When I author and burn a DVD (with menus), my DVD skips at times. Is this due to not enough RAM? I am using Windows XP Professional SP3, Intel Pentium CPU 3.00GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM, >35GB of free HD space, using Corel Movie Factory 7.0 and a 2 pass conversion. My whole system is older 3.5 years or so, Dell XPS 400. I have definitely burnt over 100 DVD/CD's on this burner, likely more (could be worn). I am not compressing at all, I use lesser quality settings (decreased audio to MP3 @ 128, frame rate lowered to 6100f/s) so the data is less than 4.3GB. Burnt DVD has skips, DVD file (VOB) has some. Thinking my processing/encoding is given me errors. I do have a lot of stuff running on my machine, can I kill some processes so all my computing power is focused on the DVD encoding and burning (maybe another user where nothing loads...)? Thoughts?
Here are the Corel Settings as I know I said frame rate I meant data rate: MPEG files 24 bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps Frame-based (DVD-NTSC), 4:3 Video data rate: Variable (Max. 6100 kbps) Audio data rate: 128 kbps Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)
I only have one question? What kind of blank DVD's are you using? Your problem is definitely cause by bad media or your burner is beginning to show it's age. I would guess is the blank media. Right now the only media I use is sony 16x plus. The only other media better than sony is tadeo yuden (sold only in the internet). Verbatim use to be good media but it skips on me now, and I stop using it. If you have nero, do a disc quality check on your DVD that you burned. The quality needs to be at least 85% (I get 93% with sony) to play without skipping. I've had phillips blank media give me 5% quality, memorex give 50% quality. Verbatim when it was good use to give 99%, now it's in the 60%. You can always test your video files before you burn them by playing them in powerdvd, if they play fine without freezing or causing powerdvd to crash when you move the timeline slider fwd and reverse it's a good conversion. Also you can open it up in dvdshrink, if it analyzes good with no navigational errors, it'll probably burn good.
I was just looking at the media, I am using Fuji Film from Taiwan. Seems to be rated in that 2nd class category of media... It seems everyone is still behind Verbatim even though Sony is also in that top class of media along with Taiyo Yuden. I just got rid of Nero for this Corel program, so the check is not an option unfortunately. The check with Power DVD or DVD Shrink is a good idea, I surely don't want to watch the whole movie before burning. Is this reliable, enough anyway? Which program is lighter on resources? I will likely only use these programs to execute this check as I use others to author and burn.
dvdshrink is very light in resources, and I still use it to shrink unecryted movies on occasion. For me it's a quick check, because it checks the video when it analyzes it. If dvdshrink crashes while analyzing your video_ts folder, then that's a sign that the dvd isn't compliant. If it checks good, then your dvd media is probably the culprit or even the burner (if it's old). I've had burners go bad on me, producing DVD's that would skip. Sony's 16x (plus and minus) are rock solid and have never skipped on me. While the verbatim sometimes skip/freeze on standalone players that I have tried them on, sometimes they play fine but I don't like taking chances when watching movies. You can also download the free nero discspeed file, it'll run a disc quality test without installing the full nero. It runs from the exe file, no installation required. http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Nero_CD-DVD_Speed
