I decided to make the DVD slideshow video myself in an editor instead of letting the (fantastic and free!) DVD authoring program DVDStyler produce the slideshow for me. I noticed that the thumbnails weren’t loading for some of the pictures, but I figured that’s not a problem because they open up just fine. What’s left? Something About the Picture Files The DVD authoring work I did wasn’t the issue. The DVD burning method and options weren’t the issue. The player itself probably wasn’t the issue. I thought I had tried everything and it would go down as one of those random things I’d never find an answer about…but then, after the customer visited and wanted a status update and was eager to get their player back, I re-visited the problem and put on my “what have I missed?” troubleshooting cap. Re-authoring the DVD also resulted in no change. All of these burning options failed to change anything. Burn speed: no dice (and it shouldn’t be a problem anyway). I ran through a bunch of possibilities and achieved the same failure every time. Did I check a box I shouldn’t have? Did I accidentally set a DVD command that I shouldn’t have? Did I use the wrong burning mode? I always run a verification pass after burning, so the data should be fine…right? What has changed? I tried so many different burn options…and none of them helped This was an exception, and it didn’t make any sense. If a DVD plays at all on the player, it generally plays exactly as it does on the computer. I’d never seen anything like this before. His Blu-ray player, however, would loop after only a few photos. I gave him the media along with a warning that DVD compatibility can be an issue and that if he has any problems, I want to know. The computer seemed to have no problem at all with the DVD media. I created properly authored video-format DVDs out of the JPEG images and they seemed to play OK on the computer, but because there are hundreds of images, I didn’t watch the whole slideshow I only confirmed that the DVD auto-plays and loops properly, and a few photos worked OK. It contained a bunch of JPEG image files that he was trying to use as a slideshow for a person who had passed away, but the DVD player wouldn’t play them properly. The Customer Drops OffĪ gentleman brought a DVD to my doorstep. There are a whole host of pitfalls in the authoring and encoding of the data that actually goes ON those discs, too, which leads us to today’s absurd first-world problem. (If you want a complete overview of DVD recordable formats, Wikipedia has very good summaries.) Suffice it to say that DVD players can be grouchy about certain DVD disc formats, so DVD-R is the only reliable choice…and yet, a small number of players out there won’t even work with that. DVD-RW is notoriously troublesome in non-RW drives, too. The earliest DVD players came before DVD-R media was available and DVD+R media wasn’t officially added to the DVD specification until 2008. DVD player compatibility is always a major concern, but it’s pretty much impossible to burn a DVD that works with all players. I’ve been creating DVDs for a long time, both personally and for Gazing Cat Productions clients, and I’ve pretty much seen it all. I still offer DVDs for sale through the Jody Bruchon DVD shop and Redbox is clearly making enough money to stay in business as well. Every Blu-ray player and disc-based game console can play a DVD, not to mention every computer that comes with a DVD drive (most computers built from about 2008 to 2017 come with a DVD burner), and DVD players for televisions have been sold for well over two decades now, so it’s a very reliable way to hand off videos to people of all levels of technical expertise. The DVD (digital video disc) format has been around since the 1990s, and while Blu-ray ultimately took over when high-definition video became widely supported, the venerable video DVD is still the go-to format of choice for a lot of purposes.
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