What worked for me: following your precise instruction to drag the DVD icon from the Desktop into the VLC Window. What I tried and failed before finding your posting: [1] Dragging the VOB File into the VLC Window. [2] Right-clicking the VOB File and selecting Open with VLC - the same for [2] Quicktime, [3] DVDPlayer, [4] FinalVideo, [5] MKPlayer, [6] OmniPlayer, [7] VideoProc. And then I gave up and prayed for a miracle, at which point I found your posting. Many thanks and Cheers!
I just got a m2 mac mini for xmas and i hooked my to LG dvd burners ive had for years, and tried this with VLC as the drive are region 1, and it worked like a charm, just open vlc program on desktop and drag dvd icon onto it, beautiful, dont need a specific apple superdrive to do it
After unboxing a brand new Apple disc drive, why does the region drive start at -1 instead of automatically setting it at whatever region coded disc I first inserted? There is no such thing as region -1!
If you didn't already fix this, it was a bug in macOS Catalina. Either update your Mac or connect your DVD drive to somebody else's Mac, change the region to 1 if you are in North America or 2 for Europe and so forth and then it's set
I'm so confused.... as far as I can tell I'm doing everything right, but nothing happens! It just says "DVD_VIDEO" in VLC and will show a blue bar at the bottom for half a second when I try the play button, but nothing happens. Any tips??
Hmm, that's puzzling to me too. Are you able to play any other DVDs using VLC, or with the default "DVD Player" app? Maybe this tweak to the process could help: (1) Instead of dragging the DVD icon from your desktop directly to VLC, right click the icon and select "Open". (2) You'll see a window pop up with two folders: VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. (3) Drag VIDEO_TS into VLC, and press the Play button. I hope that works. As a last resort, there is a more complex piece of software that you could try (MakeMKV), which is for decoding encrypted DVDs to save to your computer. It might be able to handle it, if VLC can't.
Dang, that must be frustrating. I haven't had that issue, but I found something on Google about a setting change that might help. In the Mac menu bar, click "VLC Media Player", then "Preferences", then the "Input/Codecs" tab in that window. If you see any setting called "Hardware decoding" or "hardware acceleration", disable it. They say that it helps sometimes with crashing.
In my local store I can get a "Apple USB SuperDrive MD564" Do you know if MD564 counts as the same thing? Basically I want to be able to play American/Japanese DVD's. I'm located in Europe.
The drive has nothing to do with the region and for that matter no DVD player ever made is locked by hardware. It's just a little laser reading a plastic disc. The region lock is software based. So it doesn't matter which drive you get
I wish this was the top result for every "region free dvd player" search. It worked perfectly on my MacBook Pro 13" M1
What worked for me: following your precise instruction to drag the DVD icon from the Desktop into the VLC Window.
What I tried and failed before finding your posting: [1] Dragging the VOB File into the VLC Window. [2] Right-clicking the VOB File and selecting Open with VLC - the same for [2] Quicktime, [3] DVDPlayer, [4] FinalVideo, [5] MKPlayer, [6] OmniPlayer, [7] VideoProc. And then I gave up and prayed for a miracle, at which point I found your posting. Many thanks and Cheers!
I just got a m2 mac mini for xmas and i hooked my to LG dvd burners ive had for years, and tried this with VLC as the drive are region 1, and it worked like a charm, just open vlc program on desktop and drag dvd icon onto it, beautiful, dont need a specific apple superdrive to do it
VLC OP
Thank you, Henry, it helped me a lot, because I already could not change the region.
After unboxing a brand new Apple disc drive, why does the region drive start at -1 instead of automatically setting it at whatever region coded disc I first inserted? There is no such thing as region -1!
If you didn't already fix this, it was a bug in macOS Catalina. Either update your Mac or connect your DVD drive to somebody else's Mac, change the region to 1 if you are in North America or 2 for Europe and so forth and then it's set
I'm so confused.... as far as I can tell I'm doing everything right, but nothing happens! It just says "DVD_VIDEO" in VLC and will show a blue bar at the bottom for half a second when I try the play button, but nothing happens. Any tips??
Hmm, that's puzzling to me too. Are you able to play any other DVDs using VLC, or with the default "DVD Player" app?
Maybe this tweak to the process could help:
(1) Instead of dragging the DVD icon from your desktop directly to VLC, right click the icon and select "Open".
(2) You'll see a window pop up with two folders: VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS.
(3) Drag VIDEO_TS into VLC, and press the Play button.
I hope that works. As a last resort, there is a more complex piece of software that you could try (MakeMKV), which is for decoding encrypted DVDs to save to your computer. It might be able to handle it, if VLC can't.
ive tried this many different ways on two different MacBook Pros and VLC just crashes and wont play the DVD
Dang, that must be frustrating. I haven't had that issue, but I found something on Google about a setting change that might help. In the Mac menu bar, click "VLC Media Player", then "Preferences", then the "Input/Codecs" tab in that window. If you see any setting called "Hardware decoding" or "hardware acceleration", disable it. They say that it helps sometimes with crashing.
@@henrypoole Thanks- I tried that and its not fixing the immediate crash. Hmmmm
In my local store I can get a "Apple USB SuperDrive MD564" Do you know if MD564 counts as the same thing? Basically I want to be able to play American/Japanese DVD's. I'm located in Europe.
I'm not certain whether it is the same thing, but it does seem to be the same.
The drive has nothing to do with the region and for that matter no DVD player ever made is locked by hardware. It's just a little laser reading a plastic disc. The region lock is software based. So it doesn't matter which drive you get
how can i go again on drive region?
If you run out of region changes, you can't change it again, but you can still use VLC to play the disc.