I just had a service convert our VHS tapes to DVD but they will not play on my iMac using the Apple superdrive. Can someone tell me why and what I need to do?

irishgreen wrote:

A blue screen opens up with a “title” banner and date, but I cannot play it. So, Yes, the Finder has found the DVD player - just won’t play it!

If VLC cannot play it, then there is a major problem with the work that was performed since VLC can play all of the common formats.

Even if VLC can play the videos, they may not be in a universal standard format you would prefer.

I think you will need to go back to the company which converted your videos and made this DVD and ask for assistance and more information. There are a lot of things which could be going on here as you can see from all the different ideas suggested by the various contributors. It may be a good idea to take your laptop with you to show them what actually happens.

If you burn it with either iDVD, Roxio Toast, or some other "burn" app, they will create a DVD that can be read by any DVD player. I had some older footage I took to a place that did "conversions" - nice looking DVD, but would not play anywhere except their own equipment. They then converted it and it was fine. I also have a DVD recorder that records TV programs to a hard drive or DVD - if you do not finalize it according to their instructions, it will play on the recorder it was created on, but nowhere else. Converting to an MPEG-2 is the safest as that is a format all DVD players can play.

I did this work for my family using Apple products (iDVD, iMovie) and verifying at each step using the internal drive of my 2011 MBP. It played easily on a generic home DVD player.

Any professional service should have refund policy if you need to take the work to someone else.

I found the process painful, but at least even my errors in titling consistently resulted in a "playable" DVD. Separating the hours of streamed images into title-able segments was almost the worst part ... first turn into straight video, then iMovie into more fragments. iDVD compilation taking hours because it was a 2011MBP. Pretty much the last defendable reason to keep my 2011 MBP despite having a new 16 in 2019 model.

Conversion is time-consuming and leaves much room for error, which is why people charge so much for ti.

Does the Finder even see the DVD drive mounted?

One of the best video players out there is VLC and it can play regular "movie" DVDs as well as many types of video file formats if the company made a data DVD of the recordings.

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

If they used a non-standard format, they made a mistake (my opinion). "DVD" is a generic format that any conversion software should create by default, with specific selection required to make it incompatible with Apple.

Good luck.

You don't need a software to play it - they need to give you DVDs that will play in any stand alone DVD player. They might have formatted them for a Windows computer or their own proprietary format. Did they ask you any questions when you gave them the order? There are also some formats that will only play on the equipment they were created on, so they need to be "finalized" in order to play anywhere else.

As babowa said, there may be several "intermediate" formats used along the way to creating the final generic DVD. I still have the Apple-specific iMovie files that can be used to create the final generic DVD using iDVD software. PCs may not play the intermediate files, though.

Yes, converting, editing and rendering video takes a very long time even if you have the best processor, most RAM, etc. One app that worked flawlessly was MPEG Streamclip 2 (still does on Sierra) and it was perfect for conversion - screenshot of the file > export options:

The OP might want to take a new approach ... self-service.

Get a VHS deck from a second-hand store if needed, get the inexpensive software to read the video from those inexpensive RCA cables into raw video files. At least pull the degrading mag-tape into digital before they are too damaged. Then the OP can experiment with recommended conversion tools and get a method set up with one video ... then as they say "rinse and repeat". May even want to do as I ... manually separate into "chapters, years, events, etc".

But if the firm they chose cannot deliver, take matters into your own hands.

Maybe ask the service that converted them. We have no idea what the service did or what format the files are.