Expert: Roy Bonner - 11/4/2006

Question
Sorry, I did use DVD shrink first, but if it played once, or several times, wouldn't the copy protection not be an issue?  Thanks.
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
I have a Dell Optiplex 150 with added memory and have been burning DVD's more or less with no problem with Alcohol 120.  
I copied a DVD, played it back several times, it is not scratched, tried it on two diferent DVD players, it plays about 5 minutes then freezes.  Nothing I do makes it play.  

If it did this from the start, it wouldn't be such a mystery.  Any ideas?
-----Answer-----
Hi Jaroslaw,
Well, you don't believe in giving me much to work with, but here goes: If it was a commercial DVD you copied,if you just used Alcohol 120, this will be some of the copy protection, most DVDs require some kind of ripping software to copy them.

Regards
Roy

Answer
Hi, sorry, misunderstood your question, sounded as though you were saying you had played it several times and it always froze after 5 minutes. Obviously if it originally played without problem, but now freezes, there has been some damage to the disk. When you say the disk is not scratched, I assume you are refering to the playing surface. In fact, light scratching there is not too serious a problem, it is the top of the disk that must not be scratched. It is just a painted on coating, and any damage at all will make the disk unusable. For similar reasons, you should not use sticky labels on the disks, the solvent in the glue of the label will damage the disk and make it unplayable within 6 months.
I assume that you also use either DVD decrypter or AnyDVD or something similar to remove copyprotection first. Note that some recent disks use a form of corruption of one or more of the VOB files to foil dvdshrink, but this can now be repaired with a utility called FixVTS1.403

Regards

Roy