Burned DVD movies skip/freeze on regular DVD player
I've made a few home movies, and burned them on to DVDs. When I play them on a regular DVD player (Sony), the movie skips/freezes from time to time. I've burned the same movie on my other MacBook, and this does not happen.
Could it be that the SuperDrive on this MacBook is broken?
MacBook (3.1),
Mac OS X (10.5.1),
Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz / 4GB RAM / 250GB HD
Interestingly, when I play the same skipping DVD on the other MacBook, it seems to play perfectly. No skipping. On this MacBook (the one that burned the DVDs), VLC plays it perfectly as well. No skipping.
I tested the DVDs on a friends home DVD player. The result is still the same. The movie(s) skip at the exact same places (ex: 0:04:51, 33:02:19, ...) as on my home DVD player.
Interestingly, when played on the DVD-drive of this friends PC (running Vista), there was one of the DVDs skipped, although only once.
What could be the problem? Why do the DVDs skip on DVD players and not so much on computers? Could this be a prblem with the SuperDrive on my MacBook?
Any lead that could help me narrow down the problem will be much appreciated.
I would try burning the project using a different brand disc. Some drives just don't play well with certain brands of disc. I would also pay attention to the burning speed. Slower almost always renders a more successful burn.
1. Try a different brand blank DVD medium when you burn the disc. Set top players seem to be a lot more sensitive to the brand of disc than computers.
2. Burn the iDVD project to an image file. Share the image file over to another Mac and burn it there. See if you still have problems with playback.
3. If you still had problems with an image file burned on a different computer, then you know it must be something in the data format of the disc. I've experienced problems with some set top DVD playback machines that can not handle sustained high bit rate content. As far as I know, iDVD uses a relatively simple encoding strategy, and does not do much to reduce the information content of the encoded video stream. If you start with a high resolution QuickTime or DVI import, playback machines with limited disc performance might not be able to keep up.
I did some fairly superficial Google searches and looked at iDVD, and I didn't see any means of setting up the bit rate and encoding strategies that iDVD will use. Perhaps, somebody with a little more experience can comment?... A professional DVD encoding software suite will do a multi-pass encoding - once to figure out optimization and then again to render output. That sort of analysis might require an over-night run to make the disc. I have a feeling Apple avoided that in order to make iDVD more consumer friendly. It also avoids stealing market from more professional products like Final Cut.
You might be able to go into iMovie HD to edit the clips. You could send them to QuickTime, and reduce the bit rate there, then import the QuickTime clips into iDVD.
Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. After burning numerous copies of my movies at different speed and on different Macs, and after hours of watching the same movie despite the growing soreness in my eyes, I can report what has worked.
This MacBook 2.2 GHz burns at x2, x4 and x8. Tried burning with Toast at x4 and then x2. But the movies still skipped on two different DVD players.
I then transfered the .img file to the other MacBook 2.0 GHz (which burns at x1, x2 and x4) and burned with Toast at maximum possible speed. There were no skipping.
Then, I decided to burn the same movie with Disk Utility with x2 on this MacBook 2.2 GHz. The resultant DVDs (I burned three copies of the movie, in order to make sure), worked flawlessly.
The blanks I used is FujiFilm DVD-R Single Layer (I've used this brand for a year on my previous MacBook (the 2.0 GHz)
Now the big question is: what's wrong? Is it a problem with Toast? Don't want to find out now though... can't stand the thought of watching the movie all over again!
