Hi - I hope this is the right forum for this question - I had a quick look round but wasn't sure. For the past six months I've been producing DVDs of various parts of the church services. I record the vocals with Audacity, insert the recorded clips into Powerpoint, convert to avi files using Camtasia, and then transcode the avis into DVDs using Nero 7. All the DVDs play fine on the computer, but freeze after ~5-10 minutes on my LG DVD / VHS player. They also seem to have random problems on other people's DVD players. Now. My old HP Light Scribe expired [RIP] in April. I then got a Samsung Light Scribe. I've actually found one set of DVDs which have run all the way through called HMTD1 and HMTD2 - two Masters using Nero 7 with Dobly 2, and a variety of expereiments using both Nero and Power2Go. These DVDs were the first I produced soon after I got the new DVDRW. Once I was happy with the settings I must have done 20 - 30 copies of each DVD, plus the same of the data DVD with all the Powerpoint and music files. NONE of these have been reported as faulty. Then I went back over the ppt presentations of the sermons, and started converting them to avi with Camtasia, and writing DVDs. When I retested the sermon DVDs yesterday they ALL locked up on my player, and ALL played through on the computers. I checked a few out with DVDinfoPro and Nero Speed 4.5 - no errors found. So I tried recreating one of the Nero projects with the same capture files but burnt the DVD on a different computer - froze in the same place as the original. Then tried recoding one ppt with CamStudio, and edited it with Windows Movie Maker, saving it as a High Quality PAL [wmv - much smaller file than the avi] and just recorded it on its own - played straight through. So I spent all evening recoding a full DVDs worth, and created the Nero project separately on two computers. Left them to burn overnight. This morning one had glitched due to some memory read error [not entirely surprised because that computer is long overdue a reinstall]. The other had gone through... and froze after 5:21 minutes. So I made another disk using only three out of the five clips, and the standard Nero background rather than a jpg.. and it froze after 6.54 minutes. I would write it down as my DVD / VHS player, except that they do the same things on a few other machines. I'm using Verbatim Photoprintable DVD-R 16x. They were the ones recommended for the purpose by Maplins [I'd already heard of the potential for mishaps with labelling DVDs!] I also have a few Emtec DVDRWs which I tried as well [not least because I can still erase them and use them for back-ups if the DVD fails] - in fact, it was one of these which worked with the single movie clip. I've checked the DMA for the burner, I've stopped folding and all other non-essential services; I've made a new server so the machine has no-one trying to access it to print or go on the internet; I verified the disk; I've looked at the log file for any errors [although I do have to say I don't entirely understand it]. I gather there are peeps on here who could interpret it for me?? I've cleaned the lens on both the player and the burner. Oh yes - the player plays commercial DVDs [including one old backup done on a DVDR] without any hassle at all. I think my main concern is - how did I manage to get a complete run of two separate DVDs working with no failures as my first attempt - and I can't even get one to work now??? It can't be the burners. The reason being is that, if I take a movie file which has glitched at, say, 5:25 on one disk, and burn it again with a different disk [obviously] on another computer - it then glitches on the player at 5:25. Subsequent conversion do not necessarily glitch at the same point [or at all. For example - Master DVD of Christ's Instructions to the Church; [times are froze at] ................Original Conversion.[Camtasia]..New Conversion [Cam Studio] Temple...........5:50...................................5:32 Family............1:08...................................played through Flock..............2:44...................................1:25 Body..............played through....................1:11 Bride..............played through....................0:02 [I had to do a new conversion because of the screen settings - I'd lost some of the edges of the slides.] I've tried Camtasia, CamStudio, and PresenterSoft. They all work sometimes, but unfortunately I have to burn a DVD to find out whether it will play through. A file that does play through will then do the same on subsequent burns / copies of disk. I've now got ALL not MS services turned off on my computer, including all AV. No screen saver / power save / background. It's a 3500+ with 1Gb RAM [which has tested clean]. My DMA is what it should be. I tried one of the old disks on a different [v cheap!] player - it didn't freeze, but at the point where the freeze was happening on mine, the picture went fuzzy but the sound was fine. Then the picture recovered and the sound went funny. Then they both played, but were totally out of sync until the next title. This screams synchronisation error at me - but I don't know what to do about it. I'd be really grateful for some help on this one, because I seem to be creating coasters at an alarming rate, and there's only so many the Sunday School and Cubs can use for craft projects!
As always, you should try a different brand of media first. You could also try another app to convert your AVI's then use Nero (with it's Smart Encoding ticked) to finish your project. These 2 (free) are worth a peek. http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/index.htm
Thanks for your reply. I've just tried the same file on three different brands of media, burnt on two different computers - it froze on my player at exactly the same point each time. As far as converters are concerned - so far I've tried Camtasia, CamStudio, My Screen Recorder, PresenterSoft PowerVideo, and those that need further editing I've edited in Camtasia, Windows Movie Maker and Nero. Within the programs I've tried wmv, avi and mpeg; I've tried most of the available codecs andsettings; and I'm ready to scream. I think it's only on my LG DVD / VHS player that the the files actually freeze; on other ones there are patches of blocky pictures or sound / picture out of alignment. I'm wondering if I should just try to get a different player so that i can at least copy them to videos and people will just have to live with the occasional glitch. But I'm desperate to know what the problem is.
I think I've found a connection between the files that will play and those that won't; Take a look at these three screen shots - in particular the video Date rate. The first and third are from files that play; the second from a file that won't. When I looked at the summary for all the avi files I still had on the computer [idiot that I am, I deleted most of the more recent ones to save disk space...] the ones that will play through on my standalone player had relatively low Vieo Data Rates - mostly below 100kps - the ones that won't play are nealry 200kps or even higher - like no 2 here! Otherwise, the settings are all the same [apart from the running time]. So - what do we think? And if this looks like the problem, what can I do about it??
My suggestion was to take the completed captured AVI and try one of the encoders I listed to convert to DVD ready files.
Right - I understand now. Or rather, I don't. I've installed media encoder, but I'm not sure what I need to do with it. What file type should I convert the avi / wmv into - mpeg? Or something else? I have to say I've very hazy about this. When Nero transcodes the avi / wmv files it turns them into vobs.
