Compatibility with older DVD players - help!

[niceguy]

Please help!

I am able to make dvd-backups with DvdXcopy that play on my old player. However, I do duplication for bands as a hobby and one band provided a DVD that will not play on the older player.

I need to come up with a way to work around this, as the band needs 100 copies and they need compatibility with older players.

I downloaded the Movie Factory 4 demo and played with all sorts of options but no luck! I know my older DVD player *can* play dvd-r media made with Xcopy, but I can't get the current disc to play, even when I import the video (even with the "do not create DVD ready mpeg file when one exists" unchecked - thus supposedly making a new conversion).

Any ideas how to fix this issue? It happens to me a lot when I am working with bands, so I'd love to know how to deal with this!

Thank You!

D

[TubaDad]

One of the problems with trying to solve a problem dealing with old DVD players is that they are so inconsistent. I assume that this DVD they provided plays fine on your PC. One of the things to look for is whether there is anything extra in the file structure on the DVD. If it has more than just the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories, that could be your problem. Many old players have problems with extras being on the DVD. Another thing could be the speed that the original DVD was burned. That is another place where older players fail. The faster burned DVDs have less of the media actually burned and less for the DVD player to pick up. There are a number of things it could be, but for older DVD players that you know will play DVD-Rs, those the the most common that I have run into.

You can also find a lot of knowledge at Videohelp.com too. They rank DVD players and many players have reviews of things that can and can not play. Very useful when working with older players.

[niceguy]

Bruce-

This disc has only a video_ts directory. On the dvd-backups from Xcopy (from other dvd's - not this one) there is also an audio_ts directory, but it is empty! This disc is missing that folder for some reason. Think that could be an issue?

Thanks for your time!

D

[TubaDad]

Hard to say that is the problem, only that it could be. I was thinking more of extra files/directories on the disc, rather than missing ones. I know I have run into that issue when I try to add some backup files on a disc. I used to jut put some backup files in the root and the disc would not play on may older players. Then I tried creating a directory and putting the files in there and it increased the number of players it would play on, but still had a few it would not work on.

I have never tried getting rid of the AUDIO_TS directory, even though it does seem to be useless. I just figure it doesn't take up much room so why worry about it. It might be worth burning a disc to find out. I would recommend burning an RW disc, but most older players don't like those either. Good thing the cost of discs have come down to almost reasonable.

I would be very interested in finding out the answer once you reach it.

[ruggy1]

I have found that to be sure you can play on all players, only burn at 2x regardless of the speed of the blank, and always use DVD-R disks. The speed issue is by far the more important of the 2.