stop and resume with authored dvds

[ebina]

I don't know if this should be here or the Playback forum, but here goes.

With almost all commertial DVDs I've played in my standalone player, if you hit stop anywhere in the movie, and then hit play again, it will resume playing from where you left off.
It never does this on any DVD-R I've authored, it always starts playing again at the beginning. This is quite annoying.

I create my movies with Ulead's Visual Studio, and then write them as mpeg2.
(never use smart rendering, it always screws your mpeg2). I author the DVD in DVDit PE.
I write the disc with Prassi.

Is there some option I am unaware of in one of these programs that would enable proper resume
behavior on DVDs I author?

[ebina]

It seems to not be an authoring problem, but a player difference. DVD players that play DVD-R discs seem to have a more limited set of features when playing those disks than when playing DVD-Video discs in the same players.

For example, my Panasonic will not stop and resume on DVD-Rs. A Pioneer player I tried
will stop and resume on DVD-R, but it won't display chapter and time played like it does for DVD-Video discs.

I either buy a new player or live with the inconvenience, and of course there is no way to tell how the new player will perform with DVD-Rs before buying it.

[ebina]

I thought I would update this with my recent solution to my stop/resume problem.

While it is true some players would always stop/resume properly, I discovered that my player will stop/resume if I author a DVD with DVDit PE and make the movie be the First Play. If instead I make a menu be the First Play, and play the movie from that menu, then stop/resume won't work on my player.

Thank goodness for IFOedit. Studying the IFO files I discovered a timing map that DVDit only fills in if the movie is the First Play. So I authored my DVD with DVDit having both the menu and the movie, but with the movie as First Play. Then after DVDit was done, I edited VIDEO_TS.IFO with IFOedit to make the menu be First Play. Now my DVD starts with the menu, and when I play from the menu, stop/resume works fine!.