Hello, I have had some big issues reburning LOTR2 (SNEW Digital Production-version) DVD on DVD-R and DVD-RW.

The difficulty in finding what was the cause, was that the DVD-R(W), would work for some people and yet the same disc wouldn't play at other friends. E.g. at a Lenco-02 it would freeze at the last chapter, but not on a Daytek 707 and a Panasonic standalone player of another friend. Also it worked ok with PowerDVD or WinDvd on a PC.

Having 2 Pioneer DVR-103 and a friend with a Pioneer DVR-105 we started testing on diffirent computers and with diffirent media for burn testing LOTR2 (movie only!, due to the Vob5 not being read 100%, this was in ALL the LOTR2 SNEW orignals I have (3x)!)
Beware: we only used Pioneer DVD-R burners, but this may apply to other brand DVD+/-RW burners/media too!

We did use:

A. Princo DVD-R (2x speed)
B. Princo DVD-RW (1x speed)
C. Nashua DVD-RW (1x speed)
D. Verbatim DVD-RW (1x speed)
E. Pioneer DVD-RW (2x peed)

But all DVDs froze at the last chapter! (It didn't matter if you skip, wind forward or goto to a specific time)

Somewhere on google someone mentioned that the outer-part of some DVD-media had difficulty being read by some standalone DVD-players.

From there on I started transcoding the movie with DVD2One in steps from 50MB startig at 4100MB.

I discovered that when I stayed BELOW the 4300MB with a DVD-RW (DVD-R may have another threshold), it would play fine. Transcoding with DVD2One with a target-size of 4350MB and UP would let the DVD-RW freeze at the last chapter.

The same happened when I made a backup (movie only) of LOTR 1, with a DVD2One 4300MB target-size. It played ok. Using a bigger target-size would let it freeze at the last chapter or the one before (depending on the size you choose!)

With some Full Backups I have made, the movie plays 100% flawlessly, HOWEVER I have checked the VIDEO_TS folder which seems to be 4300MB or less. Leaving all the extras to take the rest of the space. So if you have full copies of DVDs you may encounter (freezing) problems in the extras or special features. (I did not check al special features of all DVDs yet!)

For people who want to know the threshold I found:

4300MB (DVD2One) == Folder property: 4.10 GB (4,411,807,744 bytes), so check the size of your VIDEO_TS folder to be 4.10 GB or less before burning.

Please let me know your experiences with the above or tell me if you have better result with some brand of DVD-R(W).
I am happy to buy other brand of DVDs to be able to burn to the max!

CU arround, Jem.

Not sure it relates, but what firmware for Pioneers?
And burning program?

Yes, I had the same problem with Pioneer DVR-105 before.

Now, I'm using DVD-R Ritek G03 with 4375 MB Total size (I tried 4400 but it freeze at the end) and it works perfectly.

And No, it has nothing to do with Firmware ( I have upgraded twice to the lastest Firmware but same thing happend)

I think it might be the media problem, becasue I have tried Shop4tech brand DVD-R before and I only got 4325 MB working (above that size with freeze at the end).

jemboy,

i have the freezzing problems some times even though i always use 4200 as a size. but only on my dvd-rws that have been re burned many times. i used to have freezing on dvd-rs but not since i went down to 4200. it seems that rw media is very delicate,the slightest fingerprints can cause feezing and light scratches can ruin a disc.

I discovered this some while ago and these days only use Ritek dvd-r disks, as these are more reliable, when burning and are more compatible with a wide range of standalone players. I cant speak for dvd-rw's.

I always use 4444mb as the output size in Dvd2one and have never had a problem, using Riteks.

My understanding is that DVD drives (Readers & writers) have to spin faster to read/write to the extremities of the disk and it is during this process, that many cheap media brands fall down. Also the drive itself, is being pushed to it's limits, so there are 2 possibilities for error.

I hope this helps.

I always compress to 4250 MB & it works even on cheap media