Burning region-free DVDs

[qwerty]

When burning a DVD video from video_ts files, it would be great for those who live outside the USA to have the option for the program to automatically read and patch the (ifo?) files so that they become region-free (ie, playable in all regions, not change from one region to another [eg. not swapping region 1 for region-4, but making the disk playable in all regions]). I believe that there are some utilities which do this, but it would be great to have it all in the one program.

If this is not possible, perhaps an option to check the region of the files before the burn so they can be patched in another program.

 

thanks,

Edited January 13, 2009 by qwerty

[LIGHTNING UK!]

This isn't the job of a burning util and as regional encoding is a form of copy protection, ImgBurn won't ever touch it.

[blutach]

There's lots of utilities you can use - IfoEdit, DVD Shrink, PgcEdit to name just 3 (and almost every ripper makes DVDs region free).

 

Regards

[qwerty]

Thanks for your replies. The vob etc files I obtained and burned that prompted by request were not of commercially released material, but happened to have been encoded with a different region. I do understand and respect that you don't want to take your program into legal grey-areas.

 

May I suggest an alternative (softer) request that would be legally OK? When the info/confirmation dialogue comes up just before a burn is initiated by the program, could the info also display if the disk will be burned NTSC or PAL, and perhaps the region the files have been encoded. That would give the user the opportunity to abort the process before burning a disk incompatable with their system.

 

Thanks again,

- R

[LIGHTNING UK!]

I guess there's no harm in displaying that info, I'll see what I can do.

[LOCOENG]

Not that I have an issue with region coding I think this isn't a bad idea.

[blutach]

The check for RC is simple, as it only means checking one byte in VIDEO_TS.IFO. However, this does not mean that there won't be RCE (which is based on commands in the PGCs) - in fact, there probably will be RCE. This would require ImgBurn to parse the IFOs and interpret the commands, which it doesn't do.

 

So, having the RC in the log is ony half the issue and may not be 100% useful.

 

Checking on PAL and NTSC should not be difficult, but note that I have seen DVDs (not commercial) with both PAL and NTSC material.

 

The user can find out all this info for himself in any IFO editor - eg IfoEdit or PgcEdit.

 

Regards

[qwerty]

Thanks again for your replies.

R.

[qwerty]

2.4.3.0 changelog:

"Added: Region Code and TV System details to the image information screen that pops up just before creating the image / burning the disc in Build mode."

 

- Thanks for including these changes.