Crackling Video???

Question

I'm need to burn around 20 DVD's for some people by Sunday-- but I'm having a big problem. The movie, which is in high-definition (I don't know if that makes a difference) fits on the DVD, but in random parts, the video breaks up into colored/patterned/pixelated squares and the audio "crackles". It doesn't show up on the computer, and I'm assuming that it's a problem with the DVD burning process.
Does anyone know why this is happening or how I can fix it?
Thanks!
PowerPC G5   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

Answer 1

Step One (unless the project requires a DL disc).
Create a disk image of your completed project on your hard drive (in the menu bar File>Create Disk Image). Play the disk image with Apple's DVD Play application to make sure it works the way you want it to.
Step Two. Use Apple's Disk Utility (in in the Applications>Utilities folder) to burn the image to writable media. Read Burning a disk image file on a CD or DVD in Mac OS X at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93006
What this article doesn't tell you is how to reduce the burn speed (and that's what we want to do here) with Disk Utility. When you hit the Burn button (after selecting the disk image), you should see a menu that near the top says something like: 'Burn disk in' - to the Right of this line you should see a Blue triangle pointing to the Left. Click on it so it points Down and you should see several burn speed options depending on your disc and your burner.
You want to make your burns at low burn speeds on high quality media for maximum playback compatability because higher burn speeds create more burn errors which set-top DVD players can't handle. I try to use 2x or 4x max.
I know you have 20 discs to burn and are probably in a hurry, but slow and steady is the best approach. Better 20 GOOD disc slowly than 20 BAD discs fast.
BTW, some people have reported 'heat-up' problems with their burner systems and have found that waiting 5 minutes or so between burns to let the burner cool down improves disc quality.