It’s always something

Posted on January 6, 2004 by Gene

Well, as mentioned many times before, I recently finished my first professional DVD project. Today, I received a copy in the mail, all silkscreened and shrinkwrapped. I put it in the player and… horror! A data glitch of some kind!
I deliberately zipped forward to the place where I calculated the layer break to be. I expected some kind of pause, as most dual-layer DVDs have. What I got instead was a broken up picture, freezing, and–on two different players–refusal to play the disc.
I’m terrified that this is because of the layer break, but thousands and thousands of discs have dual layers and no such trouble. I know it’s not my data, because I went back and checked it. Then I looked closer at the disc.
There’s a small indentation just inside the outer rim of the disc, extending about 1/4 of the way around. It looks like the disc wasn’t quite seated properly when it was pressed, leaving a seam, or mis-pressing… like a double-struck penny. If the glitch is near the layer break, that would put it right about where this indentation is… and it would explain the problem. Oh, please… let that be it! And let this be the only one with the problem!! Although, what are the odds that out of 1000 DVDs, the one with the glitch would go to the producer?