DVD burning problem

[Bob]

Hi All,

I created a 90 minute presentation in PE 1.0 and everything appears to run fine, including burning the DVDs. Upon playing the DVDs, however, they skip and freeze up for a couple seconds on at least two different players. I updarted the firmware on my burner (an HP DVD Writer 640), tried using better media (went from Maxell to Sony) both are DVD-R's. If you watch the whole 90 minutes, the skipping/freezing gets worse as you get farther into the video and eventually quits entirely.

I seem to remember a suggestion about NOT using PE to burn DVDs but to create a folder and use other software to do the burning. That's why I can't stand AVID because it's so complicated to do what, to me, should be the easy part - burning the finished product. Can someone confirm this is a good idea?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Bob

[ATR]

Bob,

I have been working with Premiere Elements 2.0. I ran into some blocks in the program's burning. My problems were not with quality. Mine were with the use of several brands of DVD - R. Unless I hit Rescan one or 2 time before Burn, the result was error message. All other disc formats worked fine without the Rescan fix. So, until other more seasoned opinions appear, here are some comments.

First, did you Render in Edit before going to the DVD module?
Next, did you do a full Preview of the DVD before hitting the Burn Button in the Burn Dialog? Just checking.

Some people have problems with the DVD burning, but I have not done full research on what caused their problems. System problems is a popular excuse (explanation). But, I did try the Burn To Folder as well as the Burn to disc. Both worked fine for me.

If you have not tried the Burn to Folder route, why not try and compare? Maybe on a smaller scale version to get a quick look at? It is easy to do. Just select Burn to Folder instead of Burn to Disc. Select a place to save the folder (I selected My Videos). After the Premiere Elements part is finished, go to My Video (or wherever you saved the folder) and burn only the Video-TS file (found inside folder) to DVD with your burning software (not Premiere Elements).

The above may help you localize and identify the original problem.

Tips: Do not use Create Data Disc in the Burning Software. In Nero Express 6 you select Burn Image to Disc/DVD-Video files. In Sonic Record Now Version 7, select "Click this tab to view Backup Projects"/Burn Image. With Sonic, I could not get the Video_TS into the Sonic Dialog unless I put the Video_TS file on the Desktop and then dragged it from there into Sonic dialog.

I will watch your progress via this Thread.

Good luck.

ATR

[Bob]

ATR,

Thanks very much for the advice. I saw that some of the edits were not rendered (red on timeline) and tried to render them and PE simply wouldn't do it. I didn't realize that PE wouldn't render as it was creating the DVD. I deleted all the render files and re-rendered them all. After that, I burned to a folder (which took a LOT longer than burning a DVD would) and used Sonic to burn the DVD.

On the plus side, the DVD from SONIC doesn't appear to skip at all on one of my players but still does on the other, but not nearly as badly.

On the minus side, burning to a folder doesn't include the menus or DVD markers. Apparently I would need to recreate those with Sonic, but without the same theme as doing it all in PE.

Perhaps the problem was related to the render files, so I am now trying to burn a new DVD directly in PE, but that will take a few hours.

I should also point out that I have used this PC (AMD Athlon 64 dual-core) and PE to create other projects without problems although this is the longest and most elaborate in terms of editing, transitions, two video tracks, etc. What's different this time? The media and perhaps a problem with the render files. I'll know more in a few hours.

Thanks again!

Bob

[Bob]

Update: Using PE to directly create the DVDs appears to now be working as well as Sonic did once I re-rendered. They still skip on one of my players (a cheap Panasonic) but play fine on what I thought was an equally cheap Allegro, although the Allegro has Progressive Scan if that makes any difference.

The skipping/freezing is always in the last 10-15 minutes or so of the DVD and in pretty much the same spots. Since (I believe) the DVD starts writing on the inside and moves towards the outside, perhaps the relative speed at which the data on the DVD is traveling past the laser towards the end of the program is a factor.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions I'd be happy to hear them.

Thanks!

Bob

[javier]

Bob
I'm not sure this info is going to help you much but here it is

I don't know for sure if it is my PC but I have noticed that after using PE for a couple of hours it begins behaving strange and making mistakes to fix this I save my work and reboot and it's back to normal

Compatibility between DVD Disk and Players or burners has been a big headache for eveyone, since you already have the hardware you need to find Disks that are compatible with what you have, now what is important about the disk is not the brand but rather who made them there are a couple of manufacturers whose disks are compatible with most players out there, Ritek and Taiyo Yuden the second one been the best in my opinion

After rendering did you preview your proyect specialy the part where you are having the skipping?
This might sounds silly but check the disk and make sure the surface is clean a fingerprint can cause playback problems.

[Chuck Engels]

Bob, Burning to a folder does include the menus :)

[Bob]

Javier, thanks for the additional information. It does appear that most if not all of my remaining problem is related to the players. I picked up some DVD+R's and will try that too and see if that makes a difference, however I thought I had heard that the -R's are generally accepted better by the various players out there.

I also did the preview and it looks fine there. Thanks again.


Chuck, Not sure what to say about the menus other than they weren't on the DVD, nor were the scene markers. I'm using PE 1.0 if that makes a difference. Is the consensus that it's worth the move to 2.0 or am I likely to run into new problems there? Are my existing projects able to be opened in 2.0?

Thanks again for all your help!

Bob

[Chuck Engels]

If you have the project competed, including menus, and you burn to a folder, the video in the folder will include menus. Depending on what you use to put that on a DVD may remove the menus, I don't know what you actually burned the DVD with.

Version 2 is a huge step up from version 1, check out the FAQ at the Adobe site on 'what's new in version 2', you can also check out other info at videoinasnap.com and chuckengels.com