Hopefully not a dumb question re: DVD-R from a newbie...

[MadMaz]

Hey guys, my name is Mark and I'm a newbie. There is so much information on this site I don't know where to look! Could anybody please explain to me why my home movies (recorded on a Hitachi DVD camera) and then burnt with Sonic MyDVD (which came with the camera) wont play on all DVD players? My DVD player is DVD-R compatible but my in-laws on the other side of the planet isn't. I'd like to send them DVD's of my newborn sons first steps etc. but they can't see it. The reason I'm confused is that why can Joe Blow go to the local market and buy pirated DVD's that play on any player and my home DVD's wont. What am I doing wrong? Are the pirates using different DVD's? Do they have different burning software? Do they have different DVD burners to me? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Bob W]

The movie files from your camera need to be converted to "DVD compliant) files then put into a "VIDEO_TS" folder then that folder is burned to DVDR. Do that and they will play on your DVD player. Sonic MyDVD should be able to do this however I have never had any luck using that program. There are some free programs in the tools section of this site that will convert or author the camera files ( DVD Santa comes to mind).

[Epicurus8a]

MadMaz,

Don't give up! I too had poor luck with Sonic MyDVD. Try TMPGEnc DVD Author. You might also like to try DVD Lab and the various Ulead software.

For whatever reason, some players simply don't like discs authored by certain software. No matter what you do though, there is no program/disc that is 100% compatible with every existing player. (ASIDE) Be sure to use JAPANESE made discs, Taiyo-Yuden if possible. Also, be sure you burn at least 1 Gb of information to your DVDs. Some drives don't like discs with less than 1Gb of "stuff" even if that "stuff" is mostly just filler. PM me if you need me to be more specific.

Epicurus

[sanjayk]

Does your camera record directly on a DVD disk ? As you say its a DVD camera. Are you able to play this disk in your DVD player ?

If you are transfering from camera to PC then you need to check whether the file is DVD compliant or not. if not, you may need to convert to a DVD compliant file. Use a different Authoring tool lilke TMPGEnc DVD Author or DVDLab Pro. Excellent guides are available on this forum.

[trhouse]

Perhaps this will help.

http://www.vintagevideoproduction.com/HTML/DVDcompatability.htm

[lumis]

where is "the other side of the planet"? i see you're from australia, so most likely you're recording in PAL format.

if your in-laws live in NTSC land, then that may be while they're unable to watch the movie. mind you some NTSC dvd players will play the disc just fine, some will play it with a rolling black & white screen, and some wont play it at all.

if you're sure your discs are fully compliant with the dvd specification the only other thing i could suggest would be to tell your in-laws to purchase a multisystem dvd player. they're pretty plentiful and can be found for a good price. i suggest the pioneer dv-270 (aka dv-271 & dv-275). they're $60 at wal-mart (and walmart.com)..

all the the information i'm providing is based upon the assumption that you're sending them PAL dvd's and their dvd player is NTSC.