Tattva-viveka
CD quality
Karnamrita Das - January 14, 2005 5:54 pm
Sorry this is not a philosophical question, but a practical one.
I had heard some years back from either Citta-Hari or Vrindaryana Prabhus upon my observation that I could only play Swami's CDs on certain players, that there were only a few complaints. I guess I find it difficult to understand how my wife and I are the only persons who have this problem. I know it may be possible, yet it seems unlikely.
Basically out of 4 CD players, only one has never had a problem---and this is portable Panosonic MP3 player. My larger MP3 player (also Panasonic) and our car CD players have had varing amounts of problems---by problems I mean that the CD's distort sometime in to the lecture, and skip, and sometime freeze at a certain point. For my large MP3 player this is always the case for my others it is sometimes.
I should mention that all my other commercial CD's, mainly kirtana's and music CD's never have a problem on any of my players. I also clean the CD player with the CD cleaners available. So my conclusion has been that either the quality of the CDs or how they are duplicated was the problem. The other possibilities are that my wife and I give up some type of negative vibe that somehow affects our players, that we have bad luck with CD player, or that perhaps the assembled devotees may experience problems, but just don't speak about it. I hope Dayal will forgive me for bringing this to the public forum, but I am rather disappointed by this problem, and more than that, these CDs are one important life line to Swami who gives us so much spiritual nourishment. Undoubtedly there is no perfection in material things, especially with regards to technology. At the same time I am trying to the best of my ability to use what aids are avalable to assist my hearing and chanting.
Help me out here please. I would appreciate the devotees comments if you have had, or continue to have any problems with the CDs. If no one has, then I can just conclude that my problem is due to my sinful life in the past or current, and I just need to accept this. Thank Krsna that at least one CD player I can count on.
dasanudas,
Karnamrita
Nanda-tanuja Dasa - January 14, 2005 9:25 pm
I should mention that all my other commercial CD's, mainly kirtana's and music CD's never have a problem on any of my players.
Commercial CDs are made by CD replication or glass master stamper process. CDs from Audarya made by burning CD-Rs. Some older players (over 7 years) may not be able to read CD-R audio. This problem can occur with any media or player and is typically caused due to the CD reader or player’s read laser or laser’s being unable to read the table of contents or PQ information on the CD. This can result in the CD not playing at all in the player or audio skipping. This is usually not a problem associated with the actual CD-R but in fact, with the laser on the CD player. Older CD players and car systems sometimes have less powerful lasers and can have errors interpreting the coded information on the reflective surface of the disc.
This being said, I had my share of problems with CDs from Audarya which thankfully where replaced by Dayal Govinda in very timely manner. Issues could be related to CD not being "closed" or to recording speed being to fast.
Gauravani Dasa - January 16, 2005 2:00 am
I agree with Nanda-tanuja Prabhu. I have always had trouble with home-burnt CDs not lasting very long, but if they are burnt at a slower speed, that may help. Pressed CDs are always best but that seems too expensive when the market is small.
Bhrigu - January 16, 2005 11:51 am
I haven't had the problem Karnamrita Prabhu has experienced, though I have heard others complain. I think I once had a defective CD previously, but quickly got a replacement. However, there was some kind of problem with the first part of the Shiksastaka 4 lecture amongst this month's CD's. It begun with the "Guru Tattva" Q&A session, and then suddenly shifted to the Shiksastaka lecture. Is it only my CD which is defective, or have others had the same problem?
Dayal Govinda Dasa - January 16, 2005 2:18 pm
Brighu, I made a post about this months CD's in the announcement section. Everyone's Cd's have this problem.
I burnt the master through iTunes and somehow the program switched some parts of the lecture for the Guru tattva lecture I had burnt previously. That taught me for not listening to the master disc!
The replacement CD's will go out monday. Again my apologies.
Dayal Govinda dasa
Vrindaranya Dasi - January 16, 2005 4:20 pm
I thought I'd open this discussion up to DVDs as well, which we're having a lot more trouble with than the CDs. On some machines our DVDs skip or else can't be read at all. We use -R disks by the way.
Here are different ideas:
the DVD players that have trouble are older machines that use +R media
the DVD players that have trouble use -R media, but are still incompatible in some other way due to the player being old (DVD technology is changing quickly)
a DVD created on a Mac is compatible with less machines than one created on a PC
our duplicator is not high quality enough
our DVDs are not high quality enough
Any input appreciated.
Bhrigu - January 16, 2005 4:45 pm
No problem, Dayal Govinda. I somehow missed your earlier announcement. There are so many new postings daily on Tattvaviveka nowadays! 
Vrindavandas - January 17, 2005 1:23 am
I thought I'd open this discussion up to DVDs as well, which we're having a lot more trouble with than the CDs. On some machines our DVDs skip or else can't be read at all. We use -R disks by the way.
The problem has to do with technology moving quickly. Most people have outdated DVD players and can't play the new technology. However, anyone can get a very good dvd player that will play the Audarya dvd's at Circuit City for around $30.
Nanda-tanuja Dasa - January 17, 2005 6:18 am
Once written, single-layer (SL) DVD-R and DVD+R discs closely mimic the optical characteristics of single-layer (SL) prerecorded (pressed) DVDs. Thus, they can be read on the majority of computer DVD-ROM drives and DVD recorders. In addition, DVD-R and DVD+R discs are compatible with most consumer electronics (CE) DVD devices including portable, car and DVD players and recorders. Compatibility continues to evolve so newer devices are generally more able to play written discs. For example, some early DVD video players were released before the DVD-R specifications were completed so they do not recognize DVD-R discs. That being said, DVD-R is the most compatible with stand alone DVD players format. One more thing -- when create master make sure that disk is "closed" and, of course, make sure you choose media that maches your drive's speed.
Vrindaranya Dasi - January 18, 2005 11:55 am
Thanks for all the information.
How do you close a DVD?
If someone can play a -R DVD but it skips, does it mean that the player is -R compatible? Is a problem with skipping most likely the player or the DVD?
Do new professionally created DVDs work with the old players? When someone has trouble with our DVDs they generally point out that other DVDs work with their player.
Ys,
Vrindaranya
NrsinghaDas - January 18, 2005 4:07 pm
I bought a set off dvds from europe (denmark maybe), they were of talks with Srila Sridhar Maharaj. Those didnt work on anything except one x-box (video game machine) out the numerous different x-boxs, play stations, computers,dvd players ect that I tried. But when I loaded the indvidual files onto my computer from the discs they worcked! So I was satisfied with that, if anyone has Audarya dvds that they couldnt watch they can try loading them on to the hard drive of their computer.
Nanda-tanuja Dasa - January 18, 2005 7:37 pm
1. Professionally created = glass master stamper process, so it will work with the old players. Read about the process here http://www.mediatechnics.com/mastering.htm
2. "Close" DVD using burning software means do not leave DVD disc open for additional recording. For example DVD-R has 4.7GB of space, your movie is 2.5GB only, so you have a choice to close DVD so you cannot write anything else to it, or leave it opened, so you can add more data later. Sometimes stand alone DVD players have a hard time with DVDs left "opened".
3. If someone can play DVD-R means that player is a compatible one. You create your master DVD on Mac, I assume when you play it back on Mac it plays OK. When you play master on stand alone player it works fine, you can also check it on the IBM laptop I gave you -- it has DVD player, so say it works fine as well. Now next step, create copy of the master via your DVD duplicator. Play copy DVD on Mac/stand alone player/IBM laptop. If DVD skips it means your duplicator is a problem. Now, what is a problem? My first guess would be that DVD media is not of a good quality or recording speed is wrong. You need to check if there is a firmware upgrade for the duplicator available from the manufacturer website. If DVD does not skip then it's a problem with a particular stand alone player, not with DVD you've created.
Btw, both of your DVDs I've got work fine on my Sony stand alone player.
Vrindaranya Dasi - January 24, 2005 11:39 pm
The DVDs will play on our Macs, stand alone player, and PC, but I don't watch the whole DVD for skipping.
Perhaps I could get several devotees to volunteer to watch the DVDs on different platforms: PC and a couple of stand alone players. If anyone would like to participate, I could send out DVDs and keep track of the results.
It would be good if we could have Karnamrta in the loop because we've already had compatibility problems with his DVD player. By the way, Karnamrta, what is the model and make of your DVD player?
Ys,
Vrindaranya
Vrindaranya Dasi - January 24, 2005 11:49 pm
P.S. Since Guru-nistha has taken over the audio department (as well as doing some of the cooking, cleaning, and cow seva), he will not be able to take on the video, so new videos are regrettably on hold for the time being. It will still be good to iron out the problems with our existing DVD offerings though.
Nanda-tanuja Dasa - January 25, 2005 12:07 am
So who is doing DVD seva now? I’ve sent a CD with pdf book on DVD authoring addressed to Guru-nistha today, just give it to the right person I guess. The book has some useful information. I can participate in the testing, although I already have all of your DVDs (ordered Ratha-yatra 2003 yesterday).
Gauravani Dasa - January 25, 2005 12:58 pm
We have a Plextor PX-708UF that can be hooked to either a PC or Mac (USB/Firewire) that I could use to test. Also a G4 and my laptop plays DVDs as well. Whatever you send to Karnamrta Prabhu I could test as well.
Vrindaranya Dasi - January 25, 2005 5:58 pm
So who is doing DVD seva now? I’ve sent a CD with pdf book on DVD authoring addressed to Guru-nistha today, just give it to the right person I guess. The book has some useful information. I can participate in the testing, although I already have all of your DVDs (ordered Ratha-yatra 2003 yesterday).
No one is doing DVD seva now. We had to suspend new releases.
I'll track how the Ratha-yatra DVDs do on your machine. I'm not sure how the other DVDs you got were produced. They could have been done from my computer or our duplicator.
We have a Plextor PX-708UF that can be hooked to either a PC or Mac (USB/Firewire) that I could use to test. Also a G4 and my laptop plays DVDs as well. Whatever you send to Karnamrta Prabhu I could test as well.
Excellent. I'll send some DVDs today. You'll get to know the lectures really well if you watch them on 3 different platforms. 
Thanks, Nanda-tanuja and Bh. Fred. I think this should be enough testers to get the job done.
Ys,
Vrindaranya
Nanda-tanuja Dasa - January 30, 2005 2:50 am
I would like to confirm that DVDs have issues. Both Ratha-yatra 2003 DVDs are skipping, stuttering, displaying pixilation artifacts, sometimes picture completely disappears although sound keeps going on my stand alone player. My player was able to handle previous DVDs from Audarya just fine which makes me believe that duplicator has an issue or you've recently switched to media of a very poor quality. Is it possible to burn them bypassing duplicator to replace the bad once which I've got? Thanks.
Gauravani Dasa - January 30, 2005 12:24 pm
Same here on a Dell laptop with Windows Media Player.
Also plays very poorly on Mac OS 10.2.8 with VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) on the Plextor.
Vrindaranya Dasi - January 30, 2005 4:15 pm
Bummer. There is no way to burn them from the computer. The files have already been deleted (they are too large to permanently store on the computer).
We have been using new DVDs. I'll try burning a DVD with a higher quality disk and hope for the best. If the problem is the duplicator it would be a major drag.
Gauravani Dasa - January 31, 2005 12:42 pm
What about encoding at a different bitrate? Is it not possible to encode at a lower rate since the files are no longer on the hard drive?
At one point, Ekanatha converted Karnamrta's DVDs to DivX AVI, then burned on a DVD disc. The quality was a little lower, but it played without any skipping.
Nanda-tanuja Prabhu, would this process have effectively changed the bitrate?
Nanda-tanuja Dasa - January 31, 2005 7:18 pm
So essentially what Fred proposing is to rip the master DVD first (assuming that it's of a good quality) to MPEG or AVI file and then re-encode it at different bitrate. I know nothing about Mac so I cannot suggest any software to do that, although I've heard that MacTheRipper is capable of doing that.
With bitrate you have two options:
Constant bitrate (CBR) -- CBR gives much faster compression yet is less efficient, so will usually give you larger file sizes. If your video is rather short (under 30 minutes) then you can use CBR at a high bitrate without worrying about space.
Variable bitrate (VBR) -- this option uses a variable bitrate where more bits are allocated to scenes that need them, while reducing the bitrate for rather simple scenes that do not require many bits. As a result, the compression is much more efficient (no bits are used that aren't needed) and the file sizes are smaller. The disadvantage is that VBR is much slower to encode. This options uses two or more passes. The first pass the encoder goes through the video and calculates how many bits to allocate to each part of the video. No actual encoding is performed during the first pass. The second pass is when the video is actually encoded. VBR is useful for when you are trying to cram a lot of video onto the disc yet you don't want to skimp on the bitrate to fit it all (and you also have a lot of time on your hands).
If you want to make a DVD that is compatible with as many DVD players as possible, a good rule of thumb is to stick to a maximum video bitrate of 7 Mb/s (9.8 Mb/s is the maximum bitrate allowed by a DVD). With VBR, you can set the max bitrate to 7 Mb/s, and the minimum bitrate to 2 Mb/s.
Here is a good article DVD Authoring Or How to Burn a DVD Without Getting Burned you should read:
Gauravani Dasa - February 1, 2005 2:20 am
There is a large directory of Mac software here, some of which is free. 
Vrindaranya Dasi - February 1, 2005 1:31 pm
I know how to change the bitrate and I have the software to do it, but I'll try better quality DVDs first. Since the files are no longer on my hard drive, it is a bit involved to change the bitrate now.
Ys,
Vrindaranya