DVD will NOT play in government PC but other DVDs will...

[Ian Slessor]

Hey all,

Don't post too often but I always find helpful info in these forums.

Using Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 and DVD Architect 5 Pro 5.2

I produced a DVD of a natural and cultural gathering on a local Native rez and I've had no problems in the production.
The DVD looks great.

The gov't ministry rep also asked me to fix the audio on a DVD of wild rice production a band member made with an old video camera and, it looks like, a Toshiba DVD recorder and possibly edited in Windows movie maker. They then asked me to duplicate the remixed DVD 100 times.

So, I did.
I ripped the disc and using the original vob file I renamed it to the MPEG2 extension as I wasn't going to re-render video that was already compressed fairly thoroughly. I then synced the remixed audio to the video and rendered out to DVD again. It was all fine. Or so I thought.

Now here's where it gets weird.

The gathering DVD works fine. No problems. It plays on their gov't computers easily.

However they claim that NONE of the wild rice audio remix DVDs will play on ANY of their government computers. They tried on older computers and their new laptops as well. No go.
Apparently other DVDs will play. The gathering DVD I created WILL play on their computers.

Want weirder? I went through all of the 100 wild rice DVDs I took back from them and they DO play on my PS3, XBox 360, a 5 year old $25 Walmart special DVD player AND both of my laptops. One runs XP Pro, the other 7 Home Premium.

They had their tech support go over it on their end and couldn't figure out what was going on. Apparently they tried opening from Windows media player too and that didn't work.

Anybody care to conjecture why this kind of crazy thing might happen? Or is it likely all on their end?

ian

[Edward Troxel]

You didn't say what kind of DVD you burned. -R? +R? -RW? +RW?

You might try burning different types and see if they'll play any of those types. Amazingly, it always seems like the really expensive players have the problems playing while the cheap $25 players will play anything!

[Ian Slessor]

Hey Ed,

Thanks for the response.

-R DVDs.

All the time. Always use Taiyo Yuden media. Bargain stuff right now but never had any problems.

The weird thing is the Gathering DVD I cut and mastered in Vegas/DVDA can be played by their computers but the Wild Rice DVD where I only remixed the audio but was also rendered in Vegas and mastered in DVDA will not play....none of them according to the client. Which may be how I should be viewing this.
Yet I had no problem playing the DVDs on both laptops and every dvd player in my house. PS3, Xbox 360, cheap-ass $25 Walmart special.

Makes no sense unless they're doing something dramatically wrong on their end but with their tech brought in and him not able to sort it out either I'm left wondering.

ian

[Peter Manojlovic]

Hey Ian...

Perhaps you re-authoured with something other than an .AC3 audio stream?
Use decrypter to separate the elementary streams, and see what is the result.

[Magnus Helander]

Are they playing them through Windows Media Player?

I've had wierd issues and a complete presentation disaster when client did not play the DVD with PowerDVD or other dedicated DVD-player software, since M$ did not licence the MPEG2-codec for some versions of windows...

/m

[Jeff Harper]

I feel it has to do with the VOB file, but I could be wrong.

[Ian Slessor]

Thanks for the input everyone.

Peter? I rendered audio to .ac3.

Magnus? The weird thing is the govt comps won't play the DVD even in Windows Media player. My laptops with WMP play them fine. Their comps WOULD play the other DVD I'd made for them so I don't think it's a codec thing.

Jeff? Maybe? All I did was rename the .vob file to .mpg2 after I ripped it from the DVD, pulled it into DVDA then added the rerendered audio (ac3) and ensured it was synced then prepared the DVD. But then why do I have no problem playing the disc across multiple players and OSs?

Again, I don't see how it could cause problems as the DVDs all play on all my DVD/BR players in my house and both my laptops. WinXP Pro and Win 7 Home Premium. I'd like to think it's something on their end but I don't see how.

This is just so strange. :/

ian

[Chip Gallo]

When it won't play, is there an error message or error messages? Have you seen one of their computers fail to play the disc? If you burned a "legal" DVD, it has to be a codec issue.

[Jeff Harper]

Ian, the difference between your two DVDs is the VOB file thing, and to me that seems to be the obvious culprit. I don't know the why of it, but it seems logical.

[Ian Slessor]

Chip?

According to the client it simply wouldn't play.
There was no error message.
She claimed their tech looked and couldn't figure out why any of those DVDs wouldn't play either.

Right now I'm wishing they'd just asked for duplication rather than audio level adjustments as well.
heh.

To everyone.
Is it possible that creating a DVD from a renamed .vob file may be the issue?
Could that cause it to conflict with something that's ONLY on, or not on, the gov't comps?

ian

[Chip Gallo]

I have seen so-called "appliances" that create non-standard VOBs. They are good enough to play in a player but won't work for other purposes. Speculating here, but you may have run into one of those in the VOB you used as a source. I have no idea why it plays on your test machines but not their workstation. Different versions of WMP perhaps?

We got video from the US Senate that was made using an appliance system. The VOBs behaved oddly and could not be reused like you have done. This is where I learned about non-standard DVDs.

Get ImgBurn (The Official ImgBurn Website) and run it against your DVD copy. It will give you information about the disc and perhaps you can see what is going on. You can also make an image file which you can upload and share (if your customer will allow this) for troubleshooting purposes.

[Jeff Pulera]

This doesn't seem to be your problem, since you DID "author" the disc in DVD Architect, but I'd like to share what might helps others. My workflow at one time was to create a VIDEO_TS folder on the hard drive, then use NERO to do the actual burning to DVD-R. In NERO, there were TWO ways to burn to disc - DATA and VIDEO.

The VIDEO_TS folder contains all the correct info to create a standard DVD, but it MUST be burned as a VIDEO DVD, because the info gets written in such a way, or flags added to the disc, that make it "DVD compliant". If the VIDEO_TS folder is simply burned to the disc as DATA, it LOOKS like a DVD, but won't play in most set-top players!

Here's where it gets more interesting - these "data" DVDs will play in PS3, computers, and maybe even some Chinese DVD players (the off-brand units are more likely to have multimedia features like playing back JPEGS, MP3s, and just about anything else). So what happens is the PS3 or computer will recognize that "OK, there is MPEG-2 video on this disc, let's just play it!", while a standard DVD player only knows that the disc in NOT DVD-compliant, and just won't play it at all.

There are programs out there like MPEG StreamClip that will RIP from DVD and provide you with a proper .m2v file that authoring programs like. As someone else mentioned, perhaps simply changing the .vob extension was not the correct method, since the .ac3 audio is typically embedded in that file.

Check out MPEG StreamClip maybe and re-do the disc using the the "raw" .m2v video file it provides.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Ian Slessor]

Just had a realization!
It might very well BE the codec issue as some of you have pointed out.

I used the .vob file that the original creator of the DVD had put together.

What if that .vob file was created using a DVD codec that wasn't installed on the gov't comps?
Yeah, I know. You guys were on it from the start. :D

I didn't rerender the video portion so that might explain why the DVD won't play for them but it will for me and on regular DVD players.

The opening of the DVD has a Toshiba logo so I'm not sure whether the creator used Windows Movie Maker or simply went back and forth on a consumer grade DVD recorder to create the video.

Just trying to reach him now and see how he put it together.

I'll update once I have more info.

ian

[Phil Lee]

Hi

Versions of Windows prior to Vista did not come with an MPEG2 decoder as standard.

Long shot but if other DVDs play and this one doesn't, I'd also check for any adult filtering software they might have installed that could be deciding the DVD contains inappropriate or copyrighted content and so baring it.

Regards

Phil