I've been using DVD Shrink to burn movies for a few months now and it's worked just fine. However in the last few days it's started to make bad DVDs about 2/3 of the time. I've never really messed with many settings or really taken much time to see if I'm doing the process right, but all my previous ones have worked so I assumed they were alright, and I've made over 100.
Anyways the DVDs will go through the whole process fine without any errors but I will start watching them and eventually sometime in the movie the DVD with freeze, being unable to view any parts of the DVD after that moment. I was thinking it could either be my DVDs are going bad or my burner is going bad, any advice would be great.
If your backup freezes, stutters, skips, or has some pixelation, it is more than likely due to poor quality media being used. Cheap media is poorly manufactured around the edge of the disc, hence the reason why it mostly skips or freezes from the middle toward the end of the movie. The two main things to consider first are:
1. Is it cheap media that you are using? (ie. some off brand you bought at a local computer store/fair, even a store like Circuit City or Best Buy sells cheap low quality media.)
2. How fast are you burning? - Burn no faster than 4X, might have to go down to 2X with really cheap media.
Open DVD Shrink. Click "Edit", then "Preferences". On the first tab at the top in the drop down box, change it from "DVD-5 (4.7GB) to "Custom" and enter a number of 4200MB (4464MB is burning to the edge of the disc, you want to stay away from the edge as the edge of cheap media (disc's) are poorly manufactured). Screen Shot Below:
Are you viewing them on the PC,using the DVD-RW drive that burned it to play it,or are you viewing them on a stand alone player when these issues occur?
Usual culprits:
Poor media
Burned too fast
Too much data,burning the outer edge of disc.
Stand alone player may need a good cleaning-last resort before replacing a player.
There can be many more things,but those 4 are the usual culprits.
Spyware/malware/fragmented hd/heat issues/firmware update/low quality burner,etc just to name a few other possibilities.
If those issues are on a stand alone player,which 95% of the time they are, Try viewing one of those problematic backups in your pc using the DVD-RW drive that burned it. View the part/s which give you trouble and see if the pc plays it ok. It usually does.
Also verify those problematic backups in as many stand alones as possible. See how they react to those backups.
Also, What is make and Model # of your DVD-RW drive?
