Fri Aug 10, 2012 10:19 am
HI folks,
As you probably know, i catalog DVDs and Blu-rays for Stanford University Libraries. Though we have stand-alone DVD and Blu-ray players, we prefer to play them on our computers (because we are filling out cataloging forms on the computer while watching the credits). We're having increasing difficulty with our player software options and are wondering if you all might have some advice.
We're currently running Windows XP and use both PowerDVD and VLC. PowerDVD is not multi-region but generally works fine otherwise. One big advantage is that we can right-click on the movie while it's playing and get a menu that includes "Configuration>Information" and will then tell us whether something is NTSC or PAL and give us the region code or codes (when its uncoded it says 1,2,3,4,5,6, All, which isn't that user-friendly and i'm not sure it's technically correct).
The reason we really like this feature is that we are supposed to note in the catalog record whether something is PAL or NTSC and what the region code is (this is a big problem for Circulation folks dealing with angry patrons who can't play the discs they checked out). A lot of our discs come with no information on the packaging so we have to actually look to see if something is PAL or not (the region coding is usually obvious, except that a lot of our Latin American disc claim to be region 4 but are actually all or 4 and 1--not sure what's going on there!)
So, that feature is important to us, and as far as we can tell, VLC doesn't have it. We're about to switch to Windows 7 and apparently PowerDVD has just come out with a version for Windows7, but we have no idea if they have this feature. Since our tech folks would have to purchase it, we need to know before we get it. Does anyone know whether this (or whether any of the free players) can tell you when something is PAL and what the region code is? Before we discovered this feature in PowerDVD, we used DVD Patcher, but that's a clunky extra step and hard to use, the tech folks are really discouraging us from downloading freeware onto our computers ourselves.
VLC is supposed to be region free, but i find that it doesn't play about 2/3 of the region 2 discs i give it, so a more reliable multiregion player would be a useful thing to have too! VLC is very handy for giving you the total playing time up front (which PowerDVD doesn't), but it doesn't have a fast-forward--we often have to fast forward through the first few minutes of a film so we can locate the credits, especially when they are dribbled out over several minutes.
I realize these are features which most normal users don't need, and we're afraid that as programmers "improve" their players they will work more and more seamlessly which will be a bigger problem for us. We have a multi-region stand-alone player which helpfully plays everything with no comment, so we still have to stick our discs in the computer for the additional data we need.
thanks
greta
As you probably know, i catalog DVDs and Blu-rays for Stanford University Libraries. Though we have stand-alone DVD and Blu-ray players, we prefer to play them on our computers (because we are filling out cataloging forms on the computer while watching the credits). We're having increasing difficulty with our player software options and are wondering if you all might have some advice.
We're currently running Windows XP and use both PowerDVD and VLC. PowerDVD is not multi-region but generally works fine otherwise. One big advantage is that we can right-click on the movie while it's playing and get a menu that includes "Configuration>Information" and will then tell us whether something is NTSC or PAL and give us the region code or codes (when its uncoded it says 1,2,3,4,5,6, All, which isn't that user-friendly and i'm not sure it's technically correct).
The reason we really like this feature is that we are supposed to note in the catalog record whether something is PAL or NTSC and what the region code is (this is a big problem for Circulation folks dealing with angry patrons who can't play the discs they checked out). A lot of our discs come with no information on the packaging so we have to actually look to see if something is PAL or not (the region coding is usually obvious, except that a lot of our Latin American disc claim to be region 4 but are actually all or 4 and 1--not sure what's going on there!)
So, that feature is important to us, and as far as we can tell, VLC doesn't have it. We're about to switch to Windows 7 and apparently PowerDVD has just come out with a version for Windows7, but we have no idea if they have this feature. Since our tech folks would have to purchase it, we need to know before we get it. Does anyone know whether this (or whether any of the free players) can tell you when something is PAL and what the region code is? Before we discovered this feature in PowerDVD, we used DVD Patcher, but that's a clunky extra step and hard to use, the tech folks are really discouraging us from downloading freeware onto our computers ourselves.
VLC is supposed to be region free, but i find that it doesn't play about 2/3 of the region 2 discs i give it, so a more reliable multiregion player would be a useful thing to have too! VLC is very handy for giving you the total playing time up front (which PowerDVD doesn't), but it doesn't have a fast-forward--we often have to fast forward through the first few minutes of a film so we can locate the credits, especially when they are dribbled out over several minutes.
I realize these are features which most normal users don't need, and we're afraid that as programmers "improve" their players they will work more and more seamlessly which will be a bigger problem for us. We have a multi-region stand-alone player which helpfully plays everything with no comment, so we still have to stick our discs in the computer for the additional data we need.
thanks
greta
