Reproduced Region-Free DVD plays in all PCs, but not on most DVD Players

This is my first post on DVD-related topics. My company acquired the
permissions to produce and distribute a DVD of Cicero's speeches. The
original DVD we got was from the author in New Zealand. It's a Region
4 PAL DVD. It would play on our PCs in the office, and only on a
handful of DVD players connected to staff TV sets. On advisement from
searching on Google and talking to friends, I tried using DVD Shrink,
Nero, and other apps to try to remove the PAL, convert PAL to NTSC,
remove region coding, or recode as a Region-free DVD so it could play
for our buyers in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia/NZ. We made
several test disks, and even had our normal manufacturer make a "check-
disk" for us after trying to video the file themselves, and in all
cases the DVD played in all computers, and portable DVD players, and
one "regular" DVD player. For all other DVD players, we got "disc
error" or some similar message on the players' display panel. We
tried using DVD+R, DVD-R, recording at high-speed, slow-speed, but
still got the same results.

My company now is thinking of releasing the DVD as for "computers
only", but I think that's silly. We should be able to release a DVD
that plays on anything, or do a split-run of PAL and NTSC disks. If
we do the latter, how can we get the DVD to play for at least Region
1? The DVD has eight chapters, one menu, and audio and video TS
files; nothing out of the ordinary I would think.

Can someone please help, or direct me to a step-by-step resource for
getting the DVD to play in as many players as possible? Am I just
being naive here? Apologies for the n00bishness of this question....

Andrew

Andrew,

Have you tried Nero Vision Express?? You can use NVE to import
the DVD files from your DVD and create a new project in NTSC mode.

Once you import the files into NVE, click the More button at the
bottom. Under Video Options>General set it to NTSC then burn a
new set of DVD files on the hard disk. Then use NeroBurningROM to
burn those new files onto a disk.

nick

Nick -- thanks for the info. I just now tried your method and will
try playing the DVD at home tonight.

Andrew

<adreinhard@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1189443356.945369.81280@r34g2000hsd.googlegro ups.com...
> This is my first post on DVD-related topics. My company acquired the
> permissions to produce and distribute a DVD of Cicero's speeches. The
> original DVD we got was from the author in New Zealand. It's a Region
> 4 PAL DVD. It would play on our PCs in the office, and only on a
> handful of DVD players connected to staff TV sets. On advisement from
> searching on Google and talking to friends, I tried using DVD Shrink,
> Nero, and other apps to try to remove the PAL, convert PAL to NTSC,
> remove region coding, or recode as a Region-free DVD so it could play
> for our buyers in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia/NZ. We made
> several test disks, and even had our normal manufacturer make a "check-
> disk" for us after trying to video the file themselves, and in all
> cases the DVD played in all computers, and portable DVD players, and
> one "regular" DVD player. For all other DVD players, we got "disc
> error" or some similar message on the players' display panel. We
> tried using DVD+R, DVD-R, recording at high-speed, slow-speed, but
> still got the same results.
>
> My company now is thinking of releasing the DVD as for "computers
> only", but I think that's silly. We should be able to release a DVD
> that plays on anything, or do a split-run of PAL and NTSC disks. If
> we do the latter, how can we get the DVD to play for at least Region
> 1? The DVD has eight chapters, one menu, and audio and video TS
> files; nothing out of the ordinary I would think.
>
> Can someone please help, or direct me to a step-by-step resource for
> getting the DVD to play in as many players as possible? Am I just
> being naive here? Apologies for the n00bishness of this question....
>
> Andrew
>

Andrew post your question on www.videohelp.com forum. You will find many
specific answers on how to do this.
Also a bit of market research, Australia and NZ are both PAL and Region 4
but also most DVD players and TV's in those countries are multi-standard and
have no problems playing NTSC region 1... etc UK is in a similar position.
Of course there are individuals that don't have modern equipment and I guess
you have to cater for the lowest common denominator.

You are probably better off re-authoring the content using one of several
professional packages

Stuart emailed this:
> <adreinhard@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1189443356.945369.81280@r34g2000hsd.googlegro ups.com...
>> This is my first post on DVD-related topics. My company acquired the
>> permissions to produce and distribute a DVD of Cicero's speeches. The
>> original DVD we got was from the author in New Zealand. It's a Region
>> 4 PAL DVD. It would play on our PCs in the office, and only on a
>> handful of DVD players connected to staff TV sets. On advisement from
>> searching on Google and talking to friends, I tried using DVD Shrink,
>> Nero, and other apps to try to remove the PAL, convert PAL to NTSC,
>> remove region coding, or recode as a Region-free DVD so it could play
>> for our buyers in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia/NZ. We made
>> several test disks, and even had our normal manufacturer make a "check-
>> disk" for us after trying to video the file themselves, and in all
>> cases the DVD played in all computers, and portable DVD players, and
>> one "regular" DVD player. For all other DVD players, we got "disc
>> error" or some similar message on the players' display panel. We
>> tried using DVD+R, DVD-R, recording at high-speed, slow-speed, but
>> still got the same results.
>>
>> My company now is thinking of releasing the DVD as for "computers
>> only", but I think that's silly. We should be able to release a DVD
>> that plays on anything, or do a split-run of PAL and NTSC disks. If
>> we do the latter, how can we get the DVD to play for at least Region
>> 1? The DVD has eight chapters, one menu, and audio and video TS
>> files; nothing out of the ordinary I would think.
>>
>> Can someone please help, or direct me to a step-by-step resource for
>> getting the DVD to play in as many players as possible? Am I just
>> being naive here? Apologies for the n00bishness of this question....
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>
> Andrew post your question on www.videohelp.com forum. You will find many
> specific answers on how to do this.
> Also a bit of market research, Australia and NZ are both PAL and Region 4
> but also most DVD players and TV's in those countries are multi-standard and
> have no problems playing NTSC region 1... etc UK is in a similar position.
> Of course there are individuals that don't have modern equipment and I guess
> you have to cater for the lowest common denominator.
>
> You are probably better off re-authoring the content using one of several
> professional packages

I agree completely! Procoder 2, would sort you out in the PAL to NTSC
department, but it is expensive, and to convert PAL to NTSC will result in
you needing to re-do the DVDs menus afterwards.

Given your difficulty in doing this, and your obvious lack of experience,
might I suggest you hand the original DVD over to a video production house
to make you both a PAL and NTSC version - I'd skip the region coding but
you've stated this as your intention anyway. This would cost you less than
buying a copy of Procoder 2.

HTH.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my question. I'm of the opinion of
getting a professional to do this and should have little trouble
finding a company in Chicagoland to help.

Andrew

adreinhard@gmail.com emailed this:
> Thanks to everyone who replied to my question. I'm of the opinion of
> getting a professional to do this and should have little trouble
> finding a company in Chicagoland to help.

Andrew,

Why don't you find out who authored the original DVD, unless they are
totally incompetent they should still have the DVD creation files and
source material. They could probably sort out a region free NTSC and PAL
version with the same menu as the original DVD and fed-ex it to you - and
because the bulk of the work has already been done, my bet is they'll do
it much cheaper than a company coming to the project cold.

HTH,

...matthew