Video freezing « Videomaker Community Forums

Korak
Member

I was recently asked by a friend to transfer some concert footage to DVD. This is footage he shot 10-15 years when he was working as sound man; backstage stuff as well as some of the shows. Over the years he transferred everything to VHS; the original 8mm tapes are long gone so I am working from copies. Until last night I had transferred over nearly a dozen tapes for him without problems.

The tape in question is basically a 45 minute set he shot from the audience. Lots of camera movement and definitely not the best lighting but compared to some of the other tapes the overall video quality is better. The footage was captured and rendered without any problems. Chapter points were set based on the playlist he provided. When it finished burning I popped the DVD into my standalone player; it came right up and starting playing. Then I hit the Next button. The video froze while the audio moved to the next chapter point. At this point the play, pause and stop controls on the player (and remote) froze; the next and previous chapter buttons worked but would only change the audio. Had to eject the disc to stop it.

I tried to play the disc in 3 different stand-alone players as well as a computer player and 3 different DVD burners and got the same results. I have burned multiple copies using different burners (HP100i, HP300i and Sony DRU-510A) and have used +RW +R and -R formats (using Verbatim, TDK & Ritek media). Using Vegas+DVD. The problem still exists. Any ideas as to why this is happening? Thanks.

Posted 8 years ago #
Relentless
Member

The analog tape itself, has no bearing on this problem since it's out of the equation, once you've converted the content to digital.

The symptom you describe usually points to a reading problem that older standalone DVD players had, which weren't very compatible with DVD-R/DVD+R media. What's confusing is you said you've used different burners, and got the same result, but you didn't say if the affected burned disk would play back on the originating burner. For example, did the DVD you burned with the Sony, play fine in the Sony, but then hang up on every other player?

Also, does the error occur exactly the same way on each player. If it does, then you must have corrupt DVD data files. What I think you should do is render the DVD to hard disk, instead of burning directly to the DVD Platter. DVD Architect will burn a DVD, even when the encoded file isn't strictly NTSC DVD compliant. However, it should warn you of that fact.

If what you're saying is that you've used the same DVD file created with DVD Architect, installed different burners, and gotten the same results. What you shoud do is try to run the DVD from hard disk. DVD Architect should create DVD folders on your hard disk of the project. You can test it simply by accessing the folder and double-clicking on the largest file you see there. If it hangs up,as you described, then there's a problem with the transcoding.

When you made the MPEG-2 file for DVDA, what encoding option(s) did you choose? Another hint that you might have problems is if DVDA insists on re-encoding the file during the render.

To avoid making coasters with DVDs, I never use DVDA to burn disks directly. I render to hard disk, test the DVD, then I use dedicated burner software (e.g. Nero, NTI, CD Creator) to actually burn the DVD once I've tested it on the hard drive.

Posted 8 years ago #
Korak
Member

Lee:

I had a feeling you would be the first one to respond. LOL!!

I am aware of the problem with older players; the 3 players I tested the discs on are between 6 and 18 months of age; all are name-brand and none are the $30 express-lane checkout specials -- which is what my friend will be playing the disc on.

I have 3 dedicated video systems; all have 1.5GB RAM, min 2GHz cpu and at least 2 hard drives with the 2nd used for capturing and rending; drives are cleaned and optimized after each project is completed. All files are rendered as MPEG2; NTSC-compliant. I NEVER burn directly to the blank media -- I get can better quality coasters much cheaper. From what you said our procedures are pretty much the same.

When I run the project from within DVDA there is no problem; it has only occurred when burned and played on disc. The problem occurs exactly the same way on each DVD player; it also occurs on the discs when played in the burners in which they were created.

I'm using the default bitrates in Vegas (6000 and 4000 kbps) for the project when rendering. There is no video re-coding in DVDA. I have also tried adjusting the bitrate in DVDA; have gone with everything from 8000 up to 9800 and has not made any difference as far as I can tell with regards to this problem.

Like I previously mentioned, out of a dozen or so tapes I have transferred for him this is the only I have encountered any problems with. Since my original posting I have used the same source file to burn a disc without chapters and it plays without any problems on both disc and the hard drive. When I tried to run the .VOB file for the original production it would run until I hit the next chapter button; at that point the playback would stop/end. So it appears the problem lies with the chapter points; other than starting over with the capture not sure what else I can do..

Chuck

Posted 8 years ago #
Relentless
Member

Very Interesting problem. It doesn't sound like MPEG-2 encoding could cause this. It must be the chapter point insertion code. Another weirdness is that you've done so many others with no problem and now only this one is giving you a hassle. Recapturing may be the easiest but if your curiosity gets the better of you (you've certainly hooked me on this) you could try a couple of things with the soure file. I'm assuming that the caputure was DV, so the source is compressed via a DV codec. If you have the hard drive space, you could render the source as an uncompressed AVI. This would remove the DV codec data. Then you could load the uncompressed AVI file back into Vegas and then render it to MPEG-2. Actually the way I do it is to render the video only to MPEG-2 and load the audio into DVDA separately as a AC-3 or 48k stereo PCM file (even though DVDA help says this can't be done). Of course all this stuff is 'playing' and if time is a factor, your best bet is to simply recapture it. I'll look on the forums to see if there's any hints. I'd hate not to find out what this mystery is, so if you figure it out, please let me know.

Posted 8 years ago #