I have downloaded a season (8 episodes) of a tv show and I'm having issue with only a couple of the episodes. They all play perfectly on my PC but once I burn them to DVD and try to play them on the dvd player, three of them skip. It plays about the first second of video and then stops. I even went as far as to buy a new DVD player and on that machine, I can get it to play longer but it skips and in the pieces where it plays, the video and audio are badly out of sync. All other 5 episodes play perfectly. I have tried using all episodes from the same source and then also from different sources and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I have tried both DVD's (Verbatim) and CD's (Officemax) and the problem still occurs. I have used both of these for some time, from the same spindle, with no issue. I did not convert anything; I downloaded the avi's and then, using Nero, burt them directly to DVD / CD as data, which I have always done in the past with no issue. I am using a separate PC with nothing else running while burning. I have used Nero's default writing speed of 48x (the CD's have 52x written on them, the dvd's have nothing) and I have also taken the speed down to the minimum in the list - 16x. I have burnt many cd's and dvd's to this media, using exactly the same process as I'm trying now and have never had this problem before. This issue is really frustrating me so if anyone could please offer some suggestions, I would be most grateful.
Is it always the same episodes that give the problem. Do the disks play ok on the PC. If it's always the same episodes that give the problem, burn one to a cd or dvd and try it. If it still acts up, use GSpot or MediaInfo to look for differences in them (codec used for the video;type of audio;whether the audio is CBR or VBR).
Of the 8 episodes I downloaded, 3 and 5 are the problematic ones. I have initially downloaded all 8 from the same source and burnt to the same DVD. When I noticed the problem, I burnt 3 to a CD but the problem persisted. I then redownloaded it from another source and burnt it to CD but still experienced the same problem. I tried burning it at 16x speed which made no difference. The episodes play perfectly on the PC. I have burnt them all exactly the same method as I have achieved success with in the past. I purchased a new DVD player thinking it was the machine, but still had the same problem with these episodes.
I have used Gspot and found that the video codec of the episodes is XVid. Episode 1 (which works) is DX50 so it could be this XVid codec. The file extension of the episodes is AVI. Is there a way to convert an AVI with XVid codec to an AVI with DX50 codec?
Use the 4CC changer to alter the file header (practice on a copy of the video). Note the use of lower case and upper case. Load the file. Type in dx50 and DX50 in the boxes and save the file. If the file is examined with MediaInfo it will report the codec as DivX5 http://www.divx-digest.com/software/avifourcc.html
All I can suggest is to download the free version of the DivX codec. Install it then load/drag the avi into VirtualDub. Under 'Video' > 'Compression' select the DivX codec then 'File' > 'Save as AVI'. http://www.divx.com/en/products/software/windows/divx http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Virtualdub
I did as suggested above and now the file plays through, however it is audio only; there is no video.
I should add that there being no video only occurs when playing on the DVD player - the PC plays it just fine.
Try the originals on another standalone player and if they work, convert them to DVD format and try again.
I converted and burnt a new copy of a single problematic episode using these instructions: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/avi_to_dvd_avi2dvd.cfm The DVD plays about 2 seconds of audio only with no video and then stops.
