Playing a DVD in Canada

cruiser wrote on 11/27/2012, 2:22 PM

I burn my finished film from Video Easy onto DVD. It plays fine on players in the Uk, but I would like to show my family in Canada. When put into a player over there, it just comes up "bad disc" I think the DVD is burnt for all regions, but it will not play abroad. Am I doing something wrong or can I do something to make my discs playable in Canada.Any help to a fairly novice computer user would be most welcome.I have Windows 7 on my computer. Thanks Dave

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 11/27/2012, 4:03 PM

The DVD's are burnt 'region free'.

The problem is more likely to be that the DVD is PAL system and Canada is NTSC so unless the Canadian player can read and convert the DVD to NTSC it will not play.

Reading the manual for Video Easy the Video standard is set in the projects settings - so you would need to change this to NTSC - however the manual states 'You should not change this' - I would backup the whole project to another folder and test it before changing the project setting so if it misbehaves you have a good backup to reload.

John

cruiser wrote on 11/28/2012, 4:36 AM

Hi John, Thanks for prompt reply. The DVD player in Canada can be set to Pal and NTSC and I did try both, but with the same "bad disc" message. I will try your suggestion of changing settings to NTSC and see if that works. Is there any way of copying the discs I already have from Pal to NTSC? Once again Thanks Dave

johnebaker wrote on 11/28/2012, 12:43 PM

Conversion from PAL to NTSC can be done, it means ripping the DVD running it through a converter and then rewriting to DVD again.

However as the Canadian DVD player can play PAL DVD's I do not think this is the problem.

I think is is a case of disc incompatability ie the player will not be able to read the disc whether it is PAL or NTSC.

The best player 'universal' discs I have found are based on the G5 dye. I would suggest trying a good different good quality brand - for DVD I generally stick to Ridisk or Ritek full face printable discs (both G5 dye) and have virtually no problems with them playing OK - even with a 12year old DVD recorder.

John