A
Adam Albright
Let me preface what I'm going to say by telling you I do this
professionally and have burned in excess of a 1,000 DVDs on various PC
grade computers and more CDs then I care to remember, tons of them.
Myth #1 Quality of the media (the blank DVDs or CD's)
Not all media is created equal. In fact there are only a few companies
that make "good" media, and no surprise, they are located mostly in
the far East. Other "brands" cut corners, or are made by the handful
of companies that have their own factories, under license, but often
not with the same quality control or you may even be buying seconds
that the "name" brands have rejected. I have no proof of that, but I
do suspect it.
Nice site with lots of answers: Hint: the important thing, check the
media ID number. Lastly, if you scan to the very bottom of the linked
page below you'll see a chart of WHO really makes the differnt brand
names.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm
Myth #2 Quality media never fails
False! Having burned so many, I know better. ALL brands fail. If you
restate it to say quality brands fail far less often, then that is
correct. I haven't bought a 100 blank DVD spindle yet where at least
one or two weren't bad, regardless of brand.
Myth #3 You can't tell by looking at a blank CD/DVD if it is bad
False. Sometimes you can. If you know what to look for. The process is
just too much a bother and far from accurate and you need to do it
BEFORE you burn the disc, and who bothers to do that? If you must,
carfully pick up a blank DVD by the edges making sure not to get any
fingerprints on the recording surface. Now under a powerful light,
slowly and carefully tilt the disc back and forth. You do this a few
hundred times your eyes get more apt to find very slight varations in
the color of the coating. My experience, if a blank has one or more of
these very minor and hard to see flaws somewhere on the disc and for
some odd reason it always seems to be nearer the edge, it almost
always will fail either during the burn process or when playing back
the data. What happened is this is a production flaw. The coating ever
so slightly got put on too thin and the encoding when you try to
"burn" the disc likely won't take or will be inaccurate.
Myth # 4 Burning speed matters
This one is true. The faster you try to burn a DVD or CD, the harder
your burner has to work and the more likely tiny bloopers with sneek
into the encoding process. While you'll see some people suggesting you
should never burn higher than 1X speed, that's foke lore. My rule of
thumb is never burn higher than 50% of the rated speed of the media.
So if your media says 16X and you burner can burn at 16X, set the burn
speed to burn at 8X and you'll avoid most burning introduced errors.
Why? I'm not talking data discs. I'm talking media that is playable on
set up DVD players, ie any multimedia disc. Since most of this class
has a audio track, even with a larger buffer, the burner can get too
far ahead and the encoder may drop bits, often in the audio track
which is more forgiving then the video tracks. If taken to extremes,
this can result in a ruined burn where the disc simply won't play or
gets rejected during the burn process or once you try to play the disc
back it will skip, squeal and cause all kinds of grief since every DVD
player has build in circuity that attempts to read the audio enough to
where it can play it if some bits got dropped. The problem is the
process is far from accurate. So to avoid it, help your burner out,
run it at no faster than half speed when burning a disc.
The actual encoding of the DVD, not any recompression phase if needed
depending on software you use isn't that impacted by dropping the burn
speed down. I typically "burn" a 4.7 GB disc taking 99% of the disc's
surface in under 6 minues running at half the speed my LG burner can
run the format at.
Myth # 5 My DVDs don't play in Vista
Sure they can. Operative word here is CAN play, not automatically will
play. The reason is to play a DVD off your computer you need a MPEG-2
encoder/decoder commonly called a codec. Microsoft doesn't include
one, at least not in the business version I have. So you either need
to install one from the web, (generally bad idea) or buy a suite of
CD/DVD burning software like Roxio or Nero or CyberLink or something
that comes with the necessary codecs.
Myth # 6 Why don't Media Player play my DVDs?
From what I understand, wasn't designed to, but it can be forced to.
Again, hardly worth the trouble. Better to use a DVD player, included
with most DVD burning suites. See above. This way you get to see
chapters and play the DVD off your computer like you would off a set
top DVD player.
You may be successful with this method. Place the DVD you want to play
in your computer, wait till it spins up. If auto play is enabled on
your system cancel it and go to Explorer, find your CD/DVD player, and
click to open the DVD you have inserted.
You should see a video folder with several files inside. Double click
on any VOB file and see if it plays. If Vista finds a codec it should
play the file with any associated application that understands .VOB.
If you don't have any, many players do understand the format, but
you'll also need need to download a MPEG-2 codec. One free player that
easily plays DVD VOB files is called VLC Media Player. The downside is
using this method you only can play one DVD file at a time, no menu
features to click on, so a true DVD player is better.
Myth # 7 Why do my DVDs start to play, but sputter, slow down, quit
when trying to play back on my computer or not play at all?
If bad playback, this is fairly common when playing DVDs back on a
underpowered or poorly configured computer. Most people of course try
to play the DVD back at full screen which puts further stress on the
computer and it simply may not be able to keep up. Try playing back in
a reduced frame size and see if that helps.
For not playing at all or really playing poorly also check if you have
MPEG-2 codec conflicts. One such tool is called Microsoft XP Video
Decoder checkup Utility. It does work in Vista. A free download. Many
other tools like Video Inspector and GSpot also free.
Myth # 8 My DVD's play fine for me, won't play for others.
WAY common. DVDs can be very fickle. I've burned many a DVD that plays
fine on the computer that created it, but refuses to play on any other
computer. I've also had some DVDs play fine on some DVD set top player
and act up or totally refuse to play on others.
Two main culprits. The media's coating or burned at too high a
bitrate.
The first issue is due to reflectivity. If you have more than one
brand of blank DVD handy, compare the color of the coatings on the
bottom business end. The simple fact is some DVD players don't do that
great a job and the laser trying to read the disc has trouble with the
laser beam bouncing off the disc surface which may be either too shiny
or not shiny enough. Newer players have better, often multiple lasers
that work at different wave lengths that solve this problem.
The big mistake people "burning" DVDs often make is cranking up the
bitrate to maximum. Not only is this wasteful, meaning you'll be able
to put less material on the DVD, it causes problems for some players
trying to keep up with the higher bitrate stream. They show this by
sputtering, skipping, audio getting out of sync an other annoying
stuff.
Solution, burn at a lower and ideally at a variable bit rate as
opposed to a high constant bitrate.
Myth # 9, why do commerical DVD play and the ones I burn don't?
Because they're made differently. Commerical DVDs you buy in the store
go through a totally different process. The data is PRESSED into the
media. If you make a home brew DVD the laymen term and very
misleading, is you "burn" the DVD. Actually, what really happens is
like when writing to a hard drive the bits are simply wrote to the
media. Obviously you can't expect some cheesy little DVD burner that
now costs under a $100 often way under, to do as good a job as some
commerical process where many DVDs are pressed in one operation on
machines that cost millions.
Myth #10 Those CD/DVD cleaner gizmos don't work at all.
Actually they can. Operative word again is CAN, not always will.
This should be your last restort. The fact is the media surface of
both CDs and DVDs can easily be damaged with little scratches, nicks,
and oil from fingerprints, etc.. This will cause the disc
to act up. How or if any repair attempt works depends on the extent of
the damage and where on the disc it is. Gnerally, If you are making
your own CDs and DVDs, arrage your media so the most important to you
is first and it should get burned on the inner most tracks which are
subject to the least external damage.
Now about those little devices that claim to clean/repair damaged
discs. I can say I haved used them and they DO work, sometimes. When
transferring my extensive music collection to Mp3 files I had one
original and not replaceable disc that no matter what I couldn't read
fully from. Windows would try and fail over and over. Looking close at
the disc, it did have several pretty nasty scratches which probably
were the issue. Putting this disc through a electric model of a DVD
disc cleaner that does two passes, first repair, then polish, while it
didn't totally remove the scratch, it did greatly reduce it and bingo,
I then could transfer the files and make Mp3 files from it.
professionally and have burned in excess of a 1,000 DVDs on various PC
grade computers and more CDs then I care to remember, tons of them.
Myth #1 Quality of the media (the blank DVDs or CD's)
Not all media is created equal. In fact there are only a few companies
that make "good" media, and no surprise, they are located mostly in
the far East. Other "brands" cut corners, or are made by the handful
of companies that have their own factories, under license, but often
not with the same quality control or you may even be buying seconds
that the "name" brands have rejected. I have no proof of that, but I
do suspect it.
Nice site with lots of answers: Hint: the important thing, check the
media ID number. Lastly, if you scan to the very bottom of the linked
page below you'll see a chart of WHO really makes the differnt brand
names.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm
Myth #2 Quality media never fails
False! Having burned so many, I know better. ALL brands fail. If you
restate it to say quality brands fail far less often, then that is
correct. I haven't bought a 100 blank DVD spindle yet where at least
one or two weren't bad, regardless of brand.
Myth #3 You can't tell by looking at a blank CD/DVD if it is bad
False. Sometimes you can. If you know what to look for. The process is
just too much a bother and far from accurate and you need to do it
BEFORE you burn the disc, and who bothers to do that? If you must,
carfully pick up a blank DVD by the edges making sure not to get any
fingerprints on the recording surface. Now under a powerful light,
slowly and carefully tilt the disc back and forth. You do this a few
hundred times your eyes get more apt to find very slight varations in
the color of the coating. My experience, if a blank has one or more of
these very minor and hard to see flaws somewhere on the disc and for
some odd reason it always seems to be nearer the edge, it almost
always will fail either during the burn process or when playing back
the data. What happened is this is a production flaw. The coating ever
so slightly got put on too thin and the encoding when you try to
"burn" the disc likely won't take or will be inaccurate.
Myth # 4 Burning speed matters
This one is true. The faster you try to burn a DVD or CD, the harder
your burner has to work and the more likely tiny bloopers with sneek
into the encoding process. While you'll see some people suggesting you
should never burn higher than 1X speed, that's foke lore. My rule of
thumb is never burn higher than 50% of the rated speed of the media.
So if your media says 16X and you burner can burn at 16X, set the burn
speed to burn at 8X and you'll avoid most burning introduced errors.
Why? I'm not talking data discs. I'm talking media that is playable on
set up DVD players, ie any multimedia disc. Since most of this class
has a audio track, even with a larger buffer, the burner can get too
far ahead and the encoder may drop bits, often in the audio track
which is more forgiving then the video tracks. If taken to extremes,
this can result in a ruined burn where the disc simply won't play or
gets rejected during the burn process or once you try to play the disc
back it will skip, squeal and cause all kinds of grief since every DVD
player has build in circuity that attempts to read the audio enough to
where it can play it if some bits got dropped. The problem is the
process is far from accurate. So to avoid it, help your burner out,
run it at no faster than half speed when burning a disc.
The actual encoding of the DVD, not any recompression phase if needed
depending on software you use isn't that impacted by dropping the burn
speed down. I typically "burn" a 4.7 GB disc taking 99% of the disc's
surface in under 6 minues running at half the speed my LG burner can
run the format at.
Myth # 5 My DVDs don't play in Vista
Sure they can. Operative word here is CAN play, not automatically will
play. The reason is to play a DVD off your computer you need a MPEG-2
encoder/decoder commonly called a codec. Microsoft doesn't include
one, at least not in the business version I have. So you either need
to install one from the web, (generally bad idea) or buy a suite of
CD/DVD burning software like Roxio or Nero or CyberLink or something
that comes with the necessary codecs.
Myth # 6 Why don't Media Player play my DVDs?
From what I understand, wasn't designed to, but it can be forced to.
Again, hardly worth the trouble. Better to use a DVD player, included
with most DVD burning suites. See above. This way you get to see
chapters and play the DVD off your computer like you would off a set
top DVD player.
You may be successful with this method. Place the DVD you want to play
in your computer, wait till it spins up. If auto play is enabled on
your system cancel it and go to Explorer, find your CD/DVD player, and
click to open the DVD you have inserted.
You should see a video folder with several files inside. Double click
on any VOB file and see if it plays. If Vista finds a codec it should
play the file with any associated application that understands .VOB.
If you don't have any, many players do understand the format, but
you'll also need need to download a MPEG-2 codec. One free player that
easily plays DVD VOB files is called VLC Media Player. The downside is
using this method you only can play one DVD file at a time, no menu
features to click on, so a true DVD player is better.
Myth # 7 Why do my DVDs start to play, but sputter, slow down, quit
when trying to play back on my computer or not play at all?
If bad playback, this is fairly common when playing DVDs back on a
underpowered or poorly configured computer. Most people of course try
to play the DVD back at full screen which puts further stress on the
computer and it simply may not be able to keep up. Try playing back in
a reduced frame size and see if that helps.
For not playing at all or really playing poorly also check if you have
MPEG-2 codec conflicts. One such tool is called Microsoft XP Video
Decoder checkup Utility. It does work in Vista. A free download. Many
other tools like Video Inspector and GSpot also free.
Myth # 8 My DVD's play fine for me, won't play for others.
WAY common. DVDs can be very fickle. I've burned many a DVD that plays
fine on the computer that created it, but refuses to play on any other
computer. I've also had some DVDs play fine on some DVD set top player
and act up or totally refuse to play on others.
Two main culprits. The media's coating or burned at too high a
bitrate.
The first issue is due to reflectivity. If you have more than one
brand of blank DVD handy, compare the color of the coatings on the
bottom business end. The simple fact is some DVD players don't do that
great a job and the laser trying to read the disc has trouble with the
laser beam bouncing off the disc surface which may be either too shiny
or not shiny enough. Newer players have better, often multiple lasers
that work at different wave lengths that solve this problem.
The big mistake people "burning" DVDs often make is cranking up the
bitrate to maximum. Not only is this wasteful, meaning you'll be able
to put less material on the DVD, it causes problems for some players
trying to keep up with the higher bitrate stream. They show this by
sputtering, skipping, audio getting out of sync an other annoying
stuff.
Solution, burn at a lower and ideally at a variable bit rate as
opposed to a high constant bitrate.
Myth # 9, why do commerical DVD play and the ones I burn don't?
Because they're made differently. Commerical DVDs you buy in the store
go through a totally different process. The data is PRESSED into the
media. If you make a home brew DVD the laymen term and very
misleading, is you "burn" the DVD. Actually, what really happens is
like when writing to a hard drive the bits are simply wrote to the
media. Obviously you can't expect some cheesy little DVD burner that
now costs under a $100 often way under, to do as good a job as some
commerical process where many DVDs are pressed in one operation on
machines that cost millions.
Myth #10 Those CD/DVD cleaner gizmos don't work at all.
Actually they can. Operative word again is CAN, not always will.
This should be your last restort. The fact is the media surface of
both CDs and DVDs can easily be damaged with little scratches, nicks,
and oil from fingerprints, etc.. This will cause the disc
to act up. How or if any repair attempt works depends on the extent of
the damage and where on the disc it is. Gnerally, If you are making
your own CDs and DVDs, arrage your media so the most important to you
is first and it should get burned on the inner most tracks which are
subject to the least external damage.
Now about those little devices that claim to clean/repair damaged
discs. I can say I haved used them and they DO work, sometimes. When
transferring my extensive music collection to Mp3 files I had one
original and not replaceable disc that no matter what I couldn't read
fully from. Windows would try and fail over and over. Looking close at
the disc, it did have several pretty nasty scratches which probably
were the issue. Putting this disc through a electric model of a DVD
disc cleaner that does two passes, first repair, then polish, while it
didn't totally remove the scratch, it did greatly reduce it and bingo,
I then could transfer the files and make Mp3 files from it.
