rendering can take weeks, months for animations.
Once this is done, they can fit a 3 hour movie onto a disc that we can fit an hour onto.

They then use a totally different method of producing discs, involving glass masters and pressing, which gives them longevity of life, compatibility with players and the ability to try and put copy protection into the disc.

These machines, that can also do blu ray are around $1m

I advise all my clients to have their discs as single layer and as I use "professional" editing and rendering apps, I can get an hour and a half on my discs without any loss of quality quite easily, but then I did spend nearly $2k on my programmes. I then have two banks of burners and a 100 disc printer.

[Davidk]

Another take on this topic.
Reference - check the wikipedia articles on DVD and Bluray to learn how they work for record and read.

Years ago - or so it seems - I tried transferring movies from VHS tapes to DVD. There are interfaces that enable the computer to capture and store that imagery and sound as an mpeg file. Writing it back to a DL DVD using video editors (I tried Corel and Cyberlink product) was easy enough, but the problem always was playing it on professional players designed for use with TV monitors as the display device. No issues with any fast or slow PC's there. But there were lots of 'play' problems, which were inconsistent, because the "bought" movie DVD's use DL all the time to get the picture duration on one disk, and there was no problem with playing those on the same equipment.

I experimented with and wasted about 50 DL disks at the then price of about $4 a disk before giving up. But before I gave up on burning DL disks, I noted that playing was fine for the upper layer - say about 45 minutes into the movie - but as soon as playing started on the lower layer there were problems with reading the data. It presented as a series of pixelating glitches in the image before freezing, and never in the same place if the disk was played more than once. At the time various forum advisors ascribed the results to poor DL quality control in manufacture, but I really think it was a function of burning and reading the data thru 3 layers of the disk (protective coating or layer 1, upper DVD layer 2, lower DVD layer 3). Note 'burnt' data, not 'pressed' as the commercial product is.

Note however that DVD DL was just a method of recording and reading a large amount of data on a single DVD disk platter, using the DVD format. In the last few years Bluray has become both cheap and common, so give DL DVD the flick. DVD will be a long time going so using single layer DVD for movies will be fine; but if your movie or data size is higher than 4.7Gb, use Bluray - that takes you to 25Gb on one layer. The cost of the disks is a pittance, and the price of both computer burners and TV players has dropped dramatically. I note that there are now DL and even QL versions of Bluray, which nominally yields 100Gb on a disk. I would avoid them - the same problems of burn and read thru several layers of medium that bedevills DVD will probably be evident in Bluray as well.

Davidk

[cdoughertycd]

Thanks so much David, Skier and Graham for your input on this. I have struggled with DL disks thinking they would work and got the same errors as you describe Skier, at the 2nd layer. My problem is half the people I'm making DVDs for are an older audience (quite old) who are way out of date with equipment so blue-ray at this point won't work. Makes me wonder who is buying DL disks and having success with them, no one? But that would be another discussion I suppose. At this point if the music concerts or operas I'm doing video for go over about 1.5 hrs I am making sets of 2 DVDs per performance. Lots of work, but I guess the good news is I'm not doing it for a living but I get "A" for effort on trying to make the DLs work.

Candy

[cdoughertycd]

I forgot to ask basic dumb question, can blue-ray discs be played in a non blue-ray player and still play?

thanks

[Ken Berry]

Simple answer is NO. You need a Blu-Ray player. Indeed you also need such a player to play so-called hybrid or AVCHD discs. These are in effect Blu-Ray AVCHD folders burned on a standard DVD, which VS can also do. It's the AVCHD option in Share > Create Disc.

[lata]

Hi Candy

I assume you have burned 1.5 hours to a single layer disc and that the quality is not acceptable. You should get 70 minutes ish to a single layer using 8000kbps so you are only adding another 20 minutes.

Given that there is little movement within the music concerts or operas the quality may well be acceptable.
Yes you will have to render using 6000kbps ish to fit a 90 minute video to disc, but then only use one disc?

[skier-hughes]

As it's the audio which might be much more important, I would reduce the bitrate on the video, and up the bitrate on the audio, use ac3 audio which gives better quality for lower space needs.
If the camera was tripod mounted and doesn't move, then you could go quite low and get a reasonable picture. If the cam was hand held, all of those little shakes that you get will be emphasised by lowering the bitrate.