question regarding region free settings

[neo_74]

Hi there, just wondering when you encode with dvdshrink and set disc to region free how does dvd decrypter know to also burn the file region free or does it automatically burn whatever region the source file is in? Also can anyone tell me what has worked best for them as far as burning discs that are most compatable on numerous players. I usually use shrink/decrypter for typical copying but I have a feeling when others can't play my discs it may be due to the age of there player or the inability to read region free discs? Anyways , thank you for your time.

[jagabo]

The region code is just a flag in the IFO file.

[adam]

DVD Decryptor just burns the data, it does not change any aspect of the source. Region coding is set through a flag in the stream and DVD Shrink sets this. Once this is done you don't have to do anything special in your burning software.

If the disc plays on some but not all players its almost surely related to blank media incompatiblity not anything introduced by your burning software, though it can happen. DVD Decryptor is very good for burning dvd images though so I would assume that it's not the problem.

General playback problems are unrelated to region settings. If you try to play a disc encoded with a region setting other than your player, than an error screen will pop up saying so. If you try to play a region free disc on a player that uses RCE protection than again, you will get an error screen. So unless you or your friends are getting these error messages, region coding is not the problem.

[neo_74]

Thanks for the quick reply. Okay, I had also heard -R was more compatable. Any truth to this? I don't usually have issues with playback as it seems my player will play most anything including pal format which may be the case in some instances were a friend can't play the movie. Would either ISO 9660 or UDF format give a player any reason to reject playing it, or are they designed to read both these days? Also just to confirm if I have a Pal dvd and reburn it region free will playback ever be an issue? Thanks for your help

[adam]

-r discs are indeed more compatible on dvd players than +r discs, moreso on older players though. Also it is possible to bitset DVD+R discs to DVDROM which increases compatibility.

Not sure what you mean about ISO 9660 versus UDF. The former is used for cdroms and the latter is for DVDs. For either format it comes down to whether your DVD player supports that format, whether you have created a compliant disc, and whether your media is compatible with your player. CD media is generally very well supported by DVD players.

Region setting and regional formatting are two separate things. A region free disc will "play" on any DVD player, and by that I mean the region coding protection will not lock playback of the disc. But regardless of region coding, PAL video streams can only be properly played back on PAL equipment. If you have NTSC equipment you need hardware that can convert the PAL DVD to NTSC. PAL folks are luck in that their hardware can play both PAL and NTSC formats.

[neo_74]

Is there any benefit to burning region 1 over region free if playback is in north america, and just to clearify if I use brand name -R discs, set region free I've done everything I can on my end to make the disc playable for others? I really appreciate your help, makes alot of sense now.

[adam]

If the discs are only going to be used in Region 1 than you should set it to region 1 instead of region free. The reason is that some DVDs have RCE protection on them which kicks in on region free modded players.

Yes, using good quality -r media and setting to the proper region is the most you can do to increase compatibility short of getting the discs commercially pressed. Even still, you will get compatibility problems on some players. In this case you should find out what model player it is and look it up in the compatibility chart on this site and find out what media works best on it.