[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi Dave,

I just tried to play one of the check disks given to me by the Replicator on my Mac G5, and the DVD DOES mount on the desktop, and the Mac’s DVD player tries to play the disk, but like the other check disks from the Replicator, I receive a “-33” error, and an error message saying that the disk may b scratched or dirty, even though it is a new DVD check disk.

Thank you for any more thoughts you might have to help us resolve the issue…

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi David,

Thank you for your feedback and thoughts in helping us try to figure out what is causing this issue.

To answer your questions:

1) On my G5, when I insert the Replicator’s DVD check desk, I receive a “-36” error from the G5 DVD player(which says that the disk may be scratched or dirty), so I assume that it does mount. On my 2 HP PC Laptops, the title of the Replicator’s check disk DOES appear after I insert the disks.

2) Thank you for answering the questions about the options for Scenarist. My DVD Author said that he didn’t recall any additional settings like that either. (It was the owner of the Replication company that mentioned that there were this in-depth settings for CSS, like “play on DVD player, but not on computer,” etc…

What I am asking the Replicator to do now, is to repress new check disks from the glass master, so that we can eliminate whether the issue was in the last pressing of the replicator check disks.

I am not sure whether there could have been an error in the creation of the glass master, but I don’t feel like spending $200 just to check that theory out.

My last step would be to ask our DVD Author to output NEW DLTs, without CSS, and then try to create the DVD glass master and new check disks with the new CSS-less DLT tapes.

What’s mysterious is that our DVD Author’s check disk DOES play on computers, while the Replicator’s check disks do not (granted, the Replicator created the glass master and check disks from the DLT tapes that were outputted with CSS, and the DVD author created his check disk without the CSS setting – and 2054 sector size – added).

I appreciate any other thoughts in helping us try to resolve this puzzling issue.

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

I wanted to include an update about the newest pieces to this puzzle…

I took the Replicator’s check disks to our DVD Author’s office, and they DID play successfully in 4 out of 5 of their Macs, including older Macs.

(So, it looks like CSS is not the issue).

Interestingly enough, the one Mac at the DVD Author’s office that would NOT play the Replicator’s check disk, is a G5, just like my G5 that would not play the Replicator’s check DVDs.

And, again, our DVD Author’s check disk (which is exactly the same as the Replicator’s check disk, except that it does NOT have CSS and has sector sizes of 2048), DOES play successfully on all of our computers.

Thank you again for your help in trying to solve this mysterious issue.

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hello…

I spoke with the owner of the Replicator house (who I have been told is also a DVD author), and he mentioned that while outputting to DLT, there should be a CSS option to 1) allow for playing on a computer (but no copying), and 2) disable playing on a computer (as well as no copying).

My DVD Author is using Scenarist 3.0 or 3.1… Has anyone heard of these CSS options for Scenarist or any other DVD Authoring software?

Also… Would it be possible for the Glass Master Stamper house to have incorrectly changed CSS settings when they made a glass master from the DLTs (the DLTs were flagged for CSS).

Thank you for your help…

My DVD Author and I are stumped.

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thanks for your feedback,

But, is there anything in the replicator’s pressing machine that would create a checkdisk where their DVD plays on DVD players, but NOT on computers?

What’s strange is the the DVD Author’s checkdisk (without CSS) plays fine on everything.

The Replicator is telling me that it must be an issue with how the DLTs were made.

Thanks for your help in trying to figure out what exactly the issue is, and what step along the way caused the issue.

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you both, Roman and Max, for your thoughts and advice about this.

I will ask our DVD Author to rerender the Menus to PAL in After Effects.

He hasn’t worked on a PAL DVD project before (although he’s done several NTSC DVD projects on his Scenarist system).

Thanks again,

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi Roman,

Thanks for your feedback.

Our NTSC is 29.97fps, so I think that we’ll have to ask a lab to do a hardware NTSC-PAL conversion of the actual footage.

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hello again,

I just received a message from our DVD author, and he said that he received a recommendation that he could use “visualhub” to convert the menus to PAL.

Has anyone heard of how effective visualhub is?

Thank you,

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you both, Max and Roman, for your advice and thoughts about how to create a PAL Scenarist project from an NTSC version.

Since the motion menus and video transitions were created in After Effects in 30 fps video, what is the easiest to convert those AE menu clips to PAL? Does AE have a fps conversion option? Should our DVD author use compressor? Or, will we need to convert the menu video files to PAL in the same way as our video feature and special features? (I know that the menu buttons will have to be replaced).

Also, since the video clips for the NTSC Scenarist project were already digitized to Quciktime files, is there an easy way to convert them all to PAL? Is there software that can do this, or should I take the clips to a lab like Lightening Media in Los Angeles for the conversion. The most time-consuming way would be to reassemble the clips on a timeline, export them to tape, and have the lab convert the entire tape to PAL, and then redigitize each clip individually in the new PAL format, but that seems like the long way of doing this. Thank you for any suggestions for converting the QT project clips.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and advice,

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi Everyone,

Just from looking a bit deeper into Creative Cow posts, it looks like we may have to re-build the Scenarist project in PAL.

The motion menus where built in After Effects. Does anyone know if it is easy to convert After Effects motion menus to PAL?

I have not spoken with the person who will be converting the AE menus, but I’m trying to understand it myself first.

Thank you for your thoughts and feedback about the best way to convert the motion menus and other DVD elements into a PAL Scenarist DVD project.

Khashyar