Re: Creating compatible DVDs: Stuttering & Colour Temperature : DVD Authoring

[Bill in Toronto] "1. In your experience which is the best type of original media for creating a DVD intended for mass production and potentially glass mastering? e.g. DVD-R; DVD+R, et al.

Verbatim
Verbatim
Did I mention Verbatim? ;)

Others may debate this but I find DVD-R to be the most
compatible and I author tens of hundreds of unique titles each year.

For discs going in for replication source, burn at the lowest
speed possible to keep the errors down to a minimum and burn
at least 2 of them to send in case they have problems with one

2. Is there a brand of DVD media which is more reliable than others. (I've generally used Ridata.)

See #1
I used Ridata/Ritek for 4 years. They were great reliable media.
Recently they've taken a turn for the worse, I had more bad discs
(good discs gone bad and way less compatible)recently. the quality control clearly went south and for a few cents more you can have ultra
reliable Verbatims.

3. I have well over a GIG of RAM and no difficulty in playing an authored DVD without stuttering. However, some clients have older pc systems with CRT monitors, age unknown. They complain about the following:

a. Colour of some animation displayed on their monitor is too dark. (Just fine on my Samsung 713v or my NEC MultiSync LCD 1700v.)

b. Either the DVD stutters on the computer right from the beginning (but never on my system or my standalone Toshiba player); or after playing several selections, there is stuttering."

Don't worry about monitor levels, most peoples monitors are way
out of wack, have worn out phosphors that can't pump out the
contrast like they used to. Flat panels are always brighter
so just make sure it looks right on your various displays YOU test
them on.

to minimize stuttering:

ALWAYS encode the audio with Dolby .ac3 at 256kbps, any less
doesn't sound quite as nice to me at least, any more is overkill.

Encode your video so that your average or constant bit rate is between 5 and 6.5mbps Never go beyond 7mbps unless your replicating. DVD-R media has almost no error correction and can't handle the full DVD bandwidth potential set top & pc players. Replicated can.

Here endith the lesson. :)