VLC Player

I'm using an external DVD drive to play DVD's on to my laptop as it doesn't have a built in CD tray.

I downloaded VLC player so I could capture some of the content from the DVD's however, on DVD's that I have recorded on in the past playback on VLC Player is fine. In the last few week's I've been recording from VCR on to DVD and when playing these clips in VLC player, the picture plays for a few seconds then the audio just stops.

I've found away of solving this by adjusting the caching file to 59999 in the settings and it seems to work perfectly.

Why do DVD's recorded on from 2005 play fine in VLC player and newly recorded DVD's which I have recorded on in the past few weeks don't?

+/-/RAM difference perhaps?

Cross-compatibility of DVD+/-R[AM] was always poor amongst recorders, but I'd have imagined VLC would have enough codecs to conquer that...

I've found -RW's from my DVD recorder don't play in my DVD drive even after finalising. +/-R's are fine.

The external DVD drive is +RW as are the recordable DVD's i'm using at the moment.

And the older ones? I'd expect your external drive to be cross-compatible.

The DVD recorder which I used to record was also a Freeview receiver so I'd often record programmes from Freeview on to DVD. That recorder I no longer have as it stopped working a few years later.