Encore 1.5 DVDs and Macintosh

[Tim Kurkoski]

When I burn a DVD from my PC (with Encore or any other app), the first device I test it on is my G5, and I’ve never had a problem there, or with any of the older Macs I’ve used (going back to Encore 1.0).

How old is the Mac you’re using? What does it do when you try to use the DVD player app?

[Deadittex]

I have had a simular problem, when I have burned a DVD and then tried to run it on a newer Mac it has opened as a data disc? On the Mac Laptop. However,on every other playing Device it acts as a regular disc, is this normal?

Dayv

[Thestev]

We have tried our DVD on both a Powerbook and a G5 with the same results. When loading the DVD player, we simply see a black screen instead of the menu. If we hit enter to trigger the first menu option, the audio plays – although it is distorted and stuttering – but the screen remains black.

[Tim Kurkoski]

All DVD’s are data discs. DVD-Video discs just have a certain set of data (DVD VOB and IFO files) on them. What happens when you open the Apple DVD player app?

[Tim Kurkoski]

Is there any chance you could try a different burner? My gut instinct is that this is a media incompatibility issue. Since Ritek is usually good stuff, it could be something in what your burner is doing with the disc.

You could also try building an image or folder from Encore and then burning that with another app like Nero.

What do other devices (Windows PC’s, set-top players) think of the discs?

[Thestev]

It seems as though it’s the Encore copy-protection that causes problems. We tried a burn with that switched off and it seems to run fine on Macs. I’m not quite sure why the copy protection would cause such problems for Mac, but hey – as long as it works…

Although we have discovered another problem, for some reason the DVD doesn’t seem to autoplay on some of the PCs we have tested it on. It runs fine on the majority of PCs and set top units read the disc fine, but occasionally it won’t autoplay. Any idea what files trigger the autoplay for a DVD on a PC and why it might not autoplay?

Thanks,

Steve

[Tim Kurkoski]

Aha, you found the culprit. You shouldn’t have copy protection on for a burned DVD anyway, it doesn’t really work, it just throws some bits into the sector headers that usually aren’t recognized.

Autoplay for DVD-Video discs is entirely up to the OS. If it recognizes that there’s video content on the disc, it can load the DVD player software. You can put an autorun.ini file on the disc (since it needs to go on the root you’d have to build to a folder from Encore and burn from another app), but that’s only going to allow you to do command line type stuff.

On Windows I’m not really sure where the setting is. Possibly in the properties for the DVD drive (right-click on the icon in My Computer).

[Thestev]

Unfortunately other DVDs, such as commercial DVDs, autoplay fine on these systems. I’m currently trying to find out what each of these systems have in common to try and establish what’s causing this. My only lead at the moment is that our DVD is burned as region 0, where (I’m assuming) the DVDs that autoplay on these systems are region 4 – like the majority of commercial Australian DVDs. It’s not much and I can’t exactly see how the region could cause a system not to autoplay, but it’s all I have to go on at the moment.

[Aanarav Sareen]

[Timothy Kurkoski] “Since Ritek is usually good stuff,”

Just as an aside: I really haven’t had much success at all with Ritek. Looking at various recordable media forums, apparently the quality of Riteks is going downhill.

[Kwakus]

How can achieve menu transition in encore. Example, is to a transition from say main menu to submenu.