Hi everyone. I'm hoping someone can help me solve this mystery. I have an Audiovox PVS69701 car DVD player, and I play mostly burned discs on it. It plays some discs flawlessly with no skips no matter how bumpy the road is, and then some discs play marginally well (with a ton of seeking noise) but skip at the slightest bumps. I'm trying to determine what it likes about the discs that play perfect, and what it doesn't about the discs that skip non-stop. It seems like the Memorex DVD+R 4x burned with 'DVD+r' book-type seem to work perfect. Although I have a Fujifilmdvd-r disc that plays perfect, and one that doesn't play well at all. Others, like Verbatim DVD+R DL (burned with DVD-ROM book-type) don't play well at all either. So it doesn't seem like it's entirely the media to blame. Maybe a setting I'm using to burn, or the burning software itself?? So many variables!
Can anyone help me determine what type of discs and how to burn discs that will always play on this player?? Thanks you SO much in advance!!!
You are right about too many variables--they include the player, the recording software, the medium (and its dye and type), the recording drive, and even the data on the disc. There are no 4X DVD+/-R discs being manufactured. Everything has been 16X for the last five years or so. You will have to experiment with discs; and once you have found a combination that works, stick with it until something changes. That would also include your recording drive.
What is happening in the car is that the player loses track of the last sector it read if the car hits a bump. There is some information in the buffer memory that the player reads until the reading laser can pick up where it left off and start feeding the buffer again. In general, try to record at speeds half of the rated speed of the disc and use compression with lower bit rates (unfortunately, lower video quality) so that the buffer can keep up. You might also try to place some sock absorbant material around the player so that sudden shocks do not immediately jar the pickup head from its track.
Thanks a lot for your reply Joe! Those Memorex discs have an ID of 'RICOHJPN-R01-01' So I guess they're made by Ricoh? If I buy another pack of Memorex DVD+R's, is there any way of knowing if they're Ricoh's too?
It seems like the discs that play the worst are compilations of shows, etc. that I made in NeroVision. Is there a way to analyze those discs to see what's wrong with them? Maybe it's a setting in Nero Vision I need to adjust? Maybe I can fix them and reburn them? They mostly play fine on my home console dvd player.
The discs are manufactured by Ritek for Ricoh with an allowance that Memorex can also purchase them. Memorex purchases discs from Ritek, CMC, Prodisc, and a few others; so it is very difficult to determine who the actual manufacturer is before purchasing them yourself.
I suspect the problem lies more with your player and, perhaps, the recording software. You can use Nero's CD/DVD Speed to see the profile of errors. If the profile of the worst discs is much higher than the profile of the best discs, that may indicate a contribution from the discs and the compatibility with your recording drive. If the best discs have low error profiles and the worst discs have high rates of errors, you have uncovered a big factor; but you still don't know how to make them better. If that is the case, find discs that give consistently low error profiles and transfer the video to them. The playback drive will compensate for some high error rates, and better compatibility will product discs with identical material but lower error rates. Perhaps the Audiovox is choking on high error rates, but that's just a guess.
