DVD only works on New DVD Player

[katz1009]

How do I make a copy of this DVD so that it will work on most DVD players?

[guns1inger]

What DVD ?

You have given us absolutely nothing to go with here. What sort of answer do you really expect to get ?

Start again. Give us

1. The movie - source, format etc
2. The guide or process you followed, and any deviations you made along the way.
3. Details of the player it worked with, and the players it didn't

Then, maybe, we can help.

[katz1009]

sorry. i am a first timer if you can't tell. anyway, my buddy gave me a dvd of a new movie. it did not work in my panasonic vcr dvd combo, in my car dvd player but it did work on my Toshiba high end player. I am not sure how to find out the format or source. I copied it to my pc and this is what I see.

METEOR Title 1.mp4 703,436 KB MP4 File

Does this help? If not, could you kindly provide some guidence on how to find additional nessessary information.

Thanks

[RMaddog]

That is not a DVD, and the player would have to support that format before it will play it.

[guns1inger]

It is an mpeg-4 file, which is not within the DVD spec. Some players (obviously yours) will play this, however they have to have a dedicated mpeg4 decoder built in. Does you player have the Divx symbol on it, by chance ?

[katz1009]

It does not have that on my car player. I have burned dvds on my sony dvd burner that have worked in my car. is there anyway that i can convert it? without losing quaility? i have nero.

[guns1inger]

Not with Nero. OK. Let me rephrase that. You can use Nero to convert it, however you will lose quality. The best quality would be to frameserve from avisynth or virtualdub to tmpgenc or CCE or even HC, then author and burn. Keep Nero out of the picture the whole time.
You will have to resize the movie to DVD specs (see my sig for a tool to help you find the correct size), possibly use an unsharp mask to get rid of the softness inherent in resizing up, then encode to the correct bitrate to fit. It's not hard once you've done it a couple of times, and a great learning experience if you want to know what DVD is all about.

Otherwise, you could try VSO DivxtoDVD. The quality should be good, although not as good as doing it all manually. The real advantage it that you don't have to know the ins-and-outs of a duck's arse to do the job.

[katz1009]

sounds great. i will try that. will this be the reason that when i have converted mini dv home vidoe and burned to dvd using nero that the quality sucked? if so, any ideas on that?

[guns1inger]

Nero's encoder isn't the greatest *cough* understatement *cough*

As a general rule, the best results will always be obtained by using the correct tool for the task, and understanding the process. This may mean you need to learn and understand (there is a difference) several tools and processes, but the outcome will quickly become predictable, and you know that at the end of the process you have a good disk.

[katz1009]

thanks.