I've hit on a frustrating issue that I cannot puzzle out . . . I've been using DVD Shrink for straightforward DVD backups for quite a while without a single issue; backups have worked flawlessly on all of our set-top DVD players. Recently a friend passed on a bunch of old cartoons in Divx format. As I want the kids to be able to watch them in the TV room, I wanted to convert them to DVD format. I've been using Copy2DVD "forever", so of course I was aware of VSO's DivxtoDVD, but it doesn't yet have the ability to combine DVD files (not interested in 1 18-minute cartoon to a DVD, thank you!). I googled & found to my delight that combining the DVD files could be done in DVD Shrink simply by choosing "re-author" and adding the individual converted DVD files. Tried it, sure enough it seemed to work fine, and was incredibly fast! Burned with Copy2DVD as usual, no problems noted. When I put the DVD in our set top player however, it gave me a "play prohibited by region" failure. I tried our other players with similar problems. I then put the disc in the computer that burned it-played no problem. Tried another computer, played there as well. Thinking that I might have gorked the region settings in DVD-Shrink, I rebuilt the DVD and set the region setting to Region 1--finished and burned. Same problem--set-top players say the region coding is unacceptable. I happened to have Sonic MyDVD on my system testing it for Tivo transfers, so I tried it, importing the converted DVD files into it and building a DVD--worked fine in set top players (but took an entire night to encode!!) Any ideas as to why DVD Shrink is tripping up here? I really prefer the ease of the process compared to Sonic's product if anyone has suggestions . . .
rxdyer Region codes identify your players specific region (Norht America, Europe, whatever) so whoever encoded it also encoded the region codes with it. Try ripping your burned DVD with DVD Decrypter and then burn it again, that should remove the code.
Sophocles, Thought of that last night and tried it . . . didn't work! The Decrypter-ripped and reburned file still comes up unauthorized even though I had remove region code checked in options. It's truly strange . . .
Hmm! Interesting perhaps its original encode embedded it into the video and it can't be removed without affecting the video,(just a lame-brained theory). When you place it into Decrypter, does it identify its region?
rxdyer Now that's interesting but I would think that since AnyDVD removies the area code within the Windows shell you should be able to back it up. Try Ripping it with Decrypter and AnyDVD running in the background.
