DVD not playing in all players

[Bill Stephan]

You don’t describe what “plays in some players but not others means, but here are some possible causes:

1. Poor quality or defective DVD-R stock. Avoid off-brand discs.

2. Too high total bitrate. What birate was used to encode the picture? Is the audio encoded as Dolby or PCM? Are there multiple audio or subtitle streams? You want the total of the bitrates for the picture, all sound streams & all subpicure streams to total no higher than about 8.0Mbps with occasional brief higher peaks usually OK.

3. I’m not sure about how good the compatibility of the authoring software is with the DVD Spec, but there is a slight chance this might be an issue.

4. Bad DVD burner.

5. Poor compatibility of the player with the DVD Spec. This is more of a problem in older players. Some Blu-ray players don’t do a good job of playing DVD-R discs.

6. Weak laser diode in the DVD player, usually indicated where a specific player plays replicated discs easily but has trouble playing burned discs.

7. Inorrect file or folder structure on the DVD, which happens most often when authoring in one application and using another to burn the DVD-R.

The only DVD discs that are 100% compatible are correctly authored and manufactured replicated discs. Burned discs are inherently more difficult for players to read.

Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City

[Michael O’connor]

Thanks for all your help. I can try to answer some of your questions.
Using Memorex DVD-R
I used Sony Vegas 7 to render one Dolby Digital AC3 audio file , and one MPEG2 video file.
Then and used DVD Architect-4 to compile DVD.
The MPEG2 total file size was 1.75G.

The DVD menu screen would come up, and let me choose to play the DVD on some players, but not on all. On some players it didn’t recognize the disc at all. The attempt was made in machines I have and in machines my client has. For both of us sometimes it would bring up the menu screen and sometimes nothing at all, so I sort of ruled out a bad machine.

I am inclined to think bad burner, but wouldn’t that make the disc not play in any machine?

I have created DVD’s in this same machine without problems, which could mean the DVD itself is bad. I am going to try to use a different burner and see if that works.

Thanks for all your help.

[Bill Stephan]

It sounds like you have a serious compatibility issue, or maybe the menu asset is corrupt. If your DVD burner is bad, it most likely would burn completely unusable discs.

You need to swap the elements of the project until you find the one that’s causing the trouble.

Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City

[Rob Neidig]

Plus I would use a different brand of DVD-R. I’ve never met a Memorex disc I liked. For consumer discs that you can buy at OfficeMax, Best Buy, etc., I’ve had the best luck with TDK. The best professional discs are made by Taiyo Yuden, now owned by JVC.

I’ve also had issues with Adobe Encore (I haven’t used DVD-A4) in the past where if you choose “Compile and Burn a DVD” (or whatever the actual language it uses), then the disc doesn’t play in all players. But if you choose “Create a disc image”, then burn the disc from that disc image, it will play. Weird, but whatever it takes.

Have fun!

Rob

Rob Neidig
R&R Media Productions
Eugene, Oregon

[Michael O’connor]

Thanks guys, this gives me some additional ideas. I appreciate it.