Region codes?

[vikruti]

I had converted a VCD movie that was in PAL to a DVD using ffmpegx and burned using sizzle on DVD-R using Apple Superdrive. Everything looks fine, plays fine on my G4 Mac. But, when I tried to play it on my Sony DVD player to watch it on my TV (NTSC), the player rejected the disk with an error message that essentially says, improper region code. I read on these forums that DVD burned on computers are free of region code. Is there some setting in the ffmpegx that I should change when I convert a PAL-VCD to a DVD. The VCD was a commercial product that I purchased. I converted the VCD to an mpg file using isobuster on a PC. The mpg file plays fine with with QT. The DVD player connected to my TV is supposed to accept all DVDs (i.e. DVD-R, DVD+R, etc.).

[major]

The region code is set at the authoring step, so you should check at Sizzle level.

[thoughton]

I don't understand how your DVD ended up with a region code (very strange, are you sure this is a region problem and not a PAL/NTSC problem) but you could use MacTheRipper to rip your DVD-R (which should remove the region code).

[vikruti]

Sorry for this late response.

I burned the DVD with Sizzle using the .m2v and .ac3 files created by ffmpegx (after setting the chapters). The only choice I can make in the Title screen is "PAL" or "NTSC". First, I burned the DVD with "PAL" setting because the original movie was in PAL. When this didn't work on my stand-alone DVD player, I burned another DVD with "NTSC" setting. This disk also failed to play on the stand-alone DVD player. The error message essentially says that it is a region code violation. The DVD player manual says it can play both region 1 and "all" coded DVDs. Both disks played fine on my Mac fine with the DVDplayer (OSx). I am really puzzled by this. The VCDs that I used to make the DVD play fine on the stand-alone DVD player.

Could the problem be due to the PAL settings in ffmpegx? I didn't change them because the original was in PAL and the site recommendation was not to change it.

Is there anything I am doing wrong in Sizzle (or ffmpegx) settings that is the source of this problem?

Any help is appreciated.

[thoughton]

If your VCD worked on the same player it doesn't seem like a PAL/NTSC problem. Two questions:

Fire up MacTheRipper and stick in the DVD you've burnt. Does it have a region code? (What number is next to DISK RPC)

I wasn't aware that Sizzle could set region codes. What version of Sizzle did you use?

[vikruti]

I don't have the actual DVD with me now but the mounted disk image (from the .dmg file created by Sizzle) shows the Disc Rpc: 0 and Disc Rce: -CLEAR-.

The Sizzle version is 0.5 (v0.5.0b1)

Thanks in advance for your help.

[thoughton]

Hmmm...

As you can see for yourself, your disc has no region coding. So either your DVD player is screwed or something is wrong with your disc causing it not to play and your DVD player stupidly thinks it's due to region coding.

I think you should try again with a different version of Sizzle. The first 0.5 version had serious bugs. Use either 0.1 (tried and trusted, but cannot create menus) or the latest 0.5 (I've hardly used this version, but the newest B version SEEMS to pretty much work properly, I think it is 0.5b2, you need to upgrade your version)

Could you also elaborate on exactly what your DVD says when you insert the disc. You previously said "error message essentially says that it is a region code violation". Please skip out the essentially stuff and give us the exact message

[vikruti]

Well, here it is:

"Playback prohibited by area limitations"

This is exactly the same message I got from the two DVDs I burned with Sizzle (one selecting NTSC and the other PAL setting in Sizzle).

[Case]

"Playback prohibited by area limitations"

That is a known error when playing PAL discs on NTSC-only (Sony) players.

[vikruti]

Hmmmm......

The player didn't have a problem with the original VCDs (these were in PAL format) from which this DVD was created using ffmpegx and Sizzle. Obviously, there is something I am doing wrong here. Let me outline the procedure here and see if the knowledgeable people have good advise for me:

1. The movie was originally on two VCDs. The video/audio file was extracted with the aid of Isobuster into .mpg files.
2. The .mpg files were joined using ffmpegx to one .mpg file. The info on this file is as follows:

VIDEO: mpeg-1, size: 352x288, 25.000 fps, 1120 kbps. AUDIO: mp2, 44100Hz, 224 kbps.

3. I converted this to mpeg2 with the following setting in ffmpegx:

[img]http://www.videohelp.com/forum/images/guides/p965449/settings.jpg

4. The resultant .m2v and .mp2 files were used in Sizzle to create chapters and finally the disk image. The disk image was created by choosing NTSC and PAL for Video system in Sizzle. Burned a DVD from each image using Diskcopy and the Apple Superdrive on my G4 Mac.

5. Both disks gave the same error when played on the stand-alone Sony DVD player but didn't have any problem on my Mac DVD player.

6. When checked with MacTheRipper, the Disc RPC is 0 and the Disc RCE is -CLEAR-

The ffmpegx I used is still the trial version. I was going to pay for it if I can do atleast one successful burn.

[thoughton]

Still not sure where your error comes from, but just so you know: merely changing PAL/NTSC in Sizzle will not make your disc PAL or NTSC compliant. To do that you also have to change the framerate and the frame size to the appropriate settings.