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General discussion

Unable to play DVDs burnt on external SILVA-recorder on Mac

Jun 27, 2007 8:46AM PDT

I have burnt a DVD-RW on an external Player/Recorder by the brand of SILVA-Schneider. The recording was made in LP-mode and the DVD initialized prior to the recording. (There was no option to finalize it). The DVD shows the recording on a connected TV a-ok. If I insert it into my Powerbook G4-1GHz running MacOS 10.4.10 it says there is an empty DVD and what should it do to it (eject, ignore or opening the finder). If I choose open with finder, a symbol of CDR by the name of new CD will show up on the desktop - but no content. Any commercial DVDs are playing with no problem. I can't say what a computer burnt DVD would do, because my drive is a read only. Any helpful suggestion would be very much appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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I may have something to do with
Jun 27, 2007 10:50AM PDT

the disk being initialized prior to the recording.
This is not normal on a DVD on a Mac and I don't recall seeing it done on a DVD on a Windows machine.
I have seen it done on a PC, for burning a CD, using a method, whose name I forget, where the disk is initialized and mounts as a Drive Letter. Data can be dragged to that drive letter and then burned.
To read that disk, other users have to have the same software installed on their machine. Not good.

Could it be that your Player/Recorder has special software that will allow it to burn a DVD and read it but not in a regular DVD player.
The Mac is seeing that DVD as a blank disk, hence the questions as to what you want to do with it, and by choosing the Finder, it mounts the disk on the desktop. Your G4 should have a CD burner installed so the option should also have been to open another application.

P

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Still unable
Jul 2, 2007 12:28AM PDT

whether I initialize the disk as VR or as Video or not at all, the situation remains the same. When they are initialzed, they do show up on the desktop as CDR, but will not display anything in the DVD-Player app. I tried another DVD from a friend and it did show the titles in the player, though on the desktop the volume did not show any content. This disk was written in UDF. Could it be that different DVD-recorders use different formats and that some of them cannot be viewed by a computer?

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"Could it be that different DVD-recorders use different form
Jul 2, 2007 3:53AM PDT

"Could it be that different DVD-recorders use different formats and that some of them cannot be viewed by a computer?"

Absolutely. This area has caused a lot of grief for many. Let me boil it down to this -> "No, there is no standard here."

But to maximize the likelihood of it working you want to finalize the media.

And look at VLC-Player to see if it will play that content.

Not really a Mac thing or issue but one of those areas the DVD recorders have issues.

Bob

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Problem solved
Jul 11, 2007 8:25AM PDT

the disk has to be finalized in the recorder before it can be viewed on the computer