My brother has a Panny eh75 (as do I, for that matter). He's been making some DVD-Rs for a friend's birthday, but cannot get the titles he has on the hard disk to transfer to the burned DVD-R. More properly, they're there on the DVD-R when olayed on the Panny but not when played on another machine. He's read the manual, which he says covers this, but nothing he's tried has worked. Is this possible? How do you do it? Thanks!

PatH

Has he finalized the disc? It sounds like he just copied the titles but then didn't finalize. Until you do that, the disc will appear empty to other DVD players. (but will show up on the Panasonic)

Yep, sounds very much like the disc wasn't finalized. Some recorders have "finalize" as a menu item, some call it "make compatible with other players" or some such phrase.

Pat

The only way I have found to check if the disk is finalized on this machine is

with the disk in the machine and at stop

press Functions
press Other Funtions

if the disk is finalized you will see only

Schedule
VCR Plus
Advanced Copy


Setup

if it is not finalized at the bottom beneath Setup you will see "DVD Management" if you do not plan to add any more to the disk and or it is full, go into"DVD Management" . Proceed with

Disc Name, as per page 70[/I] in the manual,
then
Top Menu style
and

Playback will start with: as per [I]page 73

and then Finalize also on page 73.

If the disk is finalized and still will not show up or playback on another machine, it may be a problem with that machine, try running a lens cleaning disk through it. It could be though that the play machine just will not recognize these disks.

My SIL has two older disk players that so far will not recognize her only finalized dvd-r disks from her GO-Video recorder, though it is fine on all my newer recorders and players. Don't think she's tried cleaning the lens though.

Poor woman she's very good with a VCR but I'm trying to bring her kicking and screaming into the digi age, her resistance is strong though and gets stronger with each failure like this! :(

Okay, my brother says the disc is finalized. He recorded it on the Panny (titles plainly visible) and has played it on his Sony 715 (dubbed material clearly visible, but no episode titles). Back in the Panny, episode titles clearly visible on menu. Played in the Sony again, no titles.

What next?

PatH

It sounds like bad media ,have you tried different brands?

has played it on his Sony 715 (dubbed material clearly visible, but no episode titles

Am I understading this correctly? The disk plays in the sony but he is not seeing any top menu and or chapter menu.

To DeMuddle:

I believe that is the case. The transferred material is an old movie serial. Chapter Stops are obvious, and he wants to include the chapter titles as well. That's what shows on the Panny but not the Sony.

PatH

To DeMuddle:

I believe that is the case. The transferred material is an old movie serial. Chapter Stops are obvious, and he wants to include the chapter titles as well. That's what shows on the Panny but not the Sony.

PatH

Is there a MENU or TITLE button on the Sony. Try pressing it. Some panny recorders have a setting when finalizing to not show the menu when you first insert the disk in a player unless you press the MENU/TITLE button on the player.

To DeMuddle:

I believe that is the case. The transferred material is an old movie serial. Chapter Stops are obvious, and he wants to include the chapter titles as well. That's what shows on the Panny but not the Sony.

PatH

I didn't think you could make chapter titles on a Panny. I know you can't on a Pio. I thought only a Toshiba could do that. You would have to break the chapters into separate titles, not just chapters, to have a title, and a thumbnail, in the menu.

Am I understading this correctly? The disk plays in the sony but he is not seeing any top menu and or chapter menu.

I have the same problem when playing finalized discs from my EH75V on my computer (a Mac). In the DVD Player application, the top (title) menu screen initially comes up completely blank. When I move the mouse around, the highlighted borders of the buttons appear, and I can select titles by position on the screen. When I hit the "Menu" button while playing, the screen freezes at the current frame, and again I can see the button borders when moving the mouse around, and I can select them.

Discs from my older E85 behave the same way. There must be some quirk in the way Panasonic recorders set up the title menu.

Discs from both machines play OK in my Philips DVP-642 and my ancient Pioneer DVD player.

I didn't think you could make chapter titles on a Panny. I know you can't on a Pio. I thought only a Toshiba could do that. You would have to break the chapters into separate titles, not just chapters, to have a title, and a thumbnail, in the menu.
You are quite correct. Panasonic DVD recorders allow you to name and choose a thumbnail for the titles only, not the chapters within the titles. Your solution, to break the titles up into many titles at the chapter points, is the only way I know of to get around this problem, but isn't there a small gap between titles (half a second or so) when playing through?
There must be some quirk in the way Panasonic recorders set up the chapter menu.
Panasonic DVD recorders do not support chapter menus.

D'oh! :p I should have written "title menu". I'll go back and edit that.

The only option I can see in my E85 or EH50 is if I want the disk to autoplay the first title, or to show the titles page.

When I created DVD+R with the Panasonic ES20, and I put them in the Panasonic S29 dvd player (both from around 2005), the title menu with thumbnails is troubled in that 1) it keeps trying to refresh (or something like that) so you have to be quick to press PLAY 2) if you have more than 8 titles (eg multiple screens) it keeps taking you back to page 1... (The DVD+R are shown correctly on the dvd recorder).

Of course there is an easy workaround of starting playback anywhere, and then changing the title number, but it is nevertheless annoying especially if you are trying to read the title names from the thumbnails.

I haven't tried these on a 3rd device, so I don't know where the problem lies :)

This issue is only with DVD+R. DVD-R and DVD-RW(V) behave as expected.

OK, I see a potential misunderstanding here and it's my fault. My brother has transferred a serial from the '40's. These ran 4-4.5 hours and were broken into 12 or 15 chapters. This use of chapters has nothing to do with the use of "chapters" on a DVD recorder. What my brother has done is to record the entire serial (probably over 2 discs). He then divided the serial at the chapter points of the serial to produce individual titles for each of the serial chapters. Again, these are not chapter stops in the dvd recorder sense of the word. He placed thumbnails and titles on each of the titles and these show up fine on the Panny where they were recorded. On other machines there are individual titles (i.e., divisions) but not title names or thumbnails.
Thanks for all your suggestions so far. He has tried it on different media and he has pushed the Menu button on the Sony, but no luck yet. What now?

PatH

On other machines there are individual titles

Titles that show on a menu?

Yes, but only on the Panny.

PatH

During the finalization process, there are options listed that allow you to choose whether the first title on the disc starts automatically playing, or whether you'd like the menu to show first.

During the finalization process, there are options listed that allow you to choose whether the first title on the disc starts automatically playing, or whether you'd like the menu to show first.


If the copy to the dvd-R is auto finalized (ie. using the "Copy Navigater") this option must be set up before making the copy.

Functions
Other Funtions

DVD Management

Playback will start with: Top Menu

Hope this helps!

Dee

I'm back and the problem has been isolated, if not explained. It's my brother's Sony 715. As this unit was top-of-the-line at time of purchase, it never occurred to either of us . . . .

Basically, I put the DVD-R in an old Go Video 5000 (my first DVD player/VCR) and the titles showed. I then placed it in both the DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM drives on my PC and had titles as well. It is therefore the Sony, though why is still a mystery. Interestingly, the Panny will show titles on DVD's recorded and finalized on the Sony. Go figure.

My thanks to all who responded and my apologies to any who realize correctly that we should have exhausted these possibilities before we posted. My brother just said, though, that he'd still like to know why the Sony won't read the Panny titles when the Panny will read Sony titles.

Thanks!

PatH

I'm back and the problem has been isolated, if not explained. It's my brother's Sony 715. As this unit was top-of-the-line at time of purchase, it never occurred to either of us . . . .

Basically, I put the DVD-R in an old Go Video 5000 (my first DVD player/VCR) and the titles showed. I then placed it in both the DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM drives on my PC and had titles as well. It is therefore the Sony, though why is still a mystery. Interestingly, the Panny will show titles on DVD's recorded and finalized on the Sony. Go figure.

My thanks to all who responded and my apologies to any who realize correctly that we should have exhausted these possibilities before we posted. My brother just said, though, that he'd still like to know why the Sony won't read the Panny titles when the Panny will read Sony titles.

Thanks!

PatH

That was a reasonable question to ask in the beginning :)

It doesn't necessarily mean the problem is with the Sony... For example, I have a title/thumbnail playback issue using a Panasonic dvd player and Panasonic recorder with finalized DVD+R. So at least one of (my) Panasonics must be doing something wrong :)