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By Farrah Penn - Last Updated: Oct. 24, 2019 | Contact Author

[Verified Fix] VLC Cannot Play a Non-UDF Mastered DVD

Want to Stick to VLC to Play Non-UDF DVD? Jump to try the easiest solution.

Summary: It's frustrating when you are ready to enjoy an old DVD but VLC throws the error:

"Cannot play a non-UDF mastered DVD. You input can't be opened: VLC is unable to open the MRL dvd:///F:/."

This error has something to do with the file system of your disc. While UDF is the standard format for DVDs now, its precedent ISO9660 is a tough work for VLC.

VLC Cannot Play a Non-UDF Mastered DVD Error Message

Analysis: VLC Cannot Play a Non-UDF Mastered DVD

There are plenty of situations in which your VLC media player have DVD playback errors.

One scenario is you've got a Non-UDF DVD on hand and you attempted to play it with your newly downloaded free media player VLC. Naturally, you have followed the user's guide of VLC by clicking the menu "Media > Open disk..." from the player or "Play with VLC media player" from the context menu. However, what turned up on your screen was only an error prompting "Cannot play a non-UDF mastered DVD".

Other situations could be:

1. There is no sound or the audio is out of sync with the video.
2. There's lagging or choppy video playback.
3. VLC skipping your Non-UDF DVD files.

Don't know what to do in such situations? Before diving into the solutions, a little background knowledge on UDF and Non-UDF DVD would be helpful.

What is Non-UDF Mastered DVD? Why VLC DVD Playback Failed?
Reset VLC or Install Libdvdcss for Playing NON-UDF DVDs
Rip Non-UDF DVD to VLC Compatible Formats

What is Non-UDF mastered DVD? Why VLC DVD Playback Failed?

UDF is short for Universal Disc Format. It uses the standard Packet writing technology (PW, Packet Writing) to treat CD-R as hard disk which allows users to modify and delete files on the disc.

A typical non-UDF format usually refers to ISO 9660 which was the first worldwide adopted disk file system preceding UDF. ISO9660 restrict filenames to 8 characters or 11 with extension Joliet, and uppercase is mandate. Plus, long path is not allowed, i.e. no deeper directories. For ISO9660/Joliet, file size should be less than 4GB, and Unicode is not allowed, with a limited character set of 110.

While for UDF, Unicode and long path is supported. Plus, many other restrictions imposed on ISO9660 are removed, making UDF more compatible for various situations. However, the trade off is that, UDF has problem to keep consistency with older systems that simply don't understand UDF.

To sum up, UDF is the standard format for DVDs now, and the old one was ISO 9660. Also, you can have multiple file systems on DVD i.e. ISO9660/UDF disk, in order to make it most compatible. If your disk is written with ISO9660 only, then this non-UDF mastered DVD will cause error in VLC playback.

Reset VLC or Install Libdvdcss for Playing NON-UDF DVDs

Hint: If your disc is ISO9660 only (as oppose to UDF or UDF/ISO9660 bridge), then there is no luck with VLC at this time. According to VideoLAN wiki updated in 2019, although libcdio supports ISO9660 image reading, VLC have no access plugin to use it. This mostly happens with old DVDs, and you can jump to next solution to rip non-UDF DVD for successful VLC playback.

If you are uncertain whether "IOS9660 only" complaint DVD caused this error and prefer to troubleshoot VLC, update VLC to the lasted version (menu > help > Check for updates) and read on.

Install Libdvdcss in VLC to Fix DVD Playback Error

Libdvdcss is a free DVD playback library designed by VLC to access DVDs without bothering about decryption. You can install it to solve some DVD won't play in VLC error. For ISO9660 however, you have to either use another player like WMP or rip and convert DVD for successful playback.

Step 1. Download Libdvdcss from VideoLAN resources, and install it. The latest version of Libdvdcss is 1.4.1.

Step 2: To successfully install it, you must do as follow:
• Open the libdvdcss
• Find & enter the subdirectory libdvdcss
• Execute the command via Ubuntu shell
./configure
make
make install

Rip Non-UDF DVD to VLC Compatible Formats ISO9660 might be a dead end for VLC, but not with VideoProcFast Solution

VideoProc can convert DVDs to MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, MPEG Videos, and best part is that, it supports various types of DVDs whether encrypted or not. This software can also automatically detect the disc file system and its right title to transcode DVD at full speed to any format supported by media players like VLC.

Follow the steps below to convert MOV to Adobe Premiere Pro/Elements supported video format without damaging the original quality

Step 1. Insert DVD and launch VideoProc. Click the DVD icon on the interface.

Step 2. Click the DVD disc button. VideoProc will auto detect your DVD, hit Done.

Step 3. Choose target format at bottom and hit Run to convert DVD to VLC friendly format.

• You can choose MP4 as it's widely supported with various players, platforms and devices.
• Or you can go to backup tab in target format, choose ISO to clone DVD to ISO image.

Final Words:

As the best VLC companion, VideoProc is not simply a converter, but also excels at all facets of video processing, such as cutting, cropping, merging, adding effects etc. Free download VideoProc to rip DVD for VLC.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Farrah Penn

Farrah Penn has been a copywriter at Digiarty since 2014. Because of the occupational requirement and personal interest, Farrah has carried on broad and profound study and researches to multimedia related stuff, popular electronic devices and multimedia programs in the market.