At work we have a new Sony DVD burner that does the DVD-R, -RW, +R and +RW.
I am trying to make a copy of a family home video for my brothers, but no matter which of the systems I use, it doesn’t work on my (3 year old) cheap DVD player (Venturer Surround Sound System).
The old DVD player plays all the films I rent from the local shops perfectly, but it will not play the home video copies.
Then I realized I have been copying in HQ (1 hour max per disc) and maybe the speed is “too good” for the older model DVD player I have?
Should I try at a slower speed, and if so, what? Thing is, it takes an hour to copy the hour and to be honest, I am getting fed up with making these copies.
So - is the speed the answer, or should I just wait until this DVD player dies and buy a better system next time around?
P.S. As long as I am asking - if I make a copy of a tv show on the DVD burner here in the US, will they be able to play it on a DVD player in Germany? (They have a television that is compatible with US television system, but I don’t know about their DVD).
Is this a stand-alone unit or a drive in your computer?
If you are burning digital video files with your computer, they have to be in very specific formats to play back on standard DVD players. You should be able to convert any video you have to these proper files, but with this kind of thing you have to cross your t’s and dot the i’s.
Also, you should try to bring the DVD’s you have already made to someone else’s house or maybe even Radio Shack or something. There are definetly older DVD players that will refuse to play any kind of homemade DVD.
The quality of the picture on the discs or the speed at which you burned them shouldn’t enter into the equation.
A lot of old players won’t play certain media. If you’re lucky, you it might work with a different type of disc (e.g. DVD-R instead of -RW), or if you’re unlucky, your player might not support any recordable discs.
It is possible to encode video with a bitrate so high (or so low) that it’s outside the DVD specification, but I doubt that’s the problem. Any DVD encoding program that has settings like “HQ” probably knows all about the minimum and maximum DVD bitrates.
Why wait? You can get DVD players for $50 that’ll play almost anything you can fit inside them: -R, -RW, +R, +RW, MP3s, VCDs, MPEG files, and more. www.dvdrhelp.com has a good list that you can search by price and features.
Well, the disc you burn won’t have a region code, so that won’t be a problem. If they have a TV that’ll play NTSC (U.S. format) video, they probably also have a DVD player that’ll work with NTSC discs.
Thanks for all the info! You guys are great, and you saved me another several hours of trying to copy the home video onto DVD that probably won’t work anyway.
By the way, the burner is a stand-alone SONY that cost the company where I work close to $700. Does great copies that play on the newer DVD players, but not on my system at home…which I know is cheap, but the surround sound is great, and it still works and, as Ann Lander used to always say, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke…”
Yes, some DVD players can be an Olympic-sized pain in the ass. My main player (Malata DVP-520) will play any disc you put in it - NTSC DVD, PAL DVD, SVCD, VCD, audio CD, mp3 cd, etc. My (older) Toshiba SD-1600 will *not * play any CD-R or CD-RW discs of ANY kind, but seems to have no problem with NTSC DVD-R discs, but not PAL DVD-R discs.
If the discs you make for home play on other people’s DVD players, then teh problem is obviously your player.
Hold the phone. I thought DVD was digitalformat, which the DVD player converts to analog to send a signal to a TV. Is the encoding on the DVD itself specific to NTSC ro PAL? If so, does that imply that a DVD player can output either NTSC and PAL signals depending on the disc?
Yes, the encoding is specific to PAL or NTSC. PAL is 25 frames per second while NTSC is (usually) 29.97/fps. NTSC also has (I think) 545 lines of resolution compared to PAL’s 625. There are other differences as well.
I don’t think you can put two versions of a “program” on one disc (like you can with PC and Mac software programs, for example).
Uh, before you do anything, there might be a VERY simple fix. What kind of media are you using… if you are trying to burn to dvd+r then it will never play on anything but a computer dvd-rom. Check the media. If that’s your mistake, then just get some dvd-r’s and use them. (in case this isn’t clear, + and - are different. + is for computers only and - is the more versitile.)
DVD-R and DVD-RW
DVD-R/W was the first DVD recording format released that was compatible with standalone DVD Players.
DVD-R is a non-rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 93% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs.
DVD-RW is a rewriteable format and it is compatible with about 77% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs.
DVD-R/W supports single side 4.7 GB* DVDs(called DVD-5) and double side 9.4 GB* DVDs(called DVD-10).
These formats are supported by DVDForum.
DVD+R and DVD+RW
DVD+R/W has some “better” features than DVD-R/W such as lossless linking and both CAV and CLV writing.
DVD+R is a non-rewritable format and it is compatible with about 87% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs.
DVD+RW is a rewritable format and is compatible with about 77% of all DVD Players and most DVD-ROMs.
DVD+R/W supports single side 4.7 GB* DVDs(called DVD-5) and double side 9.4 GB* DVDs(called DVD-10).
These formats are supported by the DVD+RW Alliance.
DVD-RAM
DVD-RAM has the best recording features but it is not compatible with most DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players. Think more of it as a removable hard disk. DVD-RAM is usually used in some DVD Recorders.
This format is supported by DVDForum.
Yes and yes. My cheap DVD player has three modes - NTSC output, PAL output, or automatic selection depending on the disc.
As Rex pointed out, the differences are the frame rate and picture size. PAL discs have a taller picture and lower frame rate. DVD video is digital, so the stream stored on the disc isn’t really NTSC or PAL, but it’s designed to fit either NTSC or PAL televisions.
If you set your player to output NTSC video for a PAL disc, either your player will have to convert 625 line, 25 fps video to 525 line, 29.97 fps video, or your TV will have to cope with a bizarre 625 line, 25 fps NTSC signal. I suspect European TVs are more likely to get it right than American TVs; I don’t have any PAL discs, so I don’t know what would happen if I tried to play one in NTSC mode.
I hadn’t realised that the number jumped to 87%. I know that when I bought mine, and did the research, +r was essentially useless for anything but a dvd-rom on the ole computer. Sorry for the misinformation.
That said, 93 is still higher than 87, so it’s still a viable option, but not so much as I originally thought.