[MacDV] Help with iDVD DVD playback problems on home DVD players

[Michael Winter]

On Sep 26, 2005, at 12:24 PM, Christopher Bailey wrote:

> The problems are usually
> "skips", meaning the movie is playing along, and then bam, you see  
> a small
> glitch and now you're anywhere from a couple of seconds, to maybe a  
> minute
> or even more ahead of where you were.  We've also seen some more minor
> problems where just some small areas of the video are pixelated, or  
> you get
> a super brief skip (say 1 second or maybe less, but noticeable).   
> Oddly,
> this can get worse as you play the DVD more.  The problems always  
> seem to
> occur in the same place on repeated plays.

Just a couple shots in the dark.

First, have you tried limiting the burn to 1x or 2x to see if that  
fixes the problem? Its possible that with the fastest write speeds  
you may be getting "weak" spots in the DVD that can't be read very  
well by stand-alone players.

Second, I seem to remember a thread a looong time ago that indicated  
if you are burning video with too high of a bit rate some commercial  
players can't keep up. There was a trick to fooling iDVD into using a  
higher compression ratio, but I don't remember what it was. If you're  
compressing more than 90 minutes into a standard DVD I think you're OK.

Good luck.

-Mike