European DVD-R

Poipu04 · Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 8:24 pm Post subject: European DVD-R

A friend of mine just sent me a DVD-R, which he presumably made with his European camcorder of his recent visit with us. It would not work in our DVD player, which I expected from the compatability issues that we have discussed before on this board. I put it into my PC and windows player recognizes the file, but gives me an error message to play it. Any ideas on what else I can do to play it? Tell me what other info. you may need.

Thanks!

rfornal · Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:08 pm Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

Attempt to play this in a regular DVD Player ... non-DVD

Poipu04 · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 12:32 am Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

You know, I tried that and it said disc failure. So I checked the region settings to make sure it said "region free". I put the disc back into the DVD player and it told me that it was a data file. I am not certain, but I think that the file was from a digital video player and was saved in windows media. Any other ideas? When I put it in my PC, it does recognize the file by telling me it is 1.2 gigs and the name of the file.

nuccia · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 12:48 am Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

Will it work on the computer (sorry if this is way out there but I thought I would give it a shot).

Poipu04 · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:00 am Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

My gosh, I just got it to work on the PC! Yipee!

nuccia · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:03 am Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

Hey..thats great. The give away was when you said windows media....

Poipu04 · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:30 am Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

I don't know what I did, but somehow it worked late last night. I am going to try to play it again tonight. It failed to play towards the end, saying that the disc was scratched or dirty. I will let you know. It was so worth it because what I did see was not just a home video but a really professionally made slide show of their visit with us, set to music from both Italy and America. They even had a written introduction that scrolled on the screen about the importance of our friendship, written in both Italian and English. I was really blown away. Wink

rfornal · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 11:53 am Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

Basically, what you have told us is that it was not saved AS a DVD, but ON a DVD ... the Windows Media File is a file that can be played by the computer ... not by the DVD software on the computer.

Cathy · V.I.P. Joined: Jul 10, 2007 Posts: 2681

WOW Poipu!! How exciting. Lucky you! That was very nice of them. You may want to save the data on your hard drive and burn a new CD just to make sure nothing gets lost or corupted in the future.

Poipu04 · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject: Re: European DVD-R

Great idea, Cathy! I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to get the thing to play again when I get home today. It was very "tempermental."