Region Coding is fully supported by many DVD Authoring systems. If yours isn't one of them though, then instantly you may have a need for DVDAfterEdit ! If it is
supported, the next question is - is your application doing the job 100% correctly ? Trai has discovered an important detail which many software manufacturers have missed - which can mean that up to 5% of players out there may refuse to play the discs.
Luckily DVDAfterEdit can help you spot and fix the problem in a matter of minutes, but to find out how and why, we need to look at matters in a little more detail.
Looking at Region Codes Using DVDAfterEdit
First open up a project in DVDAfterEdit.
Now select the Video Manager ( VMG ) node in the left-hand pane, and look
at the info in the right-hand pane. If you unfold the arrow labeled "Regional Code Mask", you'll see something like this:
As you can see, each of the regions with it's enabled/disabled setting is
clearly dispayed, and can be changed if you like. If you try changing a few of them, you'll see the value above, called the "Region Code Mask" changes too. This number is just a result or summary of all the individual values.
Next, let's look at what the DVD Spec has to say about region coding, and why this can lead to incompatibility problems in some DVD Players.
The Rules
Firstly, it's important to notice some terminology - a DVD-R
is a DVD-R; it is not
a DVD-Video. The DVD Forum is very clear about this - DVD-R
is it's own "book", or type in the specification series. So,
in the following discusion, whenever we talk about DVD-Video,
that means a disc replicated from DLT tape, not
a DVD-R or even a disc replicated from a DVD-R. As
a matter of fact, anyone having their projects replicated
from a DVD-R master is actually getting a replicated DVD-R ! And players
that are incompatible with DVD-R won't play them ! So for replication,
be sure to use DLT.
As far as region coding goes, the DVD Spec is very clear - on Page VIX-117, Annex U to Part 3 ( Video Specifications ), it says:
1) ONLY
DVD-Video discs ( ie. those replicated from DLT ) can contain region info. The spec states this categorically. It goes on to specify that the Regional Code Mask must be zero for anything other than a
DVD-Video.
2) Region info must reside on two places of the replicated disc:
A) In the Control Data area of the disc right after the lead-in; and
B) In the Video Manager ( VMG ).
And, crucially, those settings must be identical - no "if's", "ands" or "buts".
The Problem
This is where the player incompatibility problem arises - Trai has
discovered during the perfecting of his TFDVD9Maker process that if these values don't
match, some players out there won't read the discs properly. One very notable example is the X-Box. And some of the biggest names in DVD authoring software are guilty of not getting this setting right ! When writing DDP v2.0 formated DLT tapes, their VMG setting doesn't match what is in the lead-in, so the disc doesn't conform to spec, and players like the X-Box have problems. See the "Solution" section below for more information on this.
When It Affects Us
One important area where this may cause you and I problems is either: if our authoring application is one of those that only writes DDP v2.0 DLTs; or if we choose to use Toast, Gear
or another external application to write discs or tapes from files on hard disc. This is because if the authoring application is doing it's job, a hard disc can't be meaningfully region coded ( since it isn't a DVD-Video ), and so
the Regional Code Mask in the VMG should be set to zero. However some applications, for example DVD Studio Pro, set this to other values - the hexadecimal value $40 in Version 2, for example. If we choose to write a DLT or disc using DVDSP, this is
corrected during writing, but if we instead choose to write them ourselves using a different application like Toast or Gear, these incorrect values will get faithfully written to the disc or tape, and may cause problems.
The Solution:
Luckily, unlike the cause, this is very simple ! All we have to do use use DVDAfterEdit to ensure that the Regional Code Mask is set to zero in the VMG whenever we write a DVD with either Toast or Gear.
The reasoning for this is slightly different though for tapes and discs:
For DVD+/-R
The DVD-R General and DVD+R formats actually have the control area glossed over, making it intentionally
unwriteable. The effective value of the regon code is therefore zero, as it should be according to the DVD Spec. So, it stands to reason that whatever the intended region code of the final product, for a DVD+/-R, the value in the
VMG MUST be a zero in order to match what is in the control area and meet the requirements of the spec, and avoid any compatibility problems. Hence, all we have to do is set the Regional Code Mask to zero in the VMG using
DVDAfterEdit, and we've avoided potential problems.
For DLT Tapes
As you may be aware, there are two different formats in which DLTs can be written - Disc Description Protocol ( DDP ) and Cutting
Master Format ( CMF ). These are often talked about as though they are effectively interchangeable, but there are some important differences:
DDP 2.0
This by far the best-supported format by pressing
plants, and hence is the most widely used. However it doesn't
support CSS copy protection (without writing the Control.DAT file with 2054 sectors, so region info can be written, which none of the major manufacturers do), and importantly for our discussion,
in the version currently used by all the major authoring applications
( v2.0 ), it
doesn't write region info to the control data after the lead-in
on the final DVD.
This is the reason that even some of the biggest authoring names
out there are creating discs with potential problems - if the
author chooses to region-code their disc and uses DDP v2.0,
then what is in the lead-in and the VMG will be different, with
all the compatibility problems that implies.
So, immediately we can draw an important conclusion
- if you want to have any chance of 100% player compatibility,
you MUST use the CMF format; or DDP 2.1 for DLTs.
CMF
CMF is by far the best format for writing DLTs,
since it does
support CSS, and it writes the correct region info in the lead-in
area. In fact, CMF is actually the replacement for DDP for replicated DVD-Video
discs. Unfortunately, not all plants support CMF formatted tapes
( which they should ), and even some that do will copy it across
to a DDP format tape before pressing ! So, if you intend to
use this format, make sure your plant can assure you that they
aren't copying it to DDP first. Toast only writes CMF formatted
DLTs, but unfortunately currently doesn't write DVD-9s.
So, as you may have picked up, if you want to write
a DVD-9 with region coding or CSS copy protection, unfortunately
you won't be able to use either Toast or Gear with the TFDVD9Maker
process. Luckily, though, DVDAfterEdit itself already has a beta-version
able to read and write CMF and DDP v2.1 ( which is the same
as CMF 1.0 ) DLTs,
which may even be available by the time you read this - so
all these problems will then be solved.
Conclusion
Always set the
Regional Code Mask of your projects to zero when writing DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW outside your authoring software. Even when using your software, if you have problems, check it's writing the correct value in the VMG.
Writeable discs should not be region coded.
When writing DLT tapes, always ensure that the Regional Code Mask is set to zero if you are writing them outside your authoring application. Always use CMF formatting, if possible. Gear writes DDP v2.0 tapes, which
again, won't have region information written to the control data, but it will if you click on the option to "write the control data with 2054 bytes per sector", so be sure to do so (but you still need to set the VMG region info to "0", because that's what Gear Mastering Edition will write in the control data. For more info on this, please see the TFDVD-9 Maker docs located in the members download section here). Toast writes CMF tapes, but sets the lead-in value to zero regardless (!), so neither will produce 100% compatible DVDs if you try to use region coding.
So now you know - when people on the Apple discussions
talk about DVD Studio Pro 2 not being as compatible with all region settings on the DVD-R, maybe it's actually because they don't really have the correct region settings written properly to tape, which is not their fault. Thanks to
DVDAfterEdit, it's not a problem we'll have in future.
