15 second timeline won't play

Question

Hello,
I'm making a DVD with four videos, each on their own timeline.
I had to add a 15 second message at the beginning of one video, so I figured the easiest way would be to make a slideshow with an end action of the video's timeline. It plays fine in the preview, but after burning a disc, I get an error from my dvd player.
I thought there might be a bug with the slideshow creator, so I made a 15 second clip in Premiere instead. Still plays fine in the preview, but the same error shows up on the player.
Any ideas? Is there a minimum timeline duration for set top players to be happy?
Thanks in advance!
Encore CS3

Answer 1

Older Sony players can be quite fussy. Maybe you are already doing this, but these general recommendations for optimizing player compatibility may help:
Use a
maximum bit rate of no more than 7Mb/s.
Let Encore convert the audio to Dolby Digital (AC3).
Use good quality DVD-R media, e.g. Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden.
Keep your burner's firmware up-to-date.
Burn at the lowest speed your burner allows. (With modern burners that is usually 4x.)
Never use adhesive labels on your discs.
On the off-chance that you were testing with a DVD-R that had nothing but the 15 second intro on it: It seems that since version 3 Encore doesn't "fill" short DVD-Rs up to the 1GB mark anymore. Some players need to have at least 1GB burned on a DVD-R (to perform a calibration check). If they find only empty space they assume an unreadable disc.
A possible workaround is to add 1GB of dummy data as "DVD-ROM Content" to your project.