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  1. Hello everyone,

    I had some DVDs sent over from Mexico. When I tried to watch them using my standalone DVD player I got a message about not being able to play that kind of DVD. I put one of those DVDs on my PC DVD drive and I was able to watch it using Nero. When I click on the DVD drive icon and go to properties I can see that the video file is a UDF and that the region code is for Mexico. I have heard that when you burn--copy-- a DVD video the region code is gone and then it will play. I think that first I have to convert from UDF to MPEG and remove the region code so that I can play the DVD on my standalone DVD player. Let me know if my approch is correct and what kind of program can I download--specially if it is a free one--to convert file, remove region code and burn the DVDs. If my approach is not correct please suggest what to do in order to watch those DVDs on my standalone player. I use Nero 9 and Pinnacle Studio .


    Thank you all for your time and suggestions.
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  2. Banned
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    Welcome, but your assumptions are incorrect. UDF is a file system. It's used on DVD format video discs. So what you are seeing sounds normal to me.

    Need more info on these discs. Are they pressed DVDs? Or did someone make them for you? Pressed DVDs will likely be region coded and Mexico is in a different region from the USA. Your standalone player may be complaining about that, but giving us the exact message you see when trying to play them would be helpful here. It is theoretically possible to put region coding on consumer burned DVD discs using the right tools, but it's a lot of trouble to do that. There's no sane reason for it. When I say "pressed DVDs" I mean are they like commercial DVDs sold in the USA rather than burned to burnable DVD discs by a consumer? Ripping a DVD to a computer does indeed remove region coding, but again, it makes no sense to do so but with the right tools it is theoretically possible for consumers to burn region coded DVDs on their own. Let us know the make and model of your DVD player. A few do have "hacks" that can remove region checking. But if you have Sony or Samsung you will not be able to remove the region checking on your player. You can search our DVD Players list to see if a hack exists for your player. Do note that the existence of a hack in no way guarantees that the hack will work for you.
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  3. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    It's burned in UDF mode. It's not any video file. Don't you see any files or folders? If you are running windows xp you might have to install a UDF Reader.
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  4. The DVDs are DVD-R, not the originals that you buy with a TV series, so my friend burned them. I have two DVD standalone players; one is a Panasonic DMR-E55 and the other is a Sangung . When I put the DVD-R from Mexico on the Samsung this is what I get: "The disk cannot be played, check the TV system". On the Panasonic I get: "Cannot Play". I have searched the internet about those UDF files but I'm confused because there are many video formats out there and what I'd like to know is if a standalone DVD player can play this kind of files as long as the region code matches the one set up for the DVD player. Could it be that, if that is the case, the reason why I can't watch those DVDs is because of the different region code?. If that is so, how can I reburn them and get rid of the region code that keeps my DVDs from being played. If the problem is both the UDF files and the region code, what program should I use to reburn them in order to play them on any of my DVD standalone players. What video format should I record them with?.

    Thank you again for your time and consideration.
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  5. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Did you read our answers? Try install the UDF Reader and then see if you see any files when you browse the dvdr.
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    1) If the DVDs are region coded for Mexico then when you try to play them on a PC you should get a warning message about that asking you to change the region on your DVD drive, If the DVDs just play on a PC with no warning message about region codes then you are fine with this issue. You will need some kind of DVD playing software to test this. I'd recommend Windows Media Player. WMP sucks big time but if there are region coding issues it will bitch for sure about them. If you get no complaints, then you don't have region coding issues. Note that VLC does NOT check region codes so testing playback with VLC is not useful here.
    2) Install GSpot on a PC and open a VOB file from the VIDEO_TS directory on the DVD disc and see if you have PAL or NTSC video. I suspect that you actually have PAL video and this is the real problem. Mexico does not use PAL video so it raises an interesting question as to why you are being sent PAL format DVDs from an NTSC country.

    Once you take care of those 2 things we can figure out where to proceed next.
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    Originally Posted by Baldrick View Post
    Did you read our answers? Try install the UDF Reader and then see if you see any files when you browse the dvdr.
    Not a bad suggestion, but since DVD is supposed to be something like UDF 1.50 any Windows from XP on should already be able to read that without installing this program. However the original poster will not hurt anything to install it. I just suspect he's got PAL video and that's the real problem here for his players.
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    DVD-Video uses micro-UDF, a subset of UDF v1.02 (the oldest version available). So should be readable by ANY Win2k or Newer machine, like what jman98 said.

    I suggest you get a copy of ISOBuster, then take a screenshot and post it here, so we can see what you REALLY have, instead of what your UNDERSTANDING of what you have is (no offense).

    Also, would be good to use NOT WMP as a DVD player software, but a true, commercial player software like WinDVD or PowerDVD. So how that plays.

    Also, do an ISO and File mode read with DVD Decrypter (not for the decryption, but for the info) and post those screenshots.

    Scott
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    Originally Posted by Axissally View Post
    Hello everyone,

    I had some DVDs sent over from Mexico. When I tried to watch them using my standalone DVD player I got a message about not being able to play that kind of DVD. I put one of those DVDs on my PC DVD drive and I was able to watch it using Nero. When I click on the DVD drive icon and go to properties I can see that the video file is a UDF and that the region code is for Mexico. I have heard that when you burn--copy-- a DVD video the region code is gone and then it will play. I think that first I have to convert from UDF to MPEG and remove the region code so that I can play the DVD on my standalone DVD player. Let me know if my approch is correct and what kind of program can I download--specially if it is a free one--to convert file, remove region code and burn the DVDs. If my approach is not correct please suggest what to do in order to watch those DVDs on my standalone player. I use Nero 9 and Pinnacle Studio .


    Thank you all for your time and suggestions.
    UDF stands for Universal Disk Format. It is a file system used for data storage on DVDs and CDs, not a video format. Any kind of data may be stored on a UDF-formatted disc, just like any kind of data can be stored on a computer hard drive.

    If you cannot see any files or folders on the disc using Windows Explorer, then possibly the disc was not finalized to enable playback on a standard DVD player. I have seen reports indicating that Nero can sometimes play unfinalized DVDs. Mexico is an NTSC country like the US, so unless the video originated in another country that uses the PAL system, PAL video is unlikely to be the reason that your DVDs are unplayable.

    Trying to finalize an unfinalized disc that you did not create often doesn't work and may destroy the data on the disc. It is safer to try to recover the video instead. I use ISOBuster for recovering video from unfinalized DVDs, but there is another method that works for some people.

    Supposedly Nero Recode can recover video files from an unfinaized DVD and save them on your hard drive. You can then use the recovered files to burn a new DVD that will play on most DVD players. I don't have Nero, so I copied the steps below from another website. These are for Nero 10, but perhaps Nero 9 is similar.

    1. Open “Nero Recode.”

    2. Select “Recode an entire DVD to DVD.” Make sure the “DVD Video Files” or “Data Files” button is selected correctly for your DVD and the “Fit to Target” button is checked and showing 4.7gig.

    3. Select “Import DVD.” Recode will now read the contents of the disc and, if it can, write the contents to a folder it will automatically create in My Documents called “Recode.”

    4. Navigate to your “My Documents” folder and you will find the newly created folder called “Recode.” Inside that folder you will find the normal ifo, bup and vob files normally seen in a DVD video folder or your DVD data files.

    5. Rename the “Recode” folder to VIDEO_TS exactly as I have typed it if the original unfinalized DVD was a video DVD.

    6. The VIDEO_TS folder can also be used to burn a new copy of your DVD on blank media.

    Most here at VideoHelp prefer to use ImgBurn (it is free) for the last step. Although Nero can burn a DVD that will play on most DVD players, the discs it produces are a little off spec.
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  10. If it's UDF 2.50, the OP does need UDFReader for the XP Pro computer listed in the OP's computer details.

    Could be DVD-Video burned incorrectly, maybe even AVCHD, but surely the person who made it would know that AVCHD won't play on a DVD standalone.
    Pull! Bang! Darn!
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  11. After investigating further I found that the original TV series on the DVDs are from Spain. That country uses PAL and that's the reason why my standalone DVDs won't play them. I need a preferably free PAL to NTSC program to convert all of them. What do you recommend?.

    Thank you all for sharing your knowledge
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    Originally Posted by Axissally View Post
    After investigating further I found that the original TV series on the DVDs are from Spain. That country uses PAL and that's the reason why my standalone DVDs won't play them. I need a preferably free PAL to NTSC program to convert all of them. What do you recommend?.

    Thank you all for sharing your knowledge
    This has come up many, many, times and the answer is always the same. Get one of the inexpensive DVD players made by Philips that includes the ability to play PAL discs and convert the output to NTSC, or watch the discs on a PC.

    Converting PAL video to NTSC is not an easy task and certainly not a job I'd recommend to a novice.
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