My sister had some DVDs of their vacation from years ago. They were originally VHS tapes transferred to DVD using a VHS to DVD recorder. When she tried to watch some of their own vacation videos recently, they would not play. The first thing that came to mind was that the DVDs were not finalized thus they would only work in the original recorder which they no longer have. My VHS to DVD recorder is also history.
I did some research online, and some suggested to use Nero to close it up. The only version of Nero I have is version 10 from 2010 on my Windows 7 desktop. So I put in one of the DVDs and opened up Nero. I couldn’t find the settings mentioned online, so I clicked around in Nero to see what I could find.
I opened up Nero Express and clicked on the button on the left-hand side that gave me some Advanced options. Then I clicked on Disc Info.
In the window that opened, I clicked on the DVD R options in the bottom left-hand corner. There was an option to Close VR disc.
It gave me a warning about not being able to add more data. I just clicked on OK.
A progress bar opened at the bottom of that window. It finished within a few minutes and the DVD then popped out. I took it out and put it into my other computer and then tried it on my DVD player. Sure enough, it worked.
Just a note: Both recorders where Toshiba.
FURTHER READING:
Best Free CD/DVD Burning Software – 2020
How To Copy CD/DVD With CDBurnerXP
How To Print DVD Labels With CD/DVD Label Maker
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I used to use my DVR and VCR as my film libraries.
I had everything matched Panasonic. The TV, DVD, DVRx2, VCR.
I even used a Panasonic digital to tape video camera.
I even bought gold hard drives which could be played and searched pretty much unlimited times.
All my DVDs played on my XP-3 laptop disc player powered by Nero as well. I could record, download and burn in the field so a client could take her DVD right after her lesson. Then at home, we could talk on the phone and discuss after she did homework while I watched her lesson back on my tv.
It was a winning combo.
Then along came my W7 laptop and things stopped working. Firstly not firewire connection so I no longer had a suitable camera.
Then I got a new DVR and those DVDs already finalized in the Panasonic machines would not play on anything.
Not only that, but once attempted and failed, they no longer played on anything!
So I have 100s of discs and 1000s of hours of footage that I used as examples of work, that now I can’t play or watch on anything. It was the end of my business.
I got a new fully digital camera that was nowhere near as good as the old one, Photoshop and Premier on W7 had glitches and shortcomings, the new DVR refused to do certain things. It was a nightmare.
The things is, all this equipment used to work seamlessly together. Why can’t that still happen?
If the software used to work why can’t it continue to work?