House, Season 1, choppy at very end

[hallway]

I backed up my copy of House and all was well until the very end of the last episode. It got very, very choppy, audio cut out, and was more or less unwatchable. The original did not exhibit this.

My first thought was it ran out to the very edge of the DVD and many people don't feel it's "safe" out there. Using DVD Shrink, for example, many people set the target size to some magic number under the DVD's full capacity. On a regular movie, I can't say I've ever really seen this, but I typically don't watch the ending credits either. On a TV series disc such as this, the credits are obviously much shorter and the shows run out much closer to the end.

I know the setting I want to use is "Target Sectors". Do others use this setting only for TV episode DVDs or use it all the time ??

[check]

Well, if the disc is dual layer, the edge of the disc will actually be at the layer break from my understanding, so that idea about the edge of the dsic would be invalid if I'm right anyway.
As to your problem, it sounds like some sort of disc reading error. Have you tried encoding the last episode a second time? More info is required otherwise, methods used, output format, etc etc.

[JFerguson]

Does your original output on the computer exhibit this? If you don't have them, rip your backup copy back to your computer and play in a software player, like PowerDVD.

This sounds like bad media -- might want to run a scan with Nero CD-DVD Speed V4.51.1, if you can...

[hallway]

Well, if the disc is dual layer... I'm using single-layer media to back up to. If I were using dual-layer, I wouldn't be doing any re-encoding. Does your original output on the computer exhibit this? I don't use my PC's drive for reference. I watch DVDs on my stand-alone player and TV. The original did NOT exhibit this behavior. This sounds like bad media -- might want to run a scan with Nero CD-DVD Speed V4.51.1, if you can... I can do that. The media is Taiyo Yuden, for what it's worth. Will report back shortly with the scan results.

Going back to your comment about using my PC's drive, my "arguement", if you will, is that say a disc scores 95+ on Nero's scan yet skips, stutters, and is more or less unplayable on my set-top DVD player. Is that a good disc or a bad disc ?? IMO, it's a bad disc. I don't use them to "test", I use them to watch. ;) My DVD player is a mid-range Toshiba too.

[jdobbs]

As you mentioned... when you are experiencing problems at the "end" of a disc -- it is almost always media.

[hallway]

Okay, scan test is done... The media wasn't TY, but was Verbatim MCC-004, which is typically considered very good media. Something though, must have went HORRIBLY wrong somewhere. Put it this way, I will NOT be posting the results of the scan here or anywhere !! :D I just checked some older scan results from the same media and I got 93 - 95 on all of the tests.

[hallway]

As you mentioned... when you are experiencing problems at the "end" of a disc -- it is almost always media. Would configuring DVD-RB to make the files smaller help ?? I don't (try not to, at least) use cheap media.

[jdobbs]

The default targetsize already leaves a little room at the end. If you haven't changed it (made it larger) there really isn't much else to do...

Maybe it was just a fluke. Every now and then a disc gets through that is bad (with pretty much any brand)...

[JFerguson]

hallway,

I have a new LiteOn 1635s (adaptive burner) that produced some very nice scores at 12x (discussed here (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=182529&page=8&pp=25) -- BlackholeForever), but were problemsome in my player. Took it down to 8x and they were fine.

Now I got these Ritek-P16s (Office Depot DVD+R 16x) that are producing some great burns (total PIE/PIF < 10000/100) - wow!

Anyway, the moral is sometimes I don't trust scores, but most of the time I do...? ;)


p.s. - Yeah, Verbatim MCC is usually pretty good. You know, I accidentally burned one of my old Office Depot 16x DVD+R discs (RICOHJPN-R03-04) at 4x and boy was it crappy!

[jdobbs]

I made the mistake of picking up some cheap discs at a "Computer Show" -- the guy said they were Ritek, but when I looked at the headers they were some no-name...

Man, oh man... they sucked bigtime... I did several discs before catching the problems at the end on one, turned out they all did the same thing and I had to reburn all of them.

Lesson learned.

[hallway]

My burner is also the LiteOn 1635. It's not in the thread you linked, but one of them there I posted a scan result that showed a score of 97 !

jdobbs: At one time, I played with the TargetSector value but that .ini file got overwritten and since I've used every at the defaults.

[JFerguson]

Yeah, jdobbs, anytime I get new media, I burn it, scan it, and then watch it. If it works, I try to stick with it. I've even had trouble with Verbatim MCC* blanks and certain burners.

Hey, hallway -- I think to get a 97 on Nero, you cannot exceed Maximum PIF of 1. Here's one of my best scans... I think I just missed it - doh! ;)

http://www.chicagophoto.net/blackhole/Stuff/NeroScan.RITEK_P16.11178-45.png

[hallway]

Here you go... I was mistaken. It wasn't a 97, it was a 98 ! :D It was with TY media, too, not Verbatim.