I have a powerbook g4 titanium , 60 GB HD, 512 MB ram, 1Ghz processor. I use the program DVD Backup to put dvd’s on my desktop as TS folders. It has served me well on business trips, bored meetings, etc. I recently upgraded to Tiger and now I can not watch the created VIDEO_TS folders on the DVD player. What is the deal?
Thank you for asking this particular question. As it turns out, I, um, made a personal backup copy of a Disney DVD onto my laptop back when it was running Panther, and it worked fine with the Panther DVD Player.
Based on your question, I checked it out in Tiger, and you’re absolutely right! The Open VIDEO_TS… option on the File menu has been quietly renamed Open DVD Media… and you’re right, it no longer opens and works with VIDEO_TS folders. Isn’t that interesting?
Fortunately, it’s not a show-stopper, because there’s a great piece of freeware that you should already have on your Mac that plays oodles of different video and audio formats, far more than QuickTime and DVD Player: VLC Player. VLC is part of a remarkably sophisticated suite of VideoLan applications available for a wide range of operating systems, ranging from Linuxes to Windows and, of course, Mac OS X.
Download this application, choose File –> Open File…, select your VIDEO_TS folder, and voila! You’re watching your movie. Here, I’ll show you:
Just don’t tell Disney about this screen shot, okay? 🙂
Anyway, download VLC Player and you’ll be good to go!
“I figured it out. Not only does the folder have to be named VIDEO_TS but also, the individual files must be named VTS_01_1.VOB etc. There can be nothing else in the file names. Before I changed the file names they were named Movie name/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB — sort of like a path. I deleted everything in the name of each file except VTS_01_1.VOB etc. and now DVD player plays it. Whew!
Posted by: elliott at August 13, 2005 1:55 AM”
This guy is totally right. I had a similar problem. Instead of having the name of the movie before the VTS_01_1.VOB , i had “part” written after. I erased the “part” of every single file of this kind and it worked just fine. And that’s my story! *flies away*
You can use Magic DVD Ripper for mac to rip the dvd to mac not the big TS files but other video formats, also you can use Magic DVD Copier for mac to copy the DVD to another dvd disc
If you launch DVD Player from the Applications folder before you insert the DVD, what happens, Ellen?
I have a brand new Mac OS X Lion. I have never had a MAC before and am getting very frustrated trying to play DVD’s. I can hear them but can’t see them. I followed the directions to see if I have a DVD player (I do) and also to download VLC. I have tried going to the VIDEO_TS folder and selected it but still no DVD showing. Does anyone have any suggestions? The DVD is good and is playing audio fine. Thanks, Ellen
Justine, does the DVD play properly on your TV or other DVD player? It is posible to get a damaged, scratched or otherwise unplayable disk. Also, can you watch other movies on your computer?
I was really excited t find your post; someone addressing this problem of my Mac not playing a DVD which is apparently not in a Mac-friendly format. So I downloaded VLC – I’d previously deleted it because it was always returning errors, but I figured I’d give it a shot, anyway. Sadly, I’m still getting errors instead of Sweeney Todd. It says it can’t undf files & that there’s no way to fix this. it actually says in the error log, repeatedly, there’s no way to fix this. I generally use Movist, another great piece of free software; and this is actually the first thing I’ve come across it won’t play. I was shocked it would be of all things a store bought copy of Sweeney Todd.
Great post Dave, thanks!!!!!!
cass, australia
Hello,
so I have read and tried every single suggestion but I still cannot get picture to play and it will not open at all in VLC. This is not a ripped DVD it is an actual DVD movie that I paid for. I do not understand why I can’t get the picture working as I can hear the audio just fine. I am hoping you can help me as the above solutions have failed in my case. TIA
I have a Mac OS x, version 10.6.8. I burned a dvd from iphoto slideshow straight a blank disc-verbatim dvd-r & memorex dvd-rw. Both play on my computer, but will not play on my blu-ray player. What’s wrong? PLease help!
Thanks thats helpful. Worked well
Thanks! This was very good info.
I have Mac Pro (Early 2008) and haven’t been able to burn ANY movies since Snow Leopard. Now running Lion. Has anyone else ran into this and fixed it?
Sandie, how is your husband making these recordings?
My husband records programmes on to DVD for me to watch later on the macbook. The DVD recorder uses DVD-RW DVDs. I have VLC but have not been able to play them … have tried several options but the only one that almost worked had the picture very tall and narrow – and that was on fullscreen!
any advice would be very welcome
Hello! I have a G4 system, 10.4.11, DVD Player application does not work and displays the following screen:
There was an initialization error
A valid DVD drive could not be found. (-70012)
How could i fix it? Thanks
If I burn a VIDEO_TS folder on a DVD, will it play in a normal DVD player?
WE have issues with both VLC and DVD player in a MAC context.
DVD player reminds us we can only rezone another ‘n’ times. If we cancel, it ejects the disc.
VLC is simply not playing the media, with certain discs which play fine elsewhere. Running one iMAC on 10.5.8 , on MACbookPRO as well, plus one MACbook on Snowleopard.
On our copy of ‘Big Fish’ the VIDEO_TS folder is upper case all. Cannot copy to HDD. Crashes VLC if I drag the VIDEO_TS folder onto the VLC media player.
Front Row simply doesn’t recognise the DVD, yet , in a windows context,plays fine.
The search goes on…..
Why argue? DVD Player is trash. You SHOULD have VLC installed anyways. Ahh n00bs.
I just upgraded to snow leopard. I can’t play anything with video_ts on either dvd player, front row, or vlc. what gives?
Hi
My mac will pay 3 of the dvds in a box set that i have but wont play the last 3 dvds of the same box set, it will load the menu but as soon as i go to play the episodes i get the circle of death and i have to switch the computer off to be able to stop the dvd and actually eject, it just doesnt make sense
Kathryn 🙂
Hi, I am a PC. I rip each of my dvd’s to a single .iso file and then play them with vlc. I can even load a bunch of them in the vlc cue. each individual file (movie) is simple to move around and sort. my son is a mac and he wants to be like me, now I am here learning how to be a mac. I asked him to buy me a cuppa latte for being so awesome. It is nice that we can all get along.
peace
I.. love u!
u = as awesome as the movie casshern.
thank u
<3
yes
But you can also try out Front Row on Mac, which can also play the Video_TS files very well.
http://www.mediasoftmac.com/article/how-to-copy-dvd-to-video-ts-on-mac.html#129
In the upgrade version of DVD Copy for Mac, we add Copy DVD to DVD player Media on Mac. If you choose to copy your DVD as DVD Player Media, you can directly play the output media file with Mac DVD player .
Resource: http://www.mac-dvd-software.com/tutorial/dvd-to-playermedia-mac.html#131
Guys guys
This is way to complicated!
of course VLC works fine. I use it a lot myself.
Try this: Start DVD Player.app & drag the movie folder onto the working DVD.app
works like a charm for me !
I have downloaded this vlc media player and it doesn’t play dvd on my version mac os x 10.4.11 Tiger. The audio plays fine straight from the external drive, but the video is plain black screen.
I also tried the default dvd player that ships with Tiger, it doesn’t recognize the external drive at all.
Other dvd players display a green screen only and no audio.
I can’t help but wonder, is there a driver or codec I’m missing?
Any help would be appreciated
The DVD player is case sensitive. My Mac has been re-writing the Video_TS folder names (only obvious when I click on the file name in finder, it changes case before my eyes!) Check the case of the files you have on your drive and rename if needed. It appears that VLC does not care about the case of the folder names.