Aussie wedding DVD needs UK reader

P

Petroni

Guest
Son got married in August. Mate came from Australia, filmed the wedding and promised to send the DVDs. Dvds now here but unreadable. He knows nothing about anything so its hard work finding out what file format he saved them as. I am only marginally better informed than him!

Question is, if he saved the files as 'Region 4' and I am using a UK purchased computer DVD drive (region 2 presumably) to read them, is there a simple way for me to find out if the files are on the discs (ie that he hasn't just cocked up the file writing and they are in fact readable). If they are there, whats the simplest solution for reading them so I can transfer them to PC and rewrite them for UK parties?

All help appreciated

Cheers

Petroni
 
If he knows nothing about nothing I honestly doubt he would have region coded the DVD. That would apply to a commercial DVD, but far less likely to a home-brew.

Do you know anything about how the DVD was created? e.g. Camcorder to DVD deck, or Camcorder to PC to DVD?

Can you read the disk in your drive at all - even at a data level, even if you can't play back the video?.... If not, then it sounds like the disk is probably ****ed. Even if it were region encoded you could still see the Video_TS folder on the disk etc. You could even open them in DVD player software most likely, it would just not play.

Maybe the disk was not finalised properly.

If you can read the data on the disk, then try downloading MPEG Streamclip. If the data is useful at all in whatever format that app can probably read it.

If it is region coded, then depending on the model of DVD drive you have then it should be possible to temporarily flip the region. Go to my computer/manage/devices and look up what model of drive you have, then google on how to change the region. There are usually tools available to do this.
 
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If he knows nothing about nothing I honestly doubt he would have region coded the DVD. That would apply to a commercial DVD, but far less likely to a home-brew.

Do you know anything about how the DVD was created? e.g. Camcorder to DVD deck, or Camcorder to PC to DVD?

** Captured on a Camcorder, transferred to PC written to DVD drive

Can you read the disk in your drive at all - even at a data level, even if you can't play back the video?.... If not, then it sounds like the disk is probably ****ed. Even if it were region encoded you could still see the Video_TS folder on the disk etc. You could even open them in DVD player software most likely, it would just not play.

** The msg the PC gives when trying to read the disc is
"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer."

Maybe the disk was not finalised properly.

** I suspect thats it

If you can read the data on the disk, then try downloading MPEG Streamclip. If the data is useful at all in whatever format that app can probably read it.

If it is region coded, then depending on the model of DVD drive you have then it should be possible to temporarily flip the region. Go to my computer/manage/devices and look up what model of drive you have, then google on how to change the region. There are usually tools available to do this.

I'll assume the discs were not prepped properly but I will ask him if he actually tried reading them himself before sending. I have tried the discs in two different PC DVD drives which work fine with any other DVD. I get no info at all when I try to access the discs

Thanks for the advice :)

Petroni
 

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