I know this isn’t really the place for this, but I thought that one of our resident geniuses might know an answer.

I have a video of our Egyptian tour burnt to a DVD. We have played it several times without any problem. Last evening it reached a certain point and went back to the opening menu. I tried several times but could not get it to play past that point.

I tried a different DVD player, with the same result. So, I took the back-up disk, which had successfully played before, and it behaved in exactly the same way, at the same point.

This morning I tried playing it on a computer, with the same result.

Does anyone have any ideas? I can only think of remaking it, fortunately I still have the raw video clips, but I don’t want to do that if the same thing could happen again. Alternatively, I could remake it and burn it to a VCD as it is short enough for that.

I am now wondering when my other DVDs will start behaving in the same way!

Hi Tangata

Leaving out issues of damage to the DVDs, I have seen this type of failure occur when there has been too much heat build-up in the DVD player. In those circumstances switching off and trying a half hour later worked. I suspect however that this is not your problem as you said you tried a different DVD player.

Therefore the first things that come to mind as possibilities are:

1. A faulty burn with errors on the disk (try burning at a slower speed).

2. Dropped frames during capture to your PC causing a break in continuity (try recapturing).

3. If you placed labels on your DVDs their have been some brands of DVD labels that have caused problems with DVDs. They have been OK for a number of playbacks but then fail in the manner that you describe because the adhesive on the labels causes a progressive deterioration of the DVD. In fact some companies have now introduced new labels branded as DVD safe.

A few questions first.

1. Did you burn the video direct to DVD from the camera or did you capture it to your computer first via firewire or similar?

2. If captured to your PC did you notice if any frames were dropped in the process? (only today I dropped 720 frames during a one hour capture and had to delete the 10 gig or so and recapture)

3. Did you use an editing program to edit your footage and add menus, dissolves, etc before burning?

4. What speed did you burn at? I have experienced the odd faulty burn that has been quite OK the second time around when I burnt at a slower speed of 2x or 4x.

5. Was your backup DVD an original burn or a copy of your primary DVD?

6. Did you put labels on your DVDs.

Perhaps Chris or Steve may have some comments as well.

Tangata, I thank you for asking this question. When I eventually get to the DVD stage of things, I now know who I have to direct my questions to. Dragons.

Hi Dragon,

Thanks for your time and the very detailed reply.

Definitely not a heat problem, I’ve tried them in two DVD players and two computers.

1. A faulty burn with errors on the disk (try burning at a slower speed).

It could have been a faulty burn; but each disk had been played three or four times before this problem emerged.

2. Dropped frames during capture to your PC causing a break in continuity (try recapturing).

I have a digital camera, so I don’t have to capture via a capture card; I just copy the files across.

3. If you placed labels on your DVDs their have been some brands of DVD labels that have caused problems with DVDs. They have been OK for a number of playbacks but then fail in the manner that you describe because the adhesive on the labels causes a progressive deterioration of the DVD. In fact some companies have now introduced new labels branded as DVD safe.

I don’t use sticky labels, just very short written titles – but again this should not identically affect two disks.

A few questions first.

1. Did you burn the video direct to DVD from the camera or did you capture it to your computer first via firewire or similar?

2. If captured to your PC did you notice if any frames were dropped in the process? (only today I dropped 720 frames during a one hour capture and had to delete the 10 gig or so and recapture)

3. Did you use an editing program to edit your footage and add menus, dissolves, etc before burning?

Transferred the raw video to computer, edited it extensively on ULead Video Studio 9, (I typically use about a third of the video I take), added narrative and music and then saved to a file and then burnt the file. I then copied the original disk to produce a back up disk.

4. What speed did you burn at? I have experienced the odd faulty burn that has been quite OK the second time around when I burnt at a slower speed of 2x or 4x.

I can’t answer that one; I left it up to the program to decide.

5. Was your backup DVD an original burn or a copy of your primary DVD?

A copy, which of course suggests there was a fault with the original. I have found that using ULead burning a second copy from the original file results in a disk that will not run at all. I made a second copy and sent it off to one of my daughters. I have asked her if she has the same problem. She may just be thinking that her old man finished his movie in an odd place!

6. Did you put labels on your DVDs.

No labels.

One other point, the break appears to occur between a video clip and a still clip. But it is not the first still clip in the compilation.

I am pretty much resigned to having to recompile and I’m congratulating myself on having burnt back up copies of the original video clips. However, I shall wait to hear from daughter, if her copy is OK I will get her to burn me a copy
.
Thanks again for your time.

Pauline,

This may be a travel board, but there is a huge wealth of knowledge out there!

Tangata,

You have certainly eliminated most of the obvious possibilities but I still lean towards a faulty burn at this stage. The second copy being a straight copy of the original would also seem to indicate this however your daughter's experiences with her copy should confirm this or shoot that theory down in flames.

Incidentaly I also have a digital camera but I still capture to the PC and when I am finished I download the finished video back to the camera and then store the tape as a master.

Your method of transferring the raw video to computer, editing it, adding narrative and music, saveing to a file and then burning the file, all seems OK except for coping the original disk to produce a back up disk. I have never used ULead Video Studio so I am not familiar with it although from a number of reports it is well regarded (I use Pinnacle Studio 10). Was the file you made an MPEG2 file?

I was interested in your comment that burning a second copy from ULead results in a non playable disk. I presume there must be a setting in ULead where you select the number of copies and I have experienced this before with other video programs and resolved it by rendering and burning the original and then rendering and burning the second one rather than selecting the number of copies. A lot slower but it worked for me.

On your last point. While on most occasions video editing software handles mixing of stills with video clips you can sometimes have a problem occur when the software fails to resolve a difference in aspects if say you are shooting video in 16:9 widescreen and your stills are in say fullscreen.

The burn speed is still a possible cause if the software default was burning at maximum speed and you might have a look at that.

Seems that I haven't been much help to you so far. Let me know what your daughter's response is and we will see where we go from there.

At this stage it is looking very much like a recompilation and burn I am sorry to say.