[Gary Aide]

I own the Panasonic e100 dvd recorder and have been pretty happy with it. However, about 1 in 12 recorded discs either don't play(or load), or hang up somewhere while playing the program. I use the printable BeAll discs, and check them after burning and printing. I also use a cheap player to check them for loading problems but it's not practical to play every disc to see if it hangs somewhere in the video.


The bad part is I produce these DVD's to sell at retail and it's not good to have your customers return these disc because they won't play. In fact I received a call today saying one of the discs played fine until the last 3 minutes of the program and then froze.


Say what you want about the poor picture quality of VHS, at least it was reliable and predictable.

 

[TimSH]

Just curious... what are you recording, then selling at retail? Isn't there a more efficient way of mastering DVD's for retail sale?

 

[jmscott42]

Who manufactures the discs? I've heard reports lately that Samsung discs have really been CMC; due to BeAll and Samsung being related (?? not sure how) maybe they're not CMC and as such, garbage?


Have you tried a different brand of disc?

 

[Gary Aide]

Quote:

Just curious... what are you recording, then selling at retail? Isn't there a more efficient way of mastering DVD's for retail sale?

I produced a video called "Bridge Day". Bridge Day is an event staged one day a year (in October) on the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville West Virginia. On that one day, they close the bridge to traffic and allow people to parachute (BASE Jump), rapel and high line from the bridge. The bridge is the second longest arch bridge in the world and is 863 feet high. More than 200,000 spectators and participants travel from around the world to witness this event. My video is about 30 minutes long and is available on VHS and DVD. They are being sold at Tamarack which is West Virginia largest travel center located just about 20 miles from the bridge.


Yes there is a more efficient way to master the DVD's but because I didn't know if the video would sell, I thought I would test the waters and duplicate them myself. I also created the label insert using Surething and use the Epson r300 for disc labeling. I duplicate my own VHS copies on professional decks.


The video is selling well, and my worry is customers will have problems playing the discs. As a side note, suprisingly, VHS sells better than DVD's.

 

[videonut]

When I need to be sure that a DVD-R created on one of my set-top recorders will play on other players I do this:


Take the finalized DVD-R and make a backup ISO using DVD Shrink and DVD DeCrypter (both are freeware).


Once you have the ISO stored on one of the HDDs, you can simply double click its icon and Decrypter will burn a DVD-R.


This procedure is a lot simpler than it sounds, and I never seem to have any compatibility issues with DVDs burned by Decrypter.



Good Luck!

Peter M

 

[sivartk]

sounds like player (you can't control) or media (you can control) compatibility. Or maybe a combination of both.


The one thing that I have learned is that brand names really don't mean much, but media codes (CMC, RICOH, etc) can make all of the difference.

 

[spiderman2k1]

What you need is TMPG DVD AUTHOR or ULEAD and MPEG2VCR go to www.dvdrhelp.com for more info and www.doom9.org

 

[clim422]

Are you using the E-100 to finalize the discs? If you don't, they will not play on other dvd players.

 

[KostyaNP]

First of all, I would switch to higher grade media: Ritek, or, better yet, Taiyo Yuden, they can be bought online for not too much. BeAll discs aren't a model of reliability and compatability.

Quote:

Originally posted by Gary Aide (...) it's not practical to play every disc to see if it hangs somewhere in the video.

If your have a PC with DVD-reader, there is a free addition to Nero burning software, called CDSpeed, I use it to check for media quality and errors. Reads at some 6X so it's not that time consuming. Before I found this software, I was using the standalone DVD player for readability checks: insert disc, hit "Play", and go do other things, in two hours or whenever I recall about it I come back and check: if it's not frozen - the test passed.

 

[mp3jockey]

Been using BeAll's(white printable) for more than a year...over 300 of them, and I cant recall having even one that would not play in a variety of set top boxes.


But, then I dont author on my HS2. I feed it my DV Camcorder footage,save to RAM Disk, then author on the PC, and burn from the authoring program (Ulead DVD Workshop v1 in this case)...you could very well use any of the most popular packages to do your authoring (menus, chapter stops): Tmpg, Womble, DVD Labs seem to be the most popular.


How old are the DVD player units you are getting complaints about? Anything over 18 months old may give playback problems for DVD-R media. However I have yet to have a problem with any of the less than $100 set top players manufactured in the past 12-18 months...from Panny to CyberHome. Problem may NOT be with your media...


OTOH, VHS is definitely more comfortable for some people, especially those who have used some black electrician's tape to mask out the blinking 12:00 clock LEDs..


jock

 

[meb577]



Originally posted by Gary Aide

I own the Panasonic e100 dvd recorder and have been pretty happy with it. However, about 1 in 12 recorded discs either don't play(or load), or hang up somewhere while playing the program. I use the printable BeAll discs, and check them after burning and printing. I also use a cheap player to check them for loading problems but it's not practical to play every disc to see if it hangs somewhere in the video.


I use Comp USA branded discs and they have never failed. They go on sale form time to time for $.50 a disk in bulk packs, noramlly $1.00 each in bulk. The have white labeling intended for writing on with a marker so that may be a detractor for you.


I tried some a while back off the web from Meritline and they worked as long as the recording was less that 75% of the disc capacity. Any more and they would freeze up as it got to the 75-80% point.


I also use Panasonic, Samsung, TDK and Imation with no problems.