Very weird DVD Burning problem

This got me stumped. I've burned over a 1,000 DVDs and aside from the
usual bad media once in awhile just doing a reburn was the cure. Not
this time. I've just tried my 4th burn all fail at the same point.

Background: I had a short home brew vid than runs about 12 minutes. I
placed it and five others on the same DVD. Both the DVD Authoring
software and DVD burning software say all files are compliant.

No errors are reported during or after burning. In fact playing the
DVD it works fine until I click on this one video. Very strange. Not
only won't it play, it locks up all three of my DVD players. A Zenith,
Pioneer and Sony. And I mean locks up. After clicking the menu choice
for this video the screen goes dark and each DVD player locks up in
that none of the controls work and just like with a hung PC you need
to pull the plug to cause the DVD player to function again.

So I tried burning JUST the problem video alone. It plays fine start
to finish. I then tried reediting the source file just so it would a
slightly different length then rendered it again and again used my DVD
burning software to burn it with the other videos. Again failure, four
times in a row.

If I look at the business end of each DVD there is a obvious darker
ring where either nothing got burned or burned incorrectly. This ring
appears in exactly the same place on each DVD. What is further
frustrating this problem video was burned on another DVD, it played
fine and originally all I did was burn it again unchanged.

I ran the DVD through some DVD testing software that is suppose to
find read write errors by checking sector by sector. Nothing found.

I tired playing all 4 DVDs off my computer and only get audio of the
menu page yet each video's VOB file including the problem one play
fine using Microsoft Expressions Encoder and other software I have.

Makes no sense to me. Anybody got any ideas?

Difficult one Adam.

What software are you using for authoring and burning?
What settings are you using?
Are you encoding the files before taking them into the authoring app?
If so, what settings are you using?

By a ring, do you mean a ring of a different colour within the burned area
on the dvd?
Maybe the burner is giving up?

Did the one dvd that worked come from the same burner?
Same make of dvd from the same batch?

I once had a problem with dificult burning and found it was caused by adding
another burning programme to my pc.

I use Ulead WS2 and in the past have also had deepburner installed and used
that for datas dvds.

I had rebuilt my pc with new parts and needed to burn a data dvd, so I
installed deepburner. All was fine until I came to use WS2 again and I just
couldn't burn a video dvd that worked. removing deepburner did the trick.

--

Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.com


"Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
news:7e87a3tsmrtod6gfp61b1u8i6mj820e96n@4ax.com...
> This got me stumped. I've burned over a 1,000 DVDs and aside from the
> usual bad media once in awhile just doing a reburn was the cure. Not
> this time. I've just tried my 4th burn all fail at the same point.
>
> Background: I had a short home brew vid than runs about 12 minutes. I
> placed it and five others on the same DVD. Both the DVD Authoring
> software and DVD burning software say all files are compliant.
>
> No errors are reported during or after burning. In fact playing the
> DVD it works fine until I click on this one video. Very strange. Not
> only won't it play, it locks up all three of my DVD players. A Zenith,
> Pioneer and Sony. And I mean locks up. After clicking the menu choice
> for this video the screen goes dark and each DVD player locks up in
> that none of the controls work and just like with a hung PC you need
> to pull the plug to cause the DVD player to function again.
>
> So I tried burning JUST the problem video alone. It plays fine start
> to finish. I then tried reediting the source file just so it would a
> slightly different length then rendered it again and again used my DVD
> burning software to burn it with the other videos. Again failure, four
> times in a row.
>
> If I look at the business end of each DVD there is a obvious darker
> ring where either nothing got burned or burned incorrectly. This ring
> appears in exactly the same place on each DVD. What is further
> frustrating this problem video was burned on another DVD, it played
> fine and originally all I did was burn it again unchanged.
>
> I ran the DVD through some DVD testing software that is suppose to
> find read write errors by checking sector by sector. Nothing found.
>
> I tired playing all 4 DVDs off my computer and only get audio of the
> menu page yet each video's VOB file including the problem one play
> fine using Microsoft Expressions Encoder and other software I have.
>
> Makes no sense to me. Anybody got any ideas?
>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:14:49 +0100, "Graham Hughes"
<graham.hughes@dvds2treasure.co.uk> wrote:

>Difficult one Adam.
>
>What software are you using for authoring and burning?

Sony's DVD Architect version 2

>What settings are you using?

Default 8,000 Mbps for the bitrate. On this particular disc only used
roughly 80% capacity of the disc's total capacity.

>Are you encoding the files before taking them into the authoring app?
>If so, what settings are you using?

See above. All DVDA does is the DVD Authoring phase then it re encodes
the audio streams to AC-3 or Dolby 5-1. The source files are 100%
compliant MPEG-2 generated in Sony's Vegas which is a video editor.
>
>By a ring, do you mean a ring of a different colour within the burned area
>on the dvd?

Yep.

>Maybe the burner is giving up?

I thought that too, but since have burned several other DVDs and no
problem. Very strange this ring shows at exactly the same spot in the
5 attempts I made now. What really freaked me in all the years I've
done this not once have I seen where clicking on a menu item on a DVD
playing on a set top DVD player that it would freeze the player to the
extend it wouldn't do anything! I tried this disc on three different
ones and all froze up. Just like you sometimes have to pull the plug
on your PC, I had to pull the plug from the electrical outlet to have
each of my free standing DVD players recover otherwise they were
totally non responsive either with the front panel control or the
remotes with the connected tv being totally dark. Weird.
>
>Did the one dvd that worked come from the same burner?

Yep. That the other weird part. If there is something with the file,
you would think it surely would crash when burned alone but it didn't.

I then thought well somehow DVD Architect messed up. I tried burning
from it directly and also after the VOB files were made burned using
Roxio's Media 9 and same result.

>Same make of dvd from the same batch?

Yep.

It just bugs me because it makes no sense. I then totally re edited
the problem file making it shorter by a few seconds then did a new
render and same result. The file plays fine in Vegas before and after
rendering and just playing the MPEG-2 plays fine on the computer
regardless what application I use. So I guess whatever is happening it
happens either during the burn or when the VOB files are created.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:14:49 +0100, "Graham Hughes"
<graham.hughes@dvds2treasure.co.uk> wrote:

>Difficult one Adam.

Update...

I just tried playing the DVD in VLC Media Player which I hadn't tried
before. It plays the other vids on the DVD fine, but when I click on
the problem vid it generates this error message:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

Assertion failed!

Program: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe
File vmc.c Line 1483 Expression: 0

Then VLC hangs. So I guess there has to be something getting corrupted
in the file's header, or something no decoder likes but what?

Know of any Vista capable tool I can look the file's header?

What I forgot to mention in my last post only adds to the confusion.
DVD Architect is capable of generating animated thumbnails from the
linked videos. That's the option I usually use. So it's odd that the
animated thumbnail of this problem video plays fine, loops for the
roughly 40 seconds the main DVD menu plays. Since this is the same
file that freezes any DVD player I don't get how the heck it can open
the file to play the thumbnail but once you click on the link on the
DVD to start playing the actual full video it locks everything up.

Have you tried putting this problem file in a differnet place on the dvd, ie
playing first instead of third or whatever it is?

Have you tried making a dvd iso and then burning it with another app?

--

Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.com


"Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
news:t3q9a3llfc5b9fita0nkhajtrcmgnd8adm@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:14:49 +0100, "Graham Hughes"
> <graham.hughes@dvds2treasure.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Difficult one Adam.
>
> Update...
>
> I just tried playing the DVD in VLC Media Player which I hadn't tried
> before. It plays the other vids on the DVD fine, but when I click on
> the problem vid it generates this error message:
>
> Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
>
> Assertion failed!
>
> Program: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe
> File vmc.c Line 1483 Expression: 0
>
> Then VLC hangs. So I guess there has to be something getting corrupted
> in the file's header, or something no decoder likes but what?
>
> Know of any Vista capable tool I can look the file's header?
>
> What I forgot to mention in my last post only adds to the confusion.
> DVD Architect is capable of generating animated thumbnails from the
> linked videos. That's the option I usually use. So it's odd that the
> animated thumbnail of this problem video plays fine, loops for the
> roughly 40 seconds the main DVD menu plays. Since this is the same
> file that freezes any DVD player I don't get how the heck it can open
> the file to play the thumbnail but once you click on the link on the
> DVD to start playing the actual full video it locks everything up.
>
>

Oops, you've tried burning an ISO.

I don't know how to look at the file header info, try asking in the windows
media newsgroup, where MVP Neil Smith might be able to help.

How about getting architect to encode this one file, save it out as a dv-avi
and see what happens.



--

Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.com


"Adam Albright" <AA@ABC.net> wrote in message
news:t3q9a3llfc5b9fita0nkhajtrcmgnd8adm@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:14:49 +0100, "Graham Hughes"
> <graham.hughes@dvds2treasure.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Difficult one Adam.
>
> Update...
>
> I just tried playing the DVD in VLC Media Player which I hadn't tried
> before. It plays the other vids on the DVD fine, but when I click on
> the problem vid it generates this error message:
>
> Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
>
> Assertion failed!
>
> Program: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe
> File vmc.c Line 1483 Expression: 0
>
> Then VLC hangs. So I guess there has to be something getting corrupted
> in the file's header, or something no decoder likes but what?
>
> Know of any Vista capable tool I can look the file's header?
>
> What I forgot to mention in my last post only adds to the confusion.
> DVD Architect is capable of generating animated thumbnails from the
> linked videos. That's the option I usually use. So it's odd that the
> animated thumbnail of this problem video plays fine, loops for the
> roughly 40 seconds the main DVD menu plays. Since this is the same
> file that freezes any DVD player I don't get how the heck it can open
> the file to play the thumbnail but once you click on the link on the
> DVD to start playing the actual full video it locks everything up.
>
>