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  • DVD Authoring

    DVD Menu is Inconsistently Gray, but Video Plays Fine

    Posted by Kenny Miracle on November 14, 2013 at 6:43 pm

    Hello,

    I recently authored a Region 0 Dual-Layer DVD in Apple DVD Studio Pro. It is a 90 minute film with 21 subtitles so it can play in many countries.

    After authoring the DVD myself, it was sent to a replication house for distribution. The issues I am having are with these replicated DVDs, not with the master burned with my Mac.

    Various copies of the DVD were played in Brazil and the UK, on both DVD players and laptops.

    Each time in Brazil, and some times in the UK, the main menu screen was completely gray. When clicking play, the movie plays fine. No problems. Just the menu is not viewable.

    Both myself and my replication company have not been able to repeat this problem in the U.S. Does anyone have ideas as to why this would happen? My guess is that it has to do with old DVD players and computers, but I need to know for sure.

    Kenny Miracle
    Editing | Motion Graphics
    http://www.kennymiracle.com

    iMac OS 10.6.8 12GB Ram
    2.66 GHz Intel Core i5
    ATI Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card

    Andreas Gumm replied 12 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies

  • Andreas Gumm

    November 14, 2013 at 7:55 pm

    double post

  • Andreas Gumm

    November 14, 2013 at 8:09 pm

    It sounds like a known issue with VLC-Player when playing back a DVD with menu.
    There is a default setting to jump directly to the presumed main menu on start.
    Try to play the disc in VLC player by using the default setting, so maybe you can sort out if this is what the users saw?
    Even when the setting follows a good intention, it sadly does not respect the programmed route on the disc.
    A complex abstraction layer, such as DVDStudio does, makes it much more complicated for VLC to find the right pgc to jump to.
    See if this is the cause, I’m really curious about it.

    Andreas Gumm
    selfemployed media author

  • Kenny Miracle

    November 15, 2013 at 12:19 am

    Thanks Andreas. I’ll look into this for the times it happens on computers. I don’t know if VLC Player was being used or not.

    Any thoughts on why this would be happening on DVD Players?

    Kenny Miracle
    Editing | Motion Graphics
    http://www.kennymiracle.com

    iMac OS 10.6.8 12GB Ram
    2.66 GHz Intel Core i5
    ATI Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card

  • Andreas Gumm

    November 15, 2013 at 5:57 pm

    I don’t think that it will happen on a DVD player if the disc is authored according to DVD spec. 😉
    Many people showing DVDs on laptops or desktop computers & a lot of them using VLC player.

    As long as you don’t know what players fails, it will be a kind of wasting time on investigation.

    best regards
    Andreas

    Andreas Gumm
    selfemployed media author

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