IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

Hello to you all.I have given this a different heading as I wanted to take
things off at a tangent, but I still wanted to link to a previous posting.
So here goes.

On his UNICA posting, Dave mentions a Korean film on DVD which would not
play it`s subtitles. I agree with his view that this sounds bizarre, but
do not fully comprehend all the technicalities of the system. As commercial
DVDs have their subtitles hidden away somewhere on the disc, should you
need
them, then I suppose it is feasable that a disc intended for another TV
system,
may not be able to access all the data. It seems all DVD players/ recorders
and discs are not the same and this may explain why this was the case. But
then, that`s probably being far too logical.Perhaps someone with more technical
knowledge can explain it?

DVD compatibility seems to be a big problem for me now, as I seem to be
making
discs to send all over the UK. People in the IAC are asking for copies of
my films and DVD seems to be an easy solution. Of course, Mini DV is the
much preferred option, but as my Sony DVD recorder can copy a disc at high
speed, it is much faster doing it this way.
I also make wedding DVDs and here again, (I have discovered) not everone
can play all discs. Minus R (-R) seems to be the generally favoured format
and I would guess that most people can play these without problems.
A few DVD players seem to handle Plus R (+R) discs better and a very few
don`t like either much. The problems seem to be pausing/ freezing, skipping
and returning to the start. For my own purposes (being logical again) I
have
just bought a Sony DVD player from Argos. As the recorder is a Sony machine,
I bought a Sony player (for only £69.99.)
This seems to play recordable discs perfectly. Three cheers for Sony, but
what about everyone else?
After the VHS Vs Betamax issue in the 70s, why didn`t manufacturers get
their
act together this time and sort out a single format? Could it be commercial
gain for the "winner"? How cynical of me. But it is a real pain not knowing
which disc to send to people.
What do readers think?

On a slightly different note: .......................Bong!

A couple more entries arrived today for our FICTION film competition. It
baffles me sometimes whether people ever bother to read anything properly.
Surely a FICTION film competition speaks for itself? A competition for FICTION
films. Nothing against non-fiction (I have made some myself) but this is
an idea to promote FICTION films.
Why then have I had one entry sent (on DVD) which from the synopsis seems
to clearly indicate that this is a documentary? Aaarrrgghh.

Ken.

P.S. Thanks to those of you on this site who have sent a film in to us.

First I want to apologise if all Ken's post is appearing again in its entirety.
Can someone please tell me what to do in order for this not to happen.

to fix a High Def. DVD format. Blu-Tooth will probably win this one. I
can confirm that the slightly older expensive players are more likely to
give trouble with home burnt discs than the cheapest player from Asda, odd
that.

For this year's AMPS Festival we had a mixture of NTSC and PAL DVDs. All
the
NTSC DVDs played perfectly in our $36 CyberHome 300 DVD player. This cheap
DVD player actually transcodes to NTSC from PAL and we found that some of
the PAL entries played and transcoded and others did not. For example, "Forgotten
Hero", "Melissa", ""225" played and transcoded perfectly, "One day at a
time"
suffered minor sound glitches at some of the transitions, Paul Chater's
"A
Quiet Country Lane" froze several times. It would be interesting to know
if the success in playing or not is related to the MPEG2 transcoding software
rather than the players. We were completely in p[laying out the PAL winners
to a DSR11 from the CyberHome and making miniDV copies for the compilation,

Ned C

"Ned C" <ned@ampsvideo.com> wrote:

For this year's AMPS Festival we had a mixture of NTSC and PAL DVDs. All
the
NTSC DVDs played perfectly in our $36 CyberHome 300 DVD player. This cheap
DVD player actually transcodes to NTSC from PAL and we found that some
of
the PAL entries played and transcoded and others did not. For example,
"Forgotten
Hero", "Melissa", ""225" played and transcoded perfectly, "One day at a
time"
suffered minor sound glitches at some of the transitions, Paul Chater's
"A
Quiet Country Lane" froze several times. It would be interesting to know
if the success in playing or not is related to the MPEG2 transcoding software
rather than the players. We were completely in p[laying out the PAL winners
to a DSR11 from the CyberHome and making miniDV copies for the compilation,

Ned C

What about Japan? Is there a different system again there?
Peter C.

The PAL DVDs are variable,
is it the media used? the method of transcoding to MPEG2? something to do
with the original DV? There appears to be some variable that our Cyberhome
DVD player does not like,

"Ned C" <ned@ampsvideo.com> wrote:

For this year's AMPS Festival we had a mixture of NTSC and PAL DVDs. All
the
NTSC DVDs played perfectly in our $36 CyberHome 300 DVD player. This cheap
DVD player actually transcodes to NTSC from PAL and we found that some
of
the PAL entries played and transcoded and others did not. For example,
"Forgotten
Hero", "Melissa", ""225" played and transcoded perfectly, "One day at a
time"
suffered minor sound glitches at some of the transitions, Paul Chater's
"A
Quiet Country Lane" froze several times. It would be interesting to know
if the success in playing or not is related to the MPEG2 transcoding software
rather than the players. We were completely in p[laying out the PAL winners
to a DSR11 from the CyberHome and making miniDV copies for the compilation,

Ned C

What about Japan? Is there a different system again there?
Peter C.