Burning Problems - I Need the Gurus!

[LiRM35]

Hello!

I need some help from some of you gurus! I've mostly lurked here and have found you guys/ladies to be pretty damn good in helping people and I've read some great stuff here (thank you!) so I'm hoping you can perhaps help me.

I'm having some burning problems when I create either DVD's or simply copy an .avi file to a CD and then try to use either one of these in my DVD player (which supports, of course, playing Divx movies directly without a conversion to DVD).

The burning problem manifests itself by a jerky movement in the video at times (not always) or the vid will pause for a second or two - then jump ahead. I can't really say I've had but one DVD "coaster" on me - my vids just come out with "jerky" motion.

I'll try to provide as much info as I can. I"m using a Maddog 18x Lightscribe DVD burner (which is really a Samsung SH-S182M that Maddog simply put's its name on and supports).

I use Nero 7.8.5.0 to burn.

Source files include .avi's or .iso's or VOB's - there doesn't seem to be any correlation between this problem and what specific file(s) I'm trying to burn or convert to for that matter (such as .avi to VOB/DVD format).

I defrag on occasion, but not usually more then once or twice a month.

I try to make sure I'm not running anything else when I burn, but I can't say that I've got absolutly no other processes running (like Kerio firewall).

I burn at the maximum speed (18x for DVD's and 32x for CD's).

I use almost exlusively Sony DVD-R's or Sony CD-R's (hmm... - just noticed my DVD's from Sony are only rated at 16x max...maybe this is part of the problem?) I have some Memorex Light Scribe DVD's but after the initial excitement of creating Lightscribed DVD's wore off (about 1/2 an hour - the time it took to create a descent looking one) I'm pretty much back to the good old Black Sharpie method of labeling.

My machine is a P4 with about 1.4 gigs of RAM - it's not a speed demon, but it's no slcouch either.

I'm typically running with anywhere of 5 to 10 gigs of free drive space - this fluctuates.

I'm not sure what else I can tell you - that's about all that comes to mind.

If anyone and give me some pointers on what I could to get rid of this problem, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.

Regards,

LiRM35

[setarip_old]

Hi!I burn at the maximum speed (18x for DVD's and 32x for CD's).Reduce your burn speed to 8X or less.my vids just come out with "jerky" motion.Try running a DVD/CD cleaning disc on both your burner and the unit you're using to play the bunred media. Maxell makes one that sells for approximately $10US...

[LiRM35]

I'll give both your suggestions a whirl and let you know what happens. Thanks for the response and ideas :)

[chipzoller]

To tell you what I do, I NEVER burn my DVD media past 8x, and depending how neurotic you are, you may want to invest in some good DVD+R (DVD-R doesn't have the error resilience as +R does) discs, Taiyo Yuden being the most well-respected. In addition, when burning with ImgBurn or Nero I ALWAYS run the verification pass after the successful burn. If it returns any error for any reason I assume the disc is bad, throw away or shred and burn another copy.

[LiRM35]

Well, I tried to burn a DVD tonight - used the 8x speed as recommended and still got a lot of chop in the final DVD. I was burning from an .iso.

I am using Nero 7.x (one of the latest revs). Do you guys/gals use other software to burn that might give me any better results?

I also removed every running process I had on the machine including my firewall (Kerio) so to reduce any other possible disk I/O.

Are there any other things I could be looking at to solve this problem?

I will try and find some of the DVD's recommended as far as that brand goes - any other good brands to use or to stay away from?

Thanks much - I appreciate any help here.

Regards,

LiRM35

[setarip_old]

As I said before, try running a DVD/CD cleaning disc on both your burner and the unit you're using to play the bunred media. Maxell makes one that sells for approximately $10US...

[Calimari]

@LiRM35

It's obvious that your DVD player is having reading problems. So your problem is the writing process. There are a few general rules around about burning a DVD, but IMO each combination burner-media has its own preferences. You simply have to know them. How? By determine them :) There are good tools to test the quality of your burned media like Plextools, DVDInfo Pro, Nero CD/DVD speed... If you're unable to use one of these, there is always the real test: playback on your hardware.
But before you get to this testing phase, there are a few other things to keep in mind.
First, and probably the most important: buy good media. Taiyo Yuden is known as one of the best, if not THE best, disc available. TY's are not the cheapest, but quality has to be paid :) I would stay away from Memorerx. TDK and Verbatim are other good brands, and I have to say I have good experiences with Sony DVD's. So I guess you could use your Sony's to do some testing.
Now, before burning something, I suggest you always create an iso image and test this on your pc with a software player. Mount your image with something like Daemon Tools and play it in Media Player Classic (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358). Or, VLC Player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) is also a good one and plays iso images directly. When everything runs smoothly, you know for sure your image is OK and you can move on to the burning process. I suggest you use ImgBurn (http://www.imgburn.com/)for burning your images. Don't use Nero. For determine the ideal burning speed on your system, there's only one solution: burn the same iso on the same brand at different speeds and compare the results. Once you have a satisfying result, stick to this combination!
Some brands will give the best results at 4X, others may prefer 8X, etc...
Crappy readers are ideal to do the test, as they'll have reading problems sooner than a good reader (I often use my old car cd-loader to test CD's, bumpy roads are ideal for this :) ).

[Lenny_Nero]

What media are you using ?

There is a long way from very good to good and then bad where most media lives. I use TY and Verbatim only, and I say to most get and try some Verbatim MCC 004 (DVD+R) and have a go at around 8x, I have found that to be a very sweet spot for a lot of drives.

There is also a prog called ImgBurn v2.3, I now always make an image and burn from that using it or CD-DVDSpeed, I then check back the quality of the burn with CD-DVDSpeed and my Lite0n drive.

LG make the best writing drives, they are not so good at reading and cant scan, but they put all other makes to shame in their ability to write with good media.

Calimari I have just seen that I have repeated what you said, but it is about the best info for good burns.

[MLS]

Could be a huge number of items.

If we're talking DVD:

1. Improperly authored disc.
2. Improperly encoded video/audio.
3. Burning program bug or issue.
4. Firmware bug with burner, or burner/media combo (write strategy).
5. Burner needs cleaning or fixing.
6. Media is bad / difficult to read.
7. Device you are testing in has problems with your media.
8. Device you are testing in has a bug, needs cleaning, or is broken.

For AVI, many hardware players will exhibit issues depending on how the file was encoded. For instance, if GMC was used and the file is XviD, I don't think any hardware player will play the file properly.

You can use the obvious methods to narrow down the problem:

- Try different media
- Burn with a different burner (ask a friend?)
- Try on a different hardware device (friends/family)?
- Try different burning software (Imgburn).

Good luck,

/MLS

[LiRM35]

First of all, thank you all for the great tips and things to try. I think the first thing I will try and do is find some of the TY disks or Verbatim as several of you suggested it might be a media issue.

I have done a couple of burns of .avi's using a speed of 8x (on Sony CD-R's) with great results. And I also ran the verification process as suggested. So it looks like (don't wanna jump the gun or put a hex on it..hehheh) this may be the solution for the .avi's.

I think I have a good player as when I use "regular" DVD's it plays fine. I will pick up one of those cleaners when I go to find the TY media as it sure can't hurt to rule out that variable.

I'm going to also try ImgBurn as suggested.

I'll report back and let you guys know what happens.

Thank you again so much for all the help - I really appreciate you folks taking the time to help me troubleshoot this as I know what a pain in the ass this can be.

Warm regards,

LiRM35

[Calimari]

I think I have a good player as when I use "regular" DVD's it plays fine.
LiRM35

Not true. Pressed discs, or 'regular' as you call them, have pits and lands. A land has a different reflection than a pit. That's how the laser determines 0's and 1's. A burned disc doesn't have pits and lands of course. To explain in a very simplistic way: you burn 'spots' on a chemical layer. Those spots have a different reflection than, let's say non-burned spots. This means the surface is flat and it's more difficult for the laser to determine the difference between burned and non-burned, or 0 and 1, than it is with pressed discs.
Conclusion: a burned disc is ALWAYS harder to read than a pressed one.

[shrink0]

As others suggested... IMGBurn build iso>burn to verbatim DVD+R or TY media, no more than 8x,preferably 6x IMO..... good luck!!!!:)

[LiRM35]

OK, I've been doing some testing of suggestions and looking into some other issues and have found a couple of things out that might be of help to the next guy (or gal) that may come along looking for some help on this same issue.

First, about the Taiyo Yuden DVD's. Many people may know that they are available online sold under that label. I'm not sure if many people know that a great many companies put their name on Taiyo Yuden DVD's. Here is an interesting link I found that lists the companies who do:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=178622

It's a little bit tough to read the batch codes, but when I looked, the Sony's I were using were in fact Taiyo Yuden's.

Regardless, I did take the suggestion and got some DVD+R's and along with a few other things have finally got a few good DVD's to burn without lags, skips and general nastyness.

I also took the suggestion of using ImgBurn to first - take the regular .VOB's and other standard DVD files and burn them to an .iso, then use ImgBurn to also burn that .iso.

That didn't entirely solve my dilemma so I started looking at some other things - namely exactly what processes did I have running on my machine that could be eating up CPU time or resources that wouldn't allow me to devote the entire box to just burning the DVD. It is beyond the scope of this article to get into everything I disabled or set to manual - there are loads of web sites devoted to such things - here is a pretty good one I found:

http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm

Suffice to say I wound up disabling quite a number of services that were running that I really didn't need to have running. I think this played a large part in what my problem was and if you are having the same burn problems - definitely run some tests with the services you don't need absolutely running - disabled or simply stopped - to at least see if it makes a difference. Be careful and make note of exactly what you are turning off though, as you may be disabling a critical service that allows networking or backup software to run - that sort of thing.

Also, as suggested from the good people who responded to my request for help - I am strictly burning DVD's at 4x max and 8x max for CD's.

Oh - one more thing - I'm not sure if it matters, but I turn my screen saver off when burning - again to keep absolutely everything off that I don't need at that moment. That includes a software firewall (Kerio - note I have an SPI hardware firewall running as well) - as well as my antivirus software - HotSync - even SideSlide - a nifty app that consolidates apps to launch from a nifty drop down menu. Bottom line - everything is shut off but my burning software.

So again I say thank you to all who helped me out - and I hope the comments I just added also may help someone who might be having this issue.

Warm regards,

LiRM35

[itchione]

I always tick the verify box when burning to disk.
But there was a period where i was getting failed burns with focus errors specified within the burn report that nero produced.
After trying all sorts of things, i found this link

Solution: How to fix "Focus or Tracking Errors" on LG Drives (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=158612)

It could be a problem for some and easy to fix so i thought i would include the link here :)

Cheers, Itchione