Not sure if this is the right forum, but I successfully (well sort of) copied my first DVD the other day and went to play it in my Pioneer DV414 and noticed some pixelation. Since I was just kind of learning the ropes, I burned it onto a Fuji +RW rather than just an R. Originally I thought that I’d been told my old Pioneer probably wouldn’t even be able to play it, so I was pleasantly surprised it did. But now I’m wondering why I have the pixelation, is it really just my older DVD player, or could it be the media? I’ve also got some Imation +Rs, should I give one of those a try or is it possible I just did something wrong during the decrypt/burning process? I used DVDShrink and basically just took the movie (Pirates of the Caribbean) with the DD 5.1 soundtrack to try and get the lowest compression ratio. Then I burned it using Nero 6.3.0.3 onto the Fuji DVD using the DVD-Video method. Any suggestions on what I can try to get rid of the pixelation? I’d really like to get a “clean” looking copy before I move onto non-rewritable blanks. Thanks

by "pixelation," do u mean that the image is covered in squares? if so, i'm guessing macroblocking is to blame, where the bitrate is dropped too low to sufficiently render the image, which isn't uncommon on very long movies, like Pirates.

No, not covered with squares, its more like certain parts of the picture start to look a little "broken" up the picture stutters slightly. But you can still see the picture, just parts of it are degraded. Does that make any sense?

try playing the RW on ur pc and see if u see the same artifacting. if u do, it's something inherent within the movie, possibly added during compression. if u don't, it has something to do with the interaction between the dvd player and the disc itself, possibly as a result of the dvd player having problems reading the disc, in which case i'd try burning it onto a dvd+r and see if that works properly in the dvd player. u can look up ur player's capabilities at dvdrhelp.

Hmmm..interesting Bubernak. I would add that "Pirates Of The Carribbean" although a great film was not as faithfully transferred to DVD as it could have been. There have been many reviews of Pirates DVD by many knowledgeable videophiles and the nutshell of those reviews is that Pirates could have been done much better. Pirates is 2.5 hours long all by itself and after you add menus and no less than three DD5.1 soundtracks one of which is a DTS mix ...well the DVD already has some compression noise before we even consider compressing it to fit on a single DVD R disc. Overall Pirates is a very dark film with lots of fog and mist at times in the background. Many reviewers have noted this and also noted the compression noise readily apparent as a result of cramming 10 pounds of poop into a five pound bag. Perhaps this is why you are seeing what you see. If we start with a true reference quality original and compress it to a degree than the resultant product still looks very good if not still excellent. If we take an original DVD that is reported to already have what is reported by professional DVD reviewers to be somewhat subpar or below an expected quality the result is only more compression artifacts in our further compressed backup. I also backed up Pirates and although I consider my copy to be watchable I would by no means consider it to be great. Your Pioneer 414 is also a relatively old model player and its even possible it has a problem with DVD- RW. Even now some new players have problems with specific movies as far as pixelation. I have owned no less than five different DVD players in the last four years and I have found that one or more of them had a problem with pixelation on for instance "Saving Private Ryan" in some chapters while another player would have no problems with it. Lately I check the reviews on DVD quality as far as image, artifacts, edge enhancement et al and if the movie I want already has issues I dont bother to try to compress it further I simply live with the original as I realize it is the best I am going to get ...either that or I split the film to two discs to negate any further compression at all.

Thanks for all the inputs. I have tried playing it on my PC and it seems to play seemlessly, so I'm guessing its not the media as much as it is my older DVD player. By the way, I looked in my DV-414 manual to see what type of media it does handle and couldn't find anything. Could anyone that has a 414 tell me what type of media they have had success with? I do have to +R blanks, but they probably won't be any better, maybe I'll try some -R's. The only thing that still doesn't make sense is that if its truely the 414 not being able to handle the +RW media, why would it play it at all? I would have just expected a blue screen or something.

according to dvdrhelp, the DV-414 is capable of playing all recordable formats, so it looks like the problem is with disc quality.