DVD-Software.info

[Bill Vermillion]

This one has me puzzled and I'm curious as to know why it is
happening in these rare instances.

I'm running XP-Pro. The DVD recorder is a Teac 840G - which is
a relabeled Plextor as I recall.

The DVR is a Philips 72. I've had instances where the disk looks
empty on the DVR, and I have just recorded a complete program.

In those instances, where the DVR says empty disk, I can use
ISO-Buster and find UDF files, or when those aren't found pull
a full track-at-once [tao] and then skip the first part of the file
using the copy in VideoRedo to pull of the part of the disk
that has the video information. I've done that a few times.

However I have about 4 disks [I've saved them and started looking
closely at them tonight] that are fully readable/playable on
the DVR, and a Philips 624 DVD player.

However they are seen as empty on the PC. When the disk is
inserted it thinks it's empty and want's to know what program it
should use for recording.

I abort out of that, and bring up ISO-Buster. All sectors
in ISO-buster show has 0x00.

I go to LBA 16384 - which is where I've always found the VOB's to
start - and the disk still shows 0x00s there too. In fact all
sectors show 0x00.

That means that the disk is not being read correctly by the DVD
device in my PC >or perhaps< there is something in the software
on the PCs at the lowest level that makes it seem empty. I suspect
the former - but who knows.

Can anyone explain this, or point me to technical information on to
why this is occuring, or how to circument this and be able to read
the disks.

The only common item that seems to be evident is that these
are Optodisks with a media identifier of OPTODISCOP4. But many
other of the OPTODISCOP4's have no problems.

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

[Ken Maltby]

I would suspect the drive you are using in your PC, you could
check for a firmware update or hack. You might borrow another
DVD Drive, that is rated to read your type RW, and see it your
PC can see it then.

Luck;
Ken

[Bill Vermillion]

Even the latest firmware 1.10 [released last week] doesn't change
this.

So here is a question. Since the disk is not recognized as
having data on it, is this from the drivers in MS [I'm running
XP-Pro with SP1 - and I have not put in SP2].

What is strange is that I started with the Opto-Disc RW from a
local vendor, and when there was a sale I got 50 Ritek +RW.

I have about 30 OptoDisc and 50 Riteks. I have ONLY seen this
on FOUR of the 4x OptoDisc, not all of the 4X and never on the
2X OptoDisc.

And I've recored on the discs many many times, using them as the
source disk on my Philips DVR-72, then making +R's on
the XP machine.

So it's only 4 disks that show this phenomenon. I'm wondering if
something got written when they were recording that makes them
appear empty.

Since I do want to get them onto +R, I'll probably bring the DVD
player to the PC and import via my Canopus ADVC300.

Then what I plan to do is try to copy the first bytes from an
operational disk to see if I can get it recongized. If that
succeeds then I can use ISO-Buster to read the full disk. As it is
since the disk seems to be empty, ISO-Buster shows 0x00 for all
sectors on the disk. That's why I suspect it may be something
in the MS side so that it is reporting to everything that
the disk is empty.

I don't have any DVD drives on my FreeBSD machines - so maybe I
need to stick one of those into a new machine I'm building up, as
I could use a 'dd' utility to suck off what is on the disk.

Thanks for the ideas.

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

[Bill Vermillion]

Something new. I had another disk that was playable with the
PowerDVD - and since it was +RW I was going to take one film from
it and reauthor two others.

However DVDDecryptor thought the disk was empty!!!!

I brought up ISO-Buster and it showed there were TWO tracks on the
disk. Track 0 was fairly short, while track 1 was 4+GB long.

I ran the extract on Track 0, and it came up with typical large
amount of files. Many starting at the same LBA, but you look for
the long files that start there.

I got everything off that disk, and sucked them into VideoRedo.
One file crashed VideoRedo, so I just ran the stream fix tool in
VideoRedo and it took care of that.

It's interesting how the supposedly standard DVD format shows up
differently in different programs. So far I've always been able to
recover with IB.

So in this instance the drive is recognizing the disk, but some aps
aren't. This only occurs rarely, and I've had to use IB less than
a dozen times - and this is over probably 600+ DVDs. All recorded
from cable or transfers from VHS/Beta I've recorded in the past 20
years.


Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

[Ken Maltby]

The "DVD Standard" isn't very. And it is somewhat flexible in what
it will allow. How hardware and software developers implement the
features described and if they maintain compatibility with other efforts
to implement/exploit the "Standard" can result in such problems.

Throw in a "Mixed-Mode" or multi "Track" disk and both drives and
software could encounter problems. Makes me wonder if a rip of some
of those might be recoverable, using normal disk repair tools like
Norton disk doctor? Or maybe even ChkDsk.

Luck;
Ken

[Bill Vermillion]

I was able to recover all of them - sometimes it took a bit long -
using ISO-Buster. I don't user Norton, having disliked the
changes he made in his utilities when somewhere in the time of the
move from DOS 2 to DOS 3.

ISO-Buster always recognized the disk when not even the OS did.
The slowest part of IB is when it does not fine UDF files or a
Lost+Found directory. It finds what it thinks are files, and then
goes through and tries to determine the type of files. And the LBA
start and stop blocks are listed for each file [ I've seen up to
190+ in one recovery operation], but it's pretty obvious where
the standard VOB's start when you find a file near the end that
starts at LBA 16384 that is about 800MB, and all other large files
after that start right after the LBA of the previious large file.

Then it's just a matter of extracting them and using VideoRedo.

Not a big deal as I've been used to editing at the disk level
from the days of my first computer back in 1977 - long before the
PC came into this world.

Maybe something I've posted will help others as they go googling
along :-)

And Ken - thanks for all your help getting me up to speed when I
first came to this group - and I'm sure all others thank you for
your more than generous help for all others who have problems.

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

[Ken Maltby]

1977, I think that was about the time I got a TRS-80 to help out
my Altair. BCD and Octal Rule!

Luck;
Ken

P.S. It looks like I should give ISOBuster another look.

[Bill Vermillion]

Never did have an Altair, but I think Scott Adams did. [not the
artist - the game author ]. I got the 4th Model I sold in Orlando.
I ordered it and it ook 4 months to get as RS never thought it would
be so popular. Serial number was about 10,000 on that one.

Store manager got the first one for himself. My only S-100
system was a CCS CPU in a Vector Graphics box, with TI serial
and Godbout memory. Disc controller was also from CCS as I recall.

I need to dig that out and fire it up again. Today's users had not
idea the hoops you had to jump through to build new images any time
you changed anything or added memory.

[arifg]

I've found a workaround how to make DVD RW made with hardware DVD recorders readable on PC. It is not working with ALREADY written DVD's but if to prepare a blank DVD RW BEFORE first recording on a way described below it will be readable on any computer DVD reader regardless of DVD reader's brand and type of software after being written on a hardware recorder.

To make disk compadible first of all (before any recordings in hardware DVD recorder) apply FULL ERASE on blank DVD RW with any software which allows to. For exaple - Nero Burning ROM - "Recorder"->"Erase ReWritable Disk" and choose "Full-erase Rewritable Disk" from the pull-down list box. Do not make Quick Erase - it does not work - only FULL ERASE option makes all necessary file system initializations and fills media with zero-data. Another way (if there is no software with FULL ERASE option) is to burn the media with any dummy data using burning software COMPLETELY (i.e. use set of files or one file with 4.3 Gb of summary size) and quick-erase media after that. Both that ways take up to 20 minutes and will reduce writing life of the disc, but there will no problems to read it on a computer after using it in the DVD recorders.. I tried it on differend computers and with different playing programs and it works.

Regards,
Arif