I do a lot of video editing using Adobe Premiere 2.0 in conjunction with a Matrox Capture card to put together promotional videos for the events that I run.

You can see a few example at YouTube - seanharry's Channel

The events I run are based around genre TV shows, so I use a lot of footage captured from DVD's to create promotional videos for the celebrity guests at the event.

I never had an issues, but recently found that I cannot capture images from certain DVD's. The image turns grey.

I dug out an old Panasonic DVD play that I bought exactly 10 years ago that doesn't work properly anymore. It makes a wheezing noise when a DVD is put in, and can only play a DVD for about 10 minutes before spitring it out.

But I dececided to try attaching this DVD player to my matrox card for capturing for one reason: I remember purchasing this one because it was region free (and region free wasn't easy to get in 199, but I remember when I got it reading in the notes that as well as the region coding, another feature of this player had been disabled; the copy protection stopping you from using it to copy DVD's to video. This was done, they claimed, because the copy protection affected some projectors, and not to encourage piracy. I laughed at this and it audatiousness.

Well, lo and behold, the DVD's that couldn't capture using my other players were fine with this. So I assume it is something to do with copy protection.

I'm not looking to pirate and sell peoples copyrighted material; I'm looking to finish off verious edits for promotion.

Can anybody recomend either a DVD player that will work for me, or a way around this problem.

Many thanks.