When watching burned DVD, footage is choppy/shaky

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Level 1

11 points

When watching burned DVD, footage is choppy/shaky

I just burned a 40 minute long clip made through Final Cut Express to a DVD. When I watch the movie file itself on the computer, it plays normally like it should be. But, after I burn it onto a DVD through iDVD and watch it on a TV, the footage is choppy during active scenes (ex. when people are dancing) and during freeze frames, it actually shakes instead of freezing. I have to show this video by Tuesday so I am in a bit of a rush to get this thing finished..

The movie file itself is compressed as "DV/DVCPRO-NTSC", exported using Quicktime conversion in Final Cut Express. I've burned two disks, one set as high quality and on widescreen, the other on high performance and on standard; both have the same results. How can I fix this? I need the footage to play smoothly and correctly, like it should be playing... anyone know? I need to get this fixed ASAP...

This Mac is running on Tiger 10.4.11 with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 2GB RAM with a 233GB Hard Drive with an available space of 12GB. I am burning to a Sony DVD-R disk which has enough space for what I am trying to burn.

Thanks.

Mac Mini, iPod 30 Gig, Mac OS X (10.5.4), 1.83 GHz Intel core Duo, 120 HD, 2 GB RAM

Posted on Aug 4, 2008 11:09 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Aug 5, 2008 11:31 AM in response to JerichoX

Hi

a. < Hard Drive with an available space of 12GB > If this is the Main hard disk
the free space is way to low ! ! should be minimum 25Gb for iDVD to work as intended

b. In iDVD 1-6 You can't set burn speed - it read from DVD discs and x16 is way
to high to get an usable result. (In iDVD08 this can be set to x1)

Way around:
• In iDVD save as DiskImage (File menu and down)

TEST this with Apple DVD-player.
• If it doesn't play OK try to use another encoder
• I use Best Performance - avoids the Best Quality though I don't think it is
(In iDVD08 there is Pro Quality - I love it.)

• Burn this to a DVD WITH Apple Disk Util tool where You can set burn speed
or use Roxio Toast™ My favourite way - so easy.

I use Verbatim
I use only DVD-R (No +R or +/-RW)

Yours Bengt W

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Answer 2

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Aug 5, 2008 12:10 PM in response to JerichoX

an available space of 12GB.

That is a VERY marginal amount. Try to get up to at least 20 GB free

BTW, a general recommendation is that Mac OS-X needs about 10% of your disk kept free just for 'housekeeping' uses.

Go the disk image route and see how the disk image file plays in the Apple DVD Player. BTW, for just 40, minutes, I'd use 'Best Performance' encoding. It's faster and the quality will be as good as 'Best Quality'.

If the disk image plays OK, use the Apple Disk Utility to burn the disk image to writable media at 4x or slower.

F Shippey

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Answer 3

JerichoX Author

Level 1

11 points

Aug 5, 2008 5:02 PM in response to F Shippey

I tried burning it as a disk image.. I got the same results. I also have 45 GB of free space on the hard drive, still no difference.

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Answer 4

Aug 7, 2008 9:58 AM in response to JerichoX

Hi

A. What kind of material did You feed FinalCut ?
• miniDV tape (streamingDV) from Camera
• HDD Camera
• DVD Camera
• .avi, .wmv etc. files ?

B. How did You go from FinalCut to iDVD ?
• Save as a QT (no QT-conversion) and non-Selfcontained (My choise)
• The opposit (I never do this)

Hard Disk. 45Gb free on ?
• Internal Start-up HD - ONLY THING that counts
• On External HD where movie material is stored (scratch disc) - size doesn't MATTER at ALL

Yours Bengt W

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Answer 5

Aug 9, 2008 1:50 PM in response to JerichoX

shakes ... Final Cut Express to a DVD

Sounds like wrong field dominance. Take care to use bottom field first in FCP settings.

I don't have FCP but this link might be useful:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58634

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Answer 6

F Shippey

Level 7

21,500 points

Aug 9, 2008 2:11 PM in response to JerichoX

... and see also Interlacing: How to prevent jagged lines in video at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25318

F Shippey

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Answer 7

matzek

Level 1

0 points

Aug 12, 2008 11:18 AM in response to JerichoX

I had the same problem. In my case i fed iDVD with MPEG4 files from iMovie which are actually not suitable to create a DVD. DVD technology requires another codec and (i guess) iDVD has encoding-problems - which made my videos choppy/shaky.

What i did: i got myself "mpeg streamclip" (freeware, just google it), decoded the mpeg4 file to .dv (beware: you will get large files) and fed iDVD with that .dv-stream.
What happened: I got a perfect video.

I hope that works for you. Cheers

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Answer 8

Sep 2, 2008 12:16 AM in response to matzek

Can't you just convert it to DV with QuickTime?

I'm also getting jerky outputs and I'm making slideshows. Never happened before. When I watch the slideshow in QT or previewing in iDVD it looks great. But when I burn it or makes an imagefile, the playback is jerky and horrible.

Any ideas, anyone?

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