Using AnyDVD and DVDShrink, encoded fine, burned fine. Put it in the player and it doesn't start. I can fast forward it and get to the opening screen and play it from there, but no other way to start it.

This is a Sony disc. They have something newer than the German one?

Without AnyDVD running, using only DVDShrink the disc reports navigation error.

Any ideas?

anydvd left all the blank titles in, did you reauthor main movie only with shrink?

Reauthor. I never use anything but the main title and dump all the languages and extra sound tracks.

did you enable preview and see all the blank areas at the beginning, I reauthored one to fix it a while back.

I always use preview. I did not see any blank areas at the beginning, it looked like all the other discs I've done before. This is the first one that I've ever done that just refuses to autostart in the player.

Live and learn. I'm new to AnyDVD. I put the disc back in and checked what AnyDVD said.

It follows:

Summary for drive F: (AnyDVD 5.8.4.1)
Drive (Hardware) Region: 1

Media is a Data DVD.
Booktype: dvd-rom (version 1), Layers: 2 (opposite)
Size of first Layer: 2084960 sectors (4072 MBytes)
Total size: 4169920 sectors (8144 MBytes)

Video DVD (or CD) label: LEGEND_OF_ZORRO
Media is CSS protected!
Video Standard: NTSC
Media is locked to region(s): 1!

RCE protection not found.
DVD structure appears to be correct.
Found & removed structural copy protection (Arccos, Puppetlock)!
Found & removed invalid VOBUs!
Autorun not found on Video DVD.
Found & removed 3 bad sector protections!
Emulating RPC-2 drive with region 1!

It says Autorun not found on Video DVD. The original starts right up in both the PC player and the regular player. The copy does not auto run.

I wonder how many more of these I will find?

Thanks for your patience, I've just never had a copy fail to start right up in the player.

must be a anydvd bug, that sony's exploiting, dvdfab did it fine

it's not a bug at all. anydvd eliminates autorun purposely. you can shut this off in the settings.

letting things autorun is not usually a good idea. how do you think sony gets its rootkits and things on your syste, (granted it hasn't be detected on dvds yet, but if they could include it on a cd, dvds were pretty close behind!)

if you'd like to allow autorun go into anydvds settings and under the DVD tab uncheck "PC-friendly - autorun on video dvd"

use dvd fab and shrink or recode and you're done.
http://www.dvdidle.com/free.htm

Re Autorun and AnyDVD

I have never changed any settings in AnyDVD except to check the box to remove protection on CD's

I have copied quite a number of DVD's using DVDShrink and lately have added AnyDVD to the mix for the Sony stuff. This is the ONLY disc I've burned that does not start in the player automatically. I can live with hitting the fast foward until I see the opening screen and hitting play if I must.

As this is different from my other experience I simply wondered why it was different, and to see if anyone had any ideas why this was so.

Thanks to everyone who has replied

having blank video at the beginning and the inability to autorun are not the same thing.

i thought your problem was that the disc would not autorun...and with anydvd running it shouldn't autorun.

i have a disc that had empty space at the beginning, and I'm nto sure what did it. some sort of glitch. i thought it was a coaster at first until i fast forwarded a bit.

have you tried re-ripping it? do the ripped files give this empty space when you paly them from your hard drive as well?

http://www.slysoft.com/download/changes_anydvd.txt

looks like they are updating it s often as dvdfab

since its inception in 2003, anydvd has issued an average of 2.23 updates a MONTH.

that's pretty darn impressive.

69 separate updates in 31 months...

you know sony's using it too, test test test

I copied it twice, thought I had a coaster the first time. It would have been the very first coaster I'd ever had. Both results are the same in the DVD player. The discs go in, they start to read and the screen goes black. I have to fast forward until I see something and hit the play button to watch them. If I don't fast forward nothing happens at all.

When I put the copies in my DVD player on the PC they fire right up in the PC's player like they should in the regular player.

I wouldn't know how to play these from my hard drive, frankly. I've relied on DVDShrink's automatic turn over to burn them in Nero.

shrink's biggest mistake was integrating burn with into shrink

Did you have Remove annoying adverts and trailers, ticked when you made the backup?
This can cause the hang you are experiencing, on backups as well as on some originals when played.