Do home video dvd's have regions?

[thinger62]

I'm making a home video with a digital camcorder and burning it to dvd to send to family in Africa. I don't think home made dvd's have regions, but I'm not sure about that. Will they be able to view it on their dvd player? If not, is there anything I can do in the authoring/burning (or even recopying) phase to make it region free? I have tmpenc, moviefactory, dvddecrypter, shrink and several other utilities at my disposal. Thanks for any advice...

[minoguestar]

No they dont it will be region free. The only 2 differnces you can have are PAL and NTSC, seeing asits not refgion coded most or about 95% of dvd players will play both!

[samijubal]

It depends on where you are on players doing PAL/NTSC both. In the US some do, most don't.

[adam]

Region coding is just a flag you set on the disc. All the software you listed should have the flag disabled by default. But as mentioned, regional formatting is another issue entirely. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of PAL equipment (tvs and dvd players) can play both PAL and NTSC, while the vast majority of NTSC equipment can play only NTSC. (NTSC tv's can only play NTSC but some players can convert PAL to NTSC.)

Luckily for you most of Africa uses PAL. So they probably shouldn't have any problem playing your discs, at least as far as region coding and regional formatting issues are concerned. Some countries do use Secam though. I'm not sure what will happen there. What country are they in?

[thinger62]

La Republique Gabonese, or Gabon... and thanks everybody, I'd forgotten about the Pal thing.

[edDV]

La Republique Gabonese, or Gabon... and thanks everybody, I'd forgotten about the Pal thing.

La Republique Gabonese uses French SECAM.

DVD authoring is identical for watching in PAL or SECAM. Follow PAL standards. The difference will be in the DVD player and TV if SECAM is the only input option for the TV. A component DVD player connection is idential for PAL and SECAM but you need a TV that can be hooked up in components. That should not be assumed for Gabon.

So encode and author the DVD as if it were PAL an hope they can play it.

If you can talk to the person with the player and TV, ask if they can play NTSC there. Otherwise assume a PAL DVD played on a PAL/SECAM DVD Player.

[thinger62]

So I will convert the avi with tmpg using the pal/secam 4:3 setting, then author with my moviefactory using the pal setting (version 2 only does ntsc, but I also have version 4 which allows a choice), correct? Then hope they can play it....

One last question: Would it make any difference if they were to watch this on a pc with a dvd rom? Does that sidestep the Pal/Secam issue or no?

[adam]

One last question: Would it make any difference if they were to watch this on a pc with a dvd rom? Does that sidestep the Pal/Secam issue or no?

Yup, that would work.

[guns1inger]

PC has no format, so yes, it does by-pass the problem - so long as they only play it on a PC.

[thinger62]

Wonderful, you guys are fast and agree....Thanks a lot for all the help!