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Hi Edugeekists! Does anyone know how a school might stand legally should they show a currently popular (musical) film at the school's Xmas ball? I choose my legalese carefully Cheers Andrew

Hello, I am just learning about SCORM and I have a few DVDs that need to be transferred to SCORM format. Does anyone know how to do that?

my new school laptop had SNB software added but when I tried to capture a still from a paused DVD it captured as a live link (it captured the whole screen but displayed part of the image but I could move the image square around to reveal the whole screen - like spotlight!) When I turned the DVD off the images captured blanked out. HELP!

I wonder if anyone can help with this one: The nice people from the cable testing company visited a couple of weeks ago, and failed all the amplifiers in one of our teaching blocks, eight classrooms in total. I can see why -- no earth on the cable, which runs into the case at 240V, and no external sheath on the wires. I was going to argue with them, but they have a point (despite these have passed in previous years ...) Finding a suitable replacement is proving more difficult than I thought it would. Hills Components, Maplin, eBuyer, eBay, etc, don't have amplifiers, or do have them but they're too big or expensive or whatever. I've attached photos of the sort of thing I'm after, but anything with multiple phono inputs and speaker output would be great. Please recommend a supplier if you know where I can get these or something similar. (BTW, pics are of the "safe" units, not the failed ones. The OR.M units are fairly nifty and I'd buy more if I could track them down.) -- Simon

I have a collection of school made DVD films, some of which are quite valuable as teaching resources (especially film of dodgy experiments with mercury etc) that I want to back up. This is in addition to making them available on ClickView, but we need to avoid compression losses. What I'd like to have some view on, is how to do it. I'm thinking of copying them to an external HDD, and then storing that somewhere safe. What is the best way to create an image on a HDD that can simply be copied onto a new DVD in the event of loss or damage. Is it best to simply copy the Video TS folder across? Or is there a better way to create a burnable image?

Hello, all.. Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this - perhaps someone can move it if required? This isn't a plea for help, more of a "this seems to work for me, so perhaps it'll be useful" One of my pet hates is support calls saying that the CD/DVD drive on PC123 keeps opening, and I get there to find some little darling has crammed something (often unspeakable) in it. The record is a 30cm plastic ruler folder up. Nice to see they're dedicated to something! I digress. In 99% of my classes, the pupils have absolutely no need for the CD/DVD drive - other than to amuse themselves by breaking it. I've put together a small script which installs the Open Source CDROM-Lock (CDRom-Lock | Download CDRom-Lock software for free at SourceForge.net) as a background service using ServiceEx (ServiceEx - Run Applications as a Service) Once running, there's a system tray icon where you can enter a password to unlock a drive. Basically, it's configured to lock all CD/DVD drives - though you can always tweak it to your own requirements. Because it's a service, the door is also locked on the login screen. It's not perfect, but it's a start The script is a small AutoIt script to let you install/uninstall the service. Should anyone wish a copy of the script, let me know. Cheers, Gerard

Hello I've now been told that the head wants to change the Prospectus for the school and add a virtual DVD of all subject areas including videos and students talking about the courses and facilities at the school. We have the camera primed and ready to go but once we get all the data I really am unsure of what is the best system to use? Any ideas - we need to do it sadly on the cheap as well! Thanks

I know this thread has been posted many times, but I was just wondering what schools do for DVD playback? Currently we are buying PowerDVD OEM for each PC which needs DVD playback, and locally installing it . In the past I have always used MPC for DVD playback on XP but I am a little concerned about the legalities of doing this in a School. Obviously a free codec like ffdshow would be ideal as it would allow editing through windows movie maker as well for MP4 files but through reading a lot of the posts on this forum I am confused about the fact that an open source implementation of it still is breaking the mpeg patent (or something like that!) making it illegal :s Anyhow as you can probably see I'm mightily confused about the whole subject now!

I have tried several version of VLC on several different machines and my dvd will still not play it is a dual layer dvd when i do right click play with vlc player my hard drive goes nuts but vlc player doesn't launch and doesn't play. If i open VLC player and then select open disc and then play the hard drive goes nuts and but still wont play, the hard drive will remain going nuts I until i stop the process. I have tried the dvd in mpc and it will play but prefer to use vlc player. i found the dvd will play if you install version 1.1.10 this found by luck when a member of staff tried the dvd on one of our older machines. I have uninstall the new version from my laptop and tried the older version and the dvd plays perfect. I have posted on VLC forum but with no joy anyone on here experienced any issue.

Dear All, Our newest computers aren't going to have DVD drives - naturally most teachers have no idea what a DVD is... But English are a little upset! Any recommendations for a means of purchasing digital versions of films so we can host on a cloud system - rather than pass actual DVDs around the school. Thanks Peter

Link: “They curdle like milk”: WB DVDs from 2006–2008 are rotting away in their cases - Ars Technica Collectors have known about this problem for years It's helpful that WBD recently provided some clarity about this situation, but its statement to JoBlo appears to be the first time the company has publicly acknowledged the disc problems. This is despite DVD collectors lamenting early onset disc rot for years, including via YouTube and online forums. YouTuber Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader, which said he conducted research through his own vast DVD collection and via forum discussions, claimed in November 2021 and May 2022 that the affected discs came out from 2006 to 2009, differing from WBD's recent statement. The YouTuber said that the problems "centered mostly around classic films and box sets but also extends to some TV seasons and standalone releases.” Explaining the problem, he said: The theory, which has not been substantiated by WBD, is that the defective discs all came from a specific manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania that used subpar materials and cut corners, resulting in poorly made discs. "They all go bad. They curdle like milk," YouTuber and DVD collector RetroBlasting said in a March 2024 video*. Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader noted that owners of WB DVDs can check to see if their discs were manufactured by the maligned plant by looking at the inner ring codes on the DVDs' undersides. Ars Technica reached out to WBD about why it didn't publicly disclose the problem earlier and why it's not offering refunds (especially in cases where replacements aren't possible). We'll update this article if we hear back. We also asked WBD about calls for the company to share a master list of affected DVDs in order to help collectors and the secondhand market. Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader made his own list, but without WB confirmation, it could have inaccuracies. In the meantime, though, if you have DVDs distributed by WB that you haven't played in a while, now is a good time to double-check if they're still functioning. * Clip begins at, about, 34 minutes 40 seconds.

I've been asked to investigate the possibilities of creating DVDs for each year group of the school - in particular the senior years that are about to leave. The school are planning to sell these DVDs to the pupils, although they want to have music playing in the background (chart music at the time etc). My question is how to ensure we meet copyright royalty restrictions on the music? As we are planning to sell these DVDs to the pupils, what type of license do we require to enable us to sample music throughout the DVD? Anyone got previous experience of doing such a task? thanks in advance

Hi - we have an original DVD (Of Mice & Men) which plays fine in Windows Media Player, (so its not firmware / driver related) but trying to play it through our school standard MPC-BE refused to play due to a copy protection error. The region code is set correctly (region 2- UK) which is what the disk claims it needs to be... and ideas of a setting that we've overlooked or configured wrong? Jordy

Hi all, It's that time of year again when staff want to start playing DVD's to the class and I've got a bit of an issue with a few of our PC's. The PC's in question are P4 1.8GHz units with 512mb Ram and plenty of HDD space free. However, when playing DVD's the CPU usage is always between 90 and 100% causing the DVDs to skip. So far I've tried PowerDVD 6, VLC and Media Player Classic but they all do the same. I've also stopped the antivirus whilst playing DVD's but get the same problem. Is the problem that my hardware is not fast enough? Could anyone recommend a resource-light DVD player instead of the aforementioned? Anything else i can try to make the DVDs run smoothly?

I have a bunch of HP PCs here. They come with WinDVD, however the region set on the DVD drive is 'none'. Thus when WinDVD first starts up it prompts for a region settings. Obviously this isn't going to work because teachers will probably muck it up. So I need to set the region some other way. Perhaps a VBS script or a command line tool?