DVD movie i made wont play in others' DVD players?

[shellyky]

i purchased a miniDV camcorder to be able to transfer my movies onto CD....originally i thought this could be done with just a CD burner, but it turned out to suck.....purchased a DVD+R/RW (what does the + or - mean?? whats the difference in burners?) ....burned my movies onto the dvd's and they look great! burned off 3 copies to mail to my parents...parents said they wouldnt play in their DVD player....so they tried it in my sisters DVD....also didnt work. I tested them before i mailed them out and they played fine.

is this a problem with their DVD players or are the DVD's i bought not playable in all DVD's?? they are VERBATIM brand.

let me know what any causes could be Thanks so much! you guys rock

[setarip]

"is this a problem with their DVD players or are the DVD's i bought not playable in all DVD's?"


1) Some standalone players won't play ANY format of BURNED DVDs - only commercial DVDs

2) Some standalone players won't play DVD+R format of BURNED DVDs - only DVD-R

3) Some standalone players won't play DVD-R format of BURNED DVDs - only DVD+R

4) Many standalone DVD players are "finicky" about what brands of burnable DVDs they will recognize

For information about the capabilities/limitations of the specific makes/models of standalone players that you're dealing with, go to:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com./

[DarkMatter]

I think you probably shouldn't bother playing the lottery for a while. I know many people will argue with this, but usually the cheaper the blank is the less compatible it is. If you buy Pioneer or Sony or Verbatim or most other name-brand $3+ disc and it plays on yours, you can usually be assured it will play (assuming it's compiled correctly) on anything. However, Setarip is right there are a few older DVD players that will not play any burnable disc and the whole question over -R and +R is still being hashed out. There is the notion out there that DVD+R is less compatible than -R. I have no idea whether that's myth or not. My feeling is that it is probably true with older players (DVD+ is new). You must have found 2 players in one of those categories. If you intend to distribute your creations my usual advice would be to buy the best blank you can afford. But, you don't get much better than Verbatim. I use a Pioneer DVD-R with Nero and since I started using Ritek discs I have only had one (ok, maybe two) stand-alones out of 10 or 12 reject my discs. In the real world, with $1.30 blanks, I think that's about as good as you can expect. But supposedly (though I don't personally believe it ) there are people out there using 75 cent Princos and have had them play on dozens of players, PS2's, and X-Boxes. (What I don't believe is that they got a Princo to play on anything Can you tell I got burned with 100 of those shiny pieces of crap?.) That's off the point and all of this will hopefully get better with time. There was a time when most CD players wouldn't play a CD-R. And the early cheap R's were unreliable. Now, I don't think you can find one that doesn't play R's and most play RW's. And most manufacturers of blanks have either shaped up or gone under. If new players don't come -R and +R compatible we should revolt. By all means give the VCDHelp (DVDRHelp) database a try if you have the specific info on your relation's players. But that source is kind of tough to wade through since so many manufacturers make so many DVD players and the models are usually a string of 15 digits and 4 letters. A more general but meaningful test is to take your disc down to your local Best Buy or whatever is local and put it in every DVD player they have hooked to a TV. If most don't play your disc the problem lies elsewhere than blank compatibility. If it plays in most, well my mom had to buy a new player to watch my kids on DVD. Most grandparents are pretty easy to work with on this issue. Hopefully, if blank compatibility is the problem, their players are old anyway. Good luck!

[shellyky]

hey thanks for the great reply! lol i would have never thought to take it to best buy or something to check..hah

but neways, my dvd player is a cheapo mintek 70 dollar deal at best buy....my mom (which didnt work) has a dvd/vhs combo symphonic brand which was an after thanksgiving day sale..i think it was 60 dollars. my sisters (also didnt work) is probably a good 2 years old so i kinda knew that one woudn't work.

i was thinking about selling these things but i dont wanna sell someone something that im not 100% certain will work in their player. guess i could always put a a VCD or something on it so its playable in a computer? wait that wont work unless they have a dvd drive....lol

oh well. i didnt know dvd media was still this iffy or i wouldn't have purchased the miniDV or the dvdrom...lol

thanks for the help

[DarkMatter]

It'll get better (I hope). Like I said, take to Best Buy. I think you'll be surprised at how many players will play your discs. But you're not going to get to 100% without a comercial burning process. I sent out catalogs on TDK CD-R and got many people calling to say it didn't work. And that's CD. So, you might check for commercial burning services. I had 500 CD's (my catalog) done for about $750. I have no idea how much DVD prints are.

[johndv]

Check out http://www.dvdplusrw.org/ for more info on compatibility. Issues with +R/+RW disks range from forgetting to use the bitsetter utility to mark the disk as DVD-ROM (this fixes 99% of the basic play issues) to incorrect Mpeg and/or audio encodes (this is the one that can be a real pain)

So, find your DVD burner bitset utility and make sure its set to DVD-ROM (or get the util from the above site)

Then tell us all the details of how you encoded your DV materal and made your menu...

[onerose]

from johndv: (Then tell us all the details of how you encoded your DV materal and made your menu... )

that's the e-z part but not in this part of the forum