BURNING DVDs - inconstent results

I know all the possible problems BUT...

I produced 3 working (on independent DVD players) in a row...great...thought I
was in hog heaven. Now the next 3 I can ONLY play on my computer (DVD player). I
have been using the TAIYO YUDEN discs...all the research says they are the
best...anyway. Gads this is frustrating...

What could possibly cause the difference...from burning 3 disc in a row that
work to 3 in a row that don't. I am afraid to keep putting more discs in that I
MIGHT not play on a standalone player!!!

BTW, using the 1X speed!

Help...I am starting to loose more hair due to the inconsistency...

THANKS, ;-(

Bill.

Firstly, please check this FAQ carefully.
 <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbe7ec0>

Other things that may cause the roblems can be any or all of the following:
1 - Burner firmware needs updating.
2 - Burner may be on the way out - if you are starting to see write errors, and
getting inconsistent results, this is quite possible as not all burners are as
good as they might be. Personally, I cannot recommend Pioneer highly enough - we
have had extremely consistently high quality from ours.
3 - You may actually be writing too slowly. Odd as this may sound, with modern
High-Speed burners & high speed media, writing too slowly can be every bit
as bad for the disc as writing too fast. If using High Speed burners (up to 16x
etc) with High Speed media, you should not write any slower than 4x as doing so
can cause data errors.
4 - The Set-Top players may need a firmware update, or even throwing away.
Whilst the cheap (and often nasty) Chinese players may try to play anything that
is thrown at them, because production costs are so cheap over there (slave
labour and all that) when problems are discovered in models, the manufacturers
will often just obsolete the player rather than get the bugs in the firmware
fixed. There are still only about 3 places that write player firmware, and they
are not cheap. Manyfacturers like the majors with their high end machines will
fix issues:
Denon, Pioneer Elite, some Sony/Panasonic etc, Onkyo, but nearly all the
cheap/rebranded machines will just be junked.
Other issues with Set-Top players can be that there is actually no requirement
at all for any player to support written media. Most do, but if you check the
user manuals, they will all tell you that the discs must be correctly finalized
etc, and that playback is never actually guaranteed. No matter if you are on +
or - flavours, the reflectivity compared to pressed discs is far lower. Which
brings us to point
5 - Data Rates.
If you are getting freezing, or glitching, then your combined data rates may
well be too high for those players. For maximum compliance, keep total combined
stream rates at UNDER 7000kbps.
6 - Disc layout.
If your "First Play" item is the main movie, or a long movie, then
again certain (cheap) players (and some expensive ones) only have the bare spec
minimum on-board memory installed for the data buffers. I do not know why, but
this can be an issue if the main movie is also the first play item.

This is about all I can say without knowing exactly what problems you are
having.
If you can define "not working" for me, we may be able to help a
little more.

Neil,

Thanks for your thoughtful email. I will read it in depth tomorrow. What drives
me nuts is doing the exact same thing...produced 3 good disc...then doing the
exact same thing the 4th, 5th and 6th time had kaka results. I do know on my
Plextor PX-708UF connected via USB...I was telling it the slowest speed. I know
a couple of time at the high speed it created a bad disc (player said "no
disc")...thanks again...more tomorrow.

Very strange indeed.
I don't know that particular drive personally, but from what I can find out, it
is rated as 8X maximum, so burning at 1X is the correct way to go. A couple of
things to look for:-
Have you checked for a firmware update?

I use both a Plextor & LG IDE burner, and have never had a problem with
discs burned on either. I'd almost bet, that Neil has hit on a possible problem
with the USB bus. Can you borrow a FW burner?

Why your burner would work fine for the first, then fail for the next indicates
that something must have changed. I always end all processes, before burning.
Actually, I end them all (EndItAll2 program), before launching PP, and/or
Encore. When burning, I do not allow any other activity - solely burning.

To Neil,
Thanks for an earlier thread on burning "too slowly." While I have not
yet had any problems, I normally burn at 2x on my 16x burners, but might
experiment with bumping that up to 4x for them, based on your observations. If
they still work fine on client's machines, then I could save a bit of time. I
had never considered burning too slowly, on higher speed burners. So far
(fingers tightly crossed) no problems at 2x with TY discs on my Marantz units,
and on clients' myriad of other set-tops. Thanks for the tip.