[Bigfire]

I purchased a Sony DRU-500A which can write any format known to man. Two days of experimentation have brought me the following pieces of knowledge:


Womble/MyDVD - When I take Replay MPEGs, edit them in Womble (without re-coding), and take them to MyDVD, it seems to recode them. I'm not sure if it's doing it for the audio and video, or just the audio as has been suggested elswhere. Regardless, I get a DVD that plays in my Sampo and life is good. EXCEPT: My shows that were originally between 500 and 650 megs are now around 1.3 gigs,which means I can't get 4 measly episodes (without commercials) on one DVD. Grrrr!!!


Womble/Spruce/Nero - I demultiplexer the files, and send them to Spruce (Spruce finds errors when it's only MPEGs). I create my menu structure and save it out. I burn it with Nero, using the DVD-ROM (UDF) format. I saw on the VCDHelp web site that it's good to do this because it lets me specify UDF 1.02 instead of 1.50, theoretically making it more compatible with DVD players. Frankly, it's not very compatible. It doesn't play on a first generation Sony or on a very recent Aiwa and Toshiba. It does play on my Sampo.


The problem is that on the Sampo, the video hesitates every 3 seconds. The audio is fine, and it's not the usual MPEG problem where there are blocks, instead, it's just a slight hesitation, and continues playing. I've played it on my PC, using PowerDVD and Windows Media player, and it plays fine there.


Does anybody have any idea what the heck is going on? I really prefer the way Spruce does menus over MyDVD, and I hate the fact that I could be getting more like 8 episodes on a DVD instead of 3, but this hesitancy thing is killing me.


If no one has any idea about what my problem is, how about a suggestion of which DVD player to get? What are you guys using with Spruce and Nero and getting good results with?

 

[Ed Rempalski]

You might try Ulead DVD Movie factory. It's simple to use and it doesn't re-encode my Womble Edited video.


On Compatability. As I understand it DVD-R and +R are more compatible than -RW and +RW because of the lower reflectivity of the re-writable format. You might try -R if you haven't already. Also some cheaper brands don't work as well. Also check the speed that your burning at, maybe try 1X.


On Players, newer ones are supposed to work, but I'd burn a disk and go to a store and try it before buying anything DVD related these days. I went for a portable and tried 10 models. The only one that worked was a Panasonic DVD-LA95 and it mentioned VCD and DVD-RAM compatibility on the box.

 

[Bigfire]

I am trying DVD-R. I haven't tried +R yet. My Aiwa randomly seems able to play DVD+RW (barely), but once I get to the point where this all just works, I'm happy to burn -Rs since I don't plan on re-recording on the disks.

 

[mburkhart]

Ed,


I really like the Ulead DVD Movie Factory also. It is very easy to use and is pretty cheap ($24.99) I'd recommend it to anyone who wants an easy method of encoding RTV Mpegs to DVD, SVCD, VCD. I currently only use it for VCD's and have been very happy with it. What do you use to edit out commercials?


-Mark

 

[Revwillie]

Quote:

Originally posted by mburkhart Ed, I really like the Ulead DVD Movie Factory also. It is very easy to use and is pretty cheap ($24.99) I'd recommend it to anyone who wants an easy method of encoding RTV Mpegs to DVD, SVCD, VCD. I currently only use it for VCD's and have been very happy with it. What do you use to edit out commercials? -Mark

I got MovieFactory this summer and it's great. It takes forever to re-encode and I can't seem to figure out how to tell it not to re-encode and just burn. Also, I hate to leave it running unattended (for the hours it takes) because it autmatically ejects the writer's tray and I can't figure out how to turn that off, either. Any suggestions?


Does anybody have a beta copy of the new version? Will it be worth the upgrade cost?

 

[Bigfire]

After trying people's recommended settings and getting the exact same error every time (video barely hesitates every three seconds), I took one of my DVD-Rs to Radio Shack and asked them to play it in their cheapest unit. When that didn't work, I went to their next cheapest unit.


To make a long story short, RCA's 150 buck unit plays it great. It also fast forwards and rewinds correctly (something my other unit couldn't do) on the DVD-R. There's a 50 buck rebate for it, so I now have a new DVD unit and the problem seems to be solved.


Strangely, there was a Go DVD player from SonicBlue that was only 80 bucks, and it played the DVD fine as well, but I noticed compression artifacts in the picture. It looked like some of the poor first generation DVD players. So I paid the 20 bucks and now I'm happy.