I have authored a number of DVDs from videos I took of our local hockey league. Some parents that I made copies of my DVDs for said they worked fine on their players, but others said their screens freeze at various points. I am using Pinnacle Studio 8 software for compilation and burning and Ritek DVD+R media to burn onto. Please advise as to the best route possible for making DVD home videos with universal player compatibilty. Thanks!
There is no such thing as universal compatability, unfortunantly. It's the dirty little media secret. Some players are very compatable with virtually any disk, while others are tempermental. Some disks will play in almost every player, and some will barely play in the unit that burned it. My personal opinion is that the +R disks are probably the most compatable with an eye towards the future, while the -R disks are the prefered disks of some older model DVD players. You should look around here at Afterdawn and read the guides concerning DVD media... Good media is key... but what's good for one burner may not be good for another. And price is not always a determining factor. For your friends who say their disk does not work you can try burning a -R disk for them to see if that helps... otherwise, you'll probably have to switch brands and you may NEVER find one that works in their DVD players. Good luck!
I find Ritek (DVD-R) to be problematical media. Even when burning at 4x, sometimes they are fine, other times they display various problems on my players. I find that Yuden (Japan), Maxell (Japan) or Verbatim give consistent results on my players. I can't use +R on my setup, but I don't believe the results would differ significantly. http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm
Stick with -R's, Verbatim is a good bet. After all is said and done -R's will still work in more players.
