Decent DVD-R's?

[m0ds]

Can anyone recommend some decent quality DVD-are's for large video files pleease? I've tried some Imiation (Imitation!1) DVD's at 4.7gb which is fine for size, but it's a one hour 20 minute production which on these DVD's is cutting out after several minutes, the dvd is just dying. I tried a slightly better DVD, though it still wasn't a brand name I can remember right now, and that played for about 30/40 minutes and then started screwing up. Is there a high quality DVD-R? I've searched for Sony DVD's thinking maybe theirs would be best, but alas didn't find much. Just some for camcorders. How come movie DVD's work constantly :p Well, if anyone has any tips or advice (and costs) I'd very much appreciate it!!! Thanks

m0ds

[SSH]

I doubt it is the media which is the problem, but more likely the software or equipment with which you are reading or writing them... different brands will maybe last longer (30 years instead of 20) or have fewer individual duds in a set, or be more resistant to scratching, but the problems you describe don't sound like a media problem.

[m0ds]

Thanks, I see. I don't really know then - I'm using a PC DVD writer which isn't too old, and the college writers are no more than a few years old (but get a lot of action I guess!). Actually nothing works in college, but these DVD's have been created at my friends house on his PC which is pretty good. Writing takes a while but it seems to work fine. Playing works very well but then it just starts to get slow, stops & then crashes - this is on a TV-dvd COMBO!1 not the PC. I've been using Ulead DVD basic, maybe I need something better!

[SSH]

How old is the tv-dvd combo? Some older/low-end ones don't play DVD-Rs. See if you can try it on another DVD player...

And check out this compatibility database:

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

[Matt Goble]

Hey Mark,

Verbatim is a good make, as is Sony which you mentioned.

Burning the discs slower can help avoid skipping - I try to never burn faster than 8x, although 4x would be extra cautious.

When you say it's cutting out do you mean recording or playing back?  If it's recording it could be that the disc is fading after the lead-in which is before it puts any data to the disc.

Check your PMs and I'll drop you my home address and we'll try and sort something out.

Matt

[m0ds]

Thanks for that, Matt - and for the PM. I don't really have enough time to send you discs, though. Recording works fine, no problems there. It's playback. The DVD's have been tested on various machines and they all seem to freeze and not continue on each machine. Weird! I've been writing at 8x, which is the lowest speed the software will give me. I think it was a Verbatim disc we tried besides the imiation one, so I'll try some Sony DVD's and let you know what happens!

[Matt Goble]

No problem.

You could also look at the drives firmware, as updates normally increase capacity.

http://www.dvdinfopro.com/ is quite good at checking there are no errors on the burnt discs.

The only other thing could be the bitrate of the video might be going outside spec and choking the player.

http://www.visualdomain.net/bitrate.htm is quite good at showing the bitrate of the disc.  Ideally you want to be around 7-8Mbps, 9Mbps max.  Although the DVD Spec allows you to go to 9.8Mbps, you can run into problems while trying to achieve that on recordable discs due to the limits of the format.

If your audio is uncompressed (PCM or AIFF) that can take quite a hit on the bitrate (1.7 Mbps just for the audio, although you need to allocate 2Mbps just to be safe).  Try converting your audio to AC3 or MP2 (224-256kbps should be pretty good).

HTH