backups of some DVD movies not playing now

trampttrampt
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Before everyone starts bashing me or calling me a pirate I actually own all the movies I have backups of. I live with four other people and they borrow my movies, scratch them, etc ... so I burn copies of them to use and if they get wrecked I just make new copies instead of rebuying my movies.



Anyway, with that said some DVD's I have backed up and played before on my G5 no longer play. The drive spins for a few seconds, no disc mounts and its ejected. Its not all my backups ... probably about 50% or so. The ones that don't play for me work fine on our home DVD player, PS2 and my roommates PC's. The only changes I've done to my machine are regular OS updates and I think Quicktime and iTunes were recently upgraded.



Does anyone have any ideas since this is rather annoying because I usually watch movies on my machine while I work all day.



Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    joedredd1joedredd1 Posts: 6member
    here's the advice an actual apple genius gave my bud to resurrect a bondi imac's drive:

    a picky optical drive is most often a dirty lens, you can clean them with a cotton bud and a dab of PURE water (not tap) be very gentle and let it dry before closing the drive.

    avoid those dvd cleaner disks, the spinning brush can do more harm than good
  • Reply 2 of 6
    trampttrampt Posts: 23member
    I don't think its the drive since EVERY non-backup DVD I put in works fine. I have a feeling there is something in one of the last OSX security updates or something that is screwing with me. Some kind of anti-privacy update, like the secret update they put in Photoshop that won't let you scan money into it.



    Perhaps its just something in the new quicktime update that is doing it. Anyone else have any ideas on this?
  • Reply 3 of 6
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by trampt

    I don't think its the drive since EVERY non-backup DVD I put in works fine. I have a feeling there is something in one of the last OSX security updates or something that is screwing with me. Some kind of anti-privacy update, like the secret update they put in Photoshop that won't let you scan money into it.



    Perhaps its just something in the new quicktime update that is doing it. Anyone else have any ideas on this?



    Is it possible that you no longer have the divx/ac3 codecs? Easy to overlook, easier to reinstall.



    --B
  • Reply 4 of 6
    joedredd1joedredd1 Posts: 6member
    my pal had exactly that problem, he could read cd-roms (like system disks) but the imac spat out recordable media, although they look the same, recordable optical disks are built very differently to factory pressed optical roms, and it's sometimes enough to irk an already twitchy drive.

    besides if such a protection had been built into osx there'd be people howling about it all over the mac-web



  • Reply 5 of 6
    trampttrampt Posts: 23member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bergz

    Is it possible that you no longer have the divx/ac3 codecs? Easy to overlook, easier to reinstall.



    --B



    Can you give me some better insight as to how I would do this. Not super Mac savy yet.



    Thanks in advance.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by trampt

    Can you give me some better insight as to how I would do this. Not super Mac savy yet.



    Thanks in advance.



    See if you have this.



    and this or this



    If you ever need any software ever, go to versiontracker or macupdate.



    If you have movie problems go to videohelp. All three are .coms.



    --B
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