DVD is not playing in my DVD player!

Question

I made a movie in iMovie HD, created a DVD in iDVD, burned it successfully, and now that I try to play it on my DVD player, it is choppy and basically freezes and says "disk error". I can see the title pages and everything looks good, so I'm not sure what's going on. I took it to work and it only played on an old DVD player in someone's office, but not on my computer DVD player, not in other, newer DVD players. I burned the movie on a Maxell DVD-R, which I thought was a good brand. Do you think it has to do with burning speed? As I'm not sure what speed I set the burn for. It does play, however, on the apple DVD Player on my mac, so I know it works at least somewhere! The problem is that I gave this DVD to the bride (I edited her wedding) and she was unable to play it at her home. Any ideas????

Answer 1

Hi
I burn my DVDs at an as slow speed possibly. This can be set in iDVD08 or by creating
a DiskImage and use Disk Util tool or Roxio Toast™ to burn where speed can be
set down to x1
Speed is set by the no. on the DVD bought eg x16 and max speed on DVD-burner eg x8
in previous versions of iDVD. So forcing iDVD up to version 6, one has to buy x2 DVDs.
No other way possibly else using another program to do the actual burning.
I only use Verbatim DVDs
Only DVD-R (Single Layer)
Read this on iDVD quality = Result
*DVD quality*
1. iDVD 8 has three levels of qualities.
iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality (movies up to 120 min.) - BEST
• Best Performances (movies less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD
• High Quality (in iDVD08) / Best Quality (in iDVD6) (movies up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
2. From
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not selfcontaining, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly eg x1 (in iDVD’08 this can also be set)
This can also be done with (Apple) Disk Util tool.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc).
5. Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW)
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
8. Don’t burn more than three DVD at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while befor next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on:
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JESDeinterlacer3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS: They are plabacked by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD08
Pro Quality (only in iDVD08)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choise)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD08
2. Project info: Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD08.
Region codes:
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes:
1 = US
2 = EU
Yours Bengt W