Sending DVDs overseas

[kreed]

On Dec 21, 9:53 am, "Mr.T" <MrT@home> wrote:

"kreed" <kenreed1...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:50634e5d-c22d-422d-8c59-7f0ec68f14c8@f20g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

Record to a rewritable DVD and then convert it to the required format
on a PC.
AVS video converter is one way to do it.
Re-use the DVD RW as required.

Surprisingly enough mine won't finalise a DVD-RW, only a DVD-R, and that is
deliberate for some reason. (probably more copyright bullshit)
Not sure whether that applies to the OP's recorder.

MrT.

Time for a TV card for the PC I think.

Then all these problems are gone.

 

[kreed]

On Dec 21, 9:59 am, "Mr.T" <MrT@home> wrote:

"kreed" <kenreed1...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:087f6693-8e34-4de4-ac79-78241e8172fc@m7g2000prd.googlegroups.com...

I had about 100 archived, and found after a few months, about 10% had
at least one error.
Believe it or not, trying different DVD readers (even of same brand
and model) did manage to recover nearly everything (with a lot of
trouble and time).

Had the same problem with a Lite-On burner. Switched to a Pioneer and no
more problems.
What many people blame on DVD's in general, is often down to lousy burners
IME. Always test your combination of burner and media for *actual* error
rate (not just the unrecoverable ones) before relying on them to last 5
minutes.

MrT.

Strangely most of the DVD's in question were burnt on a Pioneer burner
(circa 2004)
and read back on LG burners (made 2008-9). We had a box of new burners
available at the time, and I connected 2 of them up to each of our 3
comps at work to get all the DVD's read as fast as possible and later
shifted via the network onto a 1tb hard drive.

At this time, I found that the discs that wouldn't read, invariably
would (took 10 minutes in some cases to do it but it worked) when
tried on another of the LG units. There was no visible damage to the
discs, they were mostly Verbatim brand.

It wasn't one particular LG drive that was "bad" either. Some discs
seemed to "like" certain units more than others.

Cant do any other tests on the discs, they were smashed up and dumped
being successfully read.

 

[David Eather]

Sylvia Else wrote:

David Eather wrote:
L.A.T. wrote:
We have a Panasonic DVD recorder Model DMR-EX75. Sometimes when we
record a local program from free-to-air TV to its HDD and then copy
that program to a DVD, that DVD is playable on friends' equipment in
the U.S. Sometimes it wont't play. It must be a problem with the
region, but it is not consistent. I assume that a DVD that is created
on this device is coded as region 4. Is there a way to write a DVD as
"ALL"?
I stress that some DVDs that we write will play in the U.S. and some
won't. It seems to be random. Is there a way to ensure that we can
write a readable DVD? Have we just bought the wrong machine?
Yes, I have read the manual. Over and over. It is truly dreadful.


I've done this before. make sure you close/finalize the DVD on the
recorder. then take the disk to your PC and run DVD Shrink v3.2 and
set it to region free.

In the OPs situation, I can't see that DVD Shrink is going to be a
solution. Why would only some of the DVDs he burns end up with an
unsuitable region?

Sylvia.

Using DVD Shrink takes the important finalize functions out of the
hands of the user of the DVD recorder and puts it in the hands of a
repeatable, reliable program writing on a highly compatible DVD drive.

The unsuitable region may just be a result of this incompatibility or a
user error with the recorder. (and I assume the two of them have worked
out the DVD-RAM, +R, -R issues)

 

[Sylvia Else]

David Eather wrote:

Sylvia Else wrote:
David Eather wrote:
L.A.T. wrote:
We have a Panasonic DVD recorder Model DMR-EX75. Sometimes when we
record a local program from free-to-air TV to its HDD and then copy
that program to a DVD, that DVD is playable on friends' equipment in
the U.S. Sometimes it wont't play. It must be a problem with the
region, but it is not consistent. I assume that a DVD that is
created on this device is coded as region 4. Is there a way to write
a DVD as "ALL"?
I stress that some DVDs that we write will play in the U.S. and some
won't. It seems to be random. Is there a way to ensure that we can
write a readable DVD? Have we just bought the wrong machine?
Yes, I have read the manual. Over and over. It is truly dreadful.


I've done this before. make sure you close/finalize the DVD on the
recorder. then take the disk to your PC and run DVD Shrink v3.2 and
set it to region free.

In the OPs situation, I can't see that DVD Shrink is going to be a
solution. Why would only some of the DVDs he burns end up with an
unsuitable region?

Sylvia.

Using DVD Shrink takes the important finalize functions out of the
hands of the user of the DVD recorder and puts it in the hands of a
repeatable, reliable program writing on a highly compatible DVD drive.

The unsuitable region may just be a result of this incompatibility or a
user error with the recorder. (and I assume the two of them have worked
out the DVD-RAM, +R, -R issues)

The OPs recorder does the finalise automatically in the case of copying
a single recording to disk, which sounds like what the OP is doing. I
would expect it to work, or not work, consistently.

That's why I asked what sequence of steps the OP is using (he never
replied). There is a more advance menu for writing multiple recordings
to one disk where there is more scope for fogetting to do the finalise.

I would assume (perhaps wrongly) that the OP is using a stock of
identical writeable DVDs for this purpose, so the RAM, +R, -R issue
should show up on all, or none.

I suspect a media quality issue is behind this.

Sylvia.

 

[David Eather]

Sylvia Else wrote:

David Eather wrote:
Sylvia Else wrote:
David Eather wrote:
L.A.T. wrote:
We have a Panasonic DVD recorder Model DMR-EX75. Sometimes when we
record a local program from free-to-air TV to its HDD and then copy
that program to a DVD, that DVD is playable on friends' equipment
in the U.S. Sometimes it wont't play. It must be a problem with the
region, but it is not consistent. I assume that a DVD that is
created on this device is coded as region 4. Is there a way to
write a DVD as "ALL"?
I stress that some DVDs that we write will play in the U.S. and
some won't. It seems to be random. Is there a way to ensure that we
can write a readable DVD? Have we just bought the wrong machine?
Yes, I have read the manual. Over and over. It is truly dreadful.


I've done this before. make sure you close/finalize the DVD on the
recorder. then take the disk to your PC and run DVD Shrink v3.2 and
set it to region free.

In the OPs situation, I can't see that DVD Shrink is going to be a
solution. Why would only some of the DVDs he burns end up with an
unsuitable region?

Sylvia.

Using DVD Shrink takes the important finalize functions out of the
hands of the user of the DVD recorder and puts it in the hands of a
repeatable, reliable program writing on a highly compatible DVD drive.

The unsuitable region may just be a result of this incompatibility or
a user error with the recorder. (and I assume the two of them have
worked out the DVD-RAM, +R, -R issues)

The OPs recorder does the finalise automatically in the case of copying
a single recording to disk, which sounds like what the OP is doing. I
would expect it to work, or not work, consistently.

That's why I asked what sequence of steps the OP is using (he never
replied). There is a more advance menu for writing multiple recordings
to one disk where there is more scope for fogetting to do the finalise.

I would assume (perhaps wrongly) that the OP is using a stock of
identical writeable DVDs for this purpose, so the RAM, +R, -R issue
should show up on all, or none.

I suspect a media quality issue is behind this.

I had access to a panasoinc DVD recorder in a shared house (sorry don't
know the model). Media quality may well have been an issue, but our
problems were only solved after "re mastering" on a PC.

Sylvia.

 

[Bob Larter]

On 19/12/2009 6:11 PM, L.A.T. wrote:

We have a Panasonic DVD recorder Model DMR-EX75. Sometimes when we record a
local program from free-to-air TV to its HDD and then copy that program to
a DVD, that DVD is playable on friends' equipment in the U.S. Sometimes it
wont't play. It must be a problem with the region, but it is not consistent.
I assume that a DVD that is created on this device is coded as region 4. Is
there a way to write a DVD as "ALL"?
I stress that some DVDs that we write will play in the U.S. and some won't.
It seems to be random. Is there a way to ensure that we can write a readable
DVD? Have we just bought the wrong machine?
Yes, I have read the manual. Over and over. It is truly dreadful.

Your problem is nothing to do with region-coding. Most likely, you're
using cheap & nasty DVDs. I recommend the gold TDKs.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[L.A.T.]

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:008f8f1a$0$8185$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...

David Eather wrote:
Sylvia Else wrote:
David Eather wrote:
L.A.T. wrote:
We have a Panasonic DVD recorder Model DMR-EX75. Sometimes when we
record a local program from free-to-air TV to its HDD and then copy
that program to a DVD, that DVD is playable on friends' equipment in
the U.S. Sometimes it wont't play. It must be a problem with the
region, but it is not consistent. I assume that a DVD that is created
on this device is coded as region 4. Is there a way to write a DVD as
"ALL"?
I stress that some DVDs that we write will play in the U.S. and some
won't. It seems to be random. Is there a way to ensure that we can
write a readable DVD? Have we just bought the wrong machine?
Yes, I have read the manual. Over and over. It is truly dreadful.

snip>
The OPs recorder does the finalise automatically in the case of copying

a single recording to disk, which sounds like what the OP is doing. I
would expect it to work, or not work, consistently.

That's why I asked what sequence of steps the OP is using (he never
replied).
I thought I did reply.

I record the program (in which our team usually gets done) to the HDD of the
DVD recorder.
There aren't many options.
I then write that file to the DVD. The file is long enough for the box to
write the DVD at real-time speed. (not speeded up).
The box finalises the DVD without intervention.
One part of the problem is solved: One of the recipients who couldn't read
the disks and then could read them, had used DVD-ulocker to converrt his
DVD reader to multi-region.
One other recipient has discovered he can play the disks in his desktop.
We have used DVD-unlocker to convert our reader to multi-region, so we can
read anything these guys send us in return.

 

[Swanny]

Sylvia Else wrote:

David Eather wrote:
Sylvia Else wrote:
David Eather wrote:
L.A.T. wrote:
We have a Panasonic DVD recorder Model DMR-EX75. Sometimes when we
record a local program from free-to-air TV to its HDD and then copy
that program to a DVD, that DVD is playable on friends' equipment
in the U.S. Sometimes it wont't play. It must be a problem with the
region, but it is not consistent. I assume that a DVD that is
created on this device is coded as region 4. Is there a way to
write a DVD as "ALL"?
I stress that some DVDs that we write will play in the U.S. and
some won't. It seems to be random. Is there a way to ensure that we
can write a readable DVD? Have we just bought the wrong machine?
Yes, I have read the manual. Over and over. It is truly dreadful.


I've done this before. make sure you close/finalize the DVD on the
recorder. then take the disk to your PC and run DVD Shrink v3.2 and
set it to region free.

In the OPs situation, I can't see that DVD Shrink is going to be a
solution. Why would only some of the DVDs he burns end up with an
unsuitable region?

Sylvia.

Using DVD Shrink takes the important finalize functions out of the
hands of the user of the DVD recorder and puts it in the hands of a
repeatable, reliable program writing on a highly compatible DVD drive.

The unsuitable region may just be a result of this incompatibility or
a user error with the recorder. (and I assume the two of them have
worked out the DVD-RAM, +R, -R issues)

The OPs recorder does the finalise automatically in the case of copying
a single recording to disk, which sounds like what the OP is doing. I
would expect it to work, or not work, consistently.

That's why I asked what sequence of steps the OP is using (he never
replied). There is a more advance menu for writing multiple recordings
to one disk where there is more scope for fogetting to do the finalise.

I would assume (perhaps wrongly) that the OP is using a stock of
identical writeable DVDs for this purpose, so the RAM, +R, -R issue
should show up on all, or none.

I suspect a media quality issue is behind this.

Sylvia.

The speed at which it is burnt will also affect the readability of the
disc. Too slow a speed and you will get smearing from overexposure of
the dyes.