Quirks of Sonic MyDVD 5 build 93887

Sonic's MyDVD 5 (build 93887) ("Sonic") is a quirky, veritable pain in

Richard Crowley...

Sonic MyDVD was one of the applications I bought
and discarded early on because I could never get it to
successfully create a single disc.

I ended up with Adobe Encore which has never failed
me even once.

the ass to use.

Benefit from my bitter experiences (and don't waste so many blank DVDs)
by reading these tips first.

First: The DVDs recorded to here were of the "-R" variety. They
recorder is a Sony external dual layer DVD recorder.

PREPARING THE DVD PRESENTATION:
I found it easiest to prepare video clips using Microsoft Movie Maker,
saving clips in WMV format, then having Sonic burn the clips to the
DVD.

For purely photo slideshows, Sonic can handle those pretty well.

One of Sonic's main quirks is that the space shown remaining on the DVD
to be burned isn't accurate. You typically have to start burning when
the DVD shows it's about 75% full. One presentation that consisted
solely of WMV video clips burned successully with 1:08:34 worth of
video on it, and 832.32 MB free space left on the DVD-R disk. But
another presentation at 1:05:14 did not. Presentations containing BOTH
video clips AND photo slide shows seemed to burn to DVD-R with less
free space remaining than presentations containing video clips only.

BURNING THE DVD:
It takes over an hour to transcode the source video onto your hard
drive, and about another hour to write it from there onto the DVD-R --
assuming the process doesn't hang up during the "write" stage. If it
does, it's time to start the recording process all over.

Common cryptic write error messages encountered are: "DVDErr 143365";
"Sense Code (5 2C 00)" and "Command Sequence Error General (DVDErr
338944)." I couldn't find anything in the documentation about what
these codes mean, and others who have had the same question on the
Internet have gotten no answers.

These codes appear to mean that there's too much source video to fit
onto the DVD. You can get around it be deleting some of the source
clips and trying to record again. The problem is, you only get these
error codes after waiting more than an hour for the video to transcode.

If you're burning multiple copies of the same presentation, note: The
first DVD takes the longest (over an hour to transcode the source video
onto your hard drive, and about another hour to write it from there
onto the DVD-R), but subsequent DVDs only take about 8 minutes each. So
burn the presentation to the 1st DVD; the disk will eject when done and
prompt you to load the next blank DVD into the recorder. Load the next
blank DVD into the recorder and close it -- AND BE SURE TO WAIT ABOUT
30 SECONDS BEFORE CLICKING ON THE "RECORD NEXT DVD" BUTTON ON SCREEN
(give the PC time to recognize the new blank DVD).