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Burned DVD plays on TV DVD Player but not on Mac?

verveguitar

verveguitar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2009
22
0
London
Hi I had an old band performance recorded on a VHS camcorder which I today hooked up to my stand alone DVD player/recorder via the AV cable (the camcorder doesn't have any usb/firewire output due to age) and burned a DVD.

The DVD plays fine on stand alone DVD players you hook up to a TV but when I put it onto my PowerBook G4 it says the DVD is empty?

I tried it on a HP Laptop with the same outcome so it's not a Mac issue.

I've googled this to little avail so any help would be greatly appreciated.

The end result for this was to put the recording up on YouTube....
 
verveguitar

verveguitar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2009
22
0
London
simsaladimbamba said:
Have you finalised the DVD inside the DVD recorder you recorded the DVD with?
Click to expand...

not sure... the process of the DVD recorder is literally:

press record, then when you've got what you wanted press stop and it burns it do the DVD ...and that's it done.

It comes out and then it plays no problem on DVD players... but appears as a blank DVD on computers...:confused:
 
simsaladimbamba

simsaladimbamba

Guest
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
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located
verveguitar said:
not sure... the process of the DVD recorder is literally:

press record, then when you've got what you wanted press stop and it burns it do the DVD ...and that's it done.

It comes out and then it plays no problem on DVD players... but appears as a blank DVD on computers...:confused:
Click to expand...

Either tell us what exact model of DVD recorder you have or look into the manual of your recorder under "finalise" or something similar.
To play the video DVD on a computer, it needs to be finalised, as DVD drive in computers differ from DVD drives in video DVD recorders.
 
verveguitar

verveguitar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2009
22
0
London
..it's a Funai DVD Recorder... (I've personally never heard of them before) no manual (or remote control for that matter) as it was inherited from a family member moving house.. so can't be much more exact.

Is there a way of finalising it on my mac? I mean the DVD shows up no problem, it's literally that it can't see it's contents?

The disc is a DVD-R btw just in case that helps.

Any ideas would be greatly received.
 
simsaladimbamba

simsaladimbamba

Guest
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
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located
I don't know of a way to finalise a video DVD in Mac OS X or Windows, normally it needs to be done with a video DVD recorder.
Doesn't the DVD recorder have some kind of label on the back or bottom?
46LX177wheretofindserial.gif

Or does the DVD recorder not have something like this printed on it?
MR_ss_dvd_model.png

But without remote, it will be almost impossible to finalise the video DVD, as it is done via menus normally.
 
martinX

martinX

macrumors 6502a
Aug 11, 2009
928
162
Australia
What Sim said. This is exactly the behavior of an unfinalised disc. You must finalize it and you must finalize it in the model that recorded it.

Having said that, I have had success with unfinalised DVD+Rs in my Mac, but it can be hit and miss playing them back on other DVD players in an unfinalised state.

Good luck doing it without a remote though...
 
verveguitar

verveguitar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2009
22
0
London
I think you're both right... without the remote control I have no way of finalising it.

The DVD player/recorder does have some kind of optical out so it might be worth seeing if I can hook it up directly to my Mac, playing the DVD and recording it that way via VLC or something.

Thanks everyone for your help.
 
martinX

martinX

macrumors 6502a
Aug 11, 2009
928
162
Australia
verveguitar said:
The DVD player/recorder does have some kind of optical out so it might be worth seeing if I can hook it up directly to my Mac, playing the DVD and recording it that way via VLC or something.
Click to expand...

The optical connection is audio. It's a way of shifting 5.1 sound around the place without making people go crazy with cabling.

Re-record your tape on a DVD recorder u can finalise easily. I like the Panasonics I have, mainly because when I eject a burned DVD it asks me if I want to finalise, and if so, push the REC button and away it goes. Otherwise, the function is buried deep in an arcane menu structure that requires a dozen key presses. Why, O Why can't I get a reasonably priced PAL DVD recorder with serial control...
 
verveguitar

verveguitar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2009
22
0
London
martinX said:
The optical connection is audio. It's a way of shifting 5.1 sound around the place without making people go crazy with cabling.

Re-record your tape on a DVD recorder u can finalise easily. I like the Panasonics I have, mainly because when I eject a burned DVD it asks me if I want to finalise, and if so, push the REC button and away it goes. Otherwise, the function is buried deep in an arcane menu structure that requires a dozen key presses. Why, O Why can't I get a reasonably priced PAL DVD recorder with serial control...
Click to expand...

Oh really? Is there another way of getting VHS Camcorder recordings onto the Mac? I've seen a few AV to USB cables on Amazon but they all need Windows operating systems :mad:
 
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