Errors Reading Old DVDs

[Bobby]

I now have another piece of work to do.

My collection of DVDs from all the old family video tapes, photos, slides, etc. has grown to almost 50 DVDs. Of course, the most recent were done with the newer versions of PRE, using good Taiyo Yuden media, and directly printed (no paper labels).

I have kept all the source for all my projects, but the original ones (1994) were done in Pinnacle, which I no longer have, and were printed on whatever DVD blanks and paper labels pasted on.

Anyhow, with lots of gigabytes of storage, I decided to read the DVD images and store them on hard drive - so I would have not only the source, but the output as well.

Sure enough, the first one I tried (DVD 01) is getting severe read failures, although it does seem to play in my TV DVD player. I found that on my other (older) PC that it would read better, and so I am now attempting to copy the DVD to a temporary DVD and see if the other PC can read the copy. Of course, I tried cleaning the DVD.

The game plan is to check on a firmware upgrade for the drive in the Video PC and perhaps to soak off the paper label in case that might be the cause of the problem.

Any further suggestions?

[Chuck Engels]

Bob, Don't you have a Pyro Link or Canopus Converter?
I seem to remember that you do. Anyway, if you have one you can capture the DVD directly from your TV DVD player.

[Helen]

Bob,
I have found that soaking off the paper label also helps in reading the dvd that has errors. I have managed to salvage a couple of dvd's by doing this and then reburning to better media and not using labels anymore.
Hope this helps
Helen

[Bobby]

Thanks Chuck. That might be an extreme step. I did go into my closet and find my copy of Pinnacle Studio 8 that was used to create the DVDs. I could always install that and since I have the source, just re-write the DVD images again.

Status:

1) I checked the DVD drive firmware level, and it is the latest.

2) I tried reading DVD 01 on all 3 drives that I had, and all failed in one way or another. I then tried DVD 02 at it was better but still some failure.

This is all a bit unanticipated as the DVDs were always checked on my PC before putting them on the shelf. Are we seeing media deterioration here?

Questions:

1) If I install Pinnacle 8, do you think I will have any interference with PRE - CODEC problems, etc.?

2) Only one file failed on DVD 02 and it was a BUP file - since a BUP is a copy of an IFO, can I just copy the IFO and thus have a workable image to write to DVD? I did try writing it without the BUP and NERO gave me a warning, but did write it and it did play at the TV.

[Bob]

Are we seeing media deterioration here?

I think that's a strong possiblity. A lot of the dyes used in CDs and DVDs are not as stable as the ones used by Taiyo Yuden. I've run into the same problem with some of the older discs I was using. I haven't had a problem with the Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim discs I'm using now. I've never used paper labels and I've been careful to not use anything which would etch or damage the reflective back coating.

since a BUP is a copy of an IFO, can I just copy the IFO and thus have a workable image to write to DVD?

Yes, they are an exact copy. Just be sure to rename the file.

I'm not sure about reinstalling Pinnacle 8, it would be possible to introduce a conflict. But, I have no idea whether that would actually happen. A bigger issue is that Pinnacle 8 isn't Vista compatible as far as I know.

[Bill Hunt]

Regarding Pinnacle, I had Studio 10 running fine with Premiere Pro 2 with no issues for about two months.

Now, upgrading to Studio 10.5.1 did blow up my system in a major way, but up until that point, there were no conflicts

I was about to suggest using "other" DVD drives, but you were posting that you had tried that at the same time. However, one trick that I have used in the past has been to do a Copy of a DVD from one burner to another via Nero. Disc, that would not read properly when using Windows Explorer, etc., DID copy perfectly and the duplicate played and worked perfectly. I always have two different brands of burners/drives on each workstation, and have had to swap the offending disc between these, using the other as the destination drive. I do not know why/how the Copy DVD function can get better results, than just trying to play, or copy via Win Explorer, but it does - maybe better buffering and error correction?

Good luck,

Hunt

[Bobby]

Thanks all - it's good to know I have a support net

Well, some interesting new news. The failures on the first two DVDs were only in BUP files. I find this very strange. Since the DVDs were written directly from Studio and not using, for example Nero, there may be some issue with how the DVDs themselves were written.

When I said that I checked the DVDs on my PC I meant that I played them - I didn't try to copy the files as data, which I am doing now. I did try copying via Nero and that didn't work - critical errors detected.

Anyhow, I re-created the BUP files by copying the IFO as noted above, and all is fine. I was able to write two new DVDs and both played fine.

I am going to continue through the collection and see what transpires. 50 DVDs times about 4GB per DVD is 200GB - plenty of room on the terabyte drive.

[Chuck Engels]

Bob, you might want to give the Pyro a shot. At least a few minutes to see how good the quality will be.
I've done this a few times and the quality was just as good as the DVD even after editing and burning again.

[ScrugneysGundogs]

You might want to try copying the disk using DVD Decryptor. If I remember correctly, it will retry bad reads multiple times before giving up. It read some really bad disks for me.

Also, removing the stick-on label will probably fix all the errors. Get some Goo-Gone, soak the label and let it sit for 15 minutes. The label will come right off. Just be careful about where you spill that Goo-Gone!

[Bobby]

Thanks all, again!

The latest from this morning is that I think I am looking at multiple issues; this is often the case where things don't make total sense.

The Optiarc drive in my new Video PC is definitely having more trouble reading the old DVDs than either of the two drives (Sony and LG) in my regular PC. So problem (1) seems to be that drive and I am going to have to look at replacing it. In the mean time I am reading the DVD images using the regular PC and then transferring them to storage on the Video PC - a little more work, but it is getting the job done.

Problem (2) may in fact be some deterioration of the old DVD disks themselves. But I don't have a handle on that problem yet. For example, DVD 01 failed to copy all files, but it was only a BUP file that was bad. In fact that DVD did and still plays fine on the TV system. In other words, I never actually read or checked that BUP file before and so don't know if it was ever good.

I can meet the objectives of this exercise - get images on hard drive of all my DVDs. For any recent DVDs, I have been saving the VIDEO_TS anyhow so it is only the older DVDs that have to be read and stored.

Sorry for being so long winded on this, but I think the lesson is that you have to work at and check your old media and this may be a continual process. Be aware...

[Bobby]

All is well. I am almost finished copying all the DVD images to hard drive; I was able to recover the early bad ones and the rest was a piece of cake. So mission accomplished.

The only odd thing was that I was brushing the dust off one DVD prior to copying it, and it looked either empty or very full. But knowing what was on there, it couldn't be full. Sure enough - put it in the drive and it is completely blank. It has a printed label, but I forgot to write the data

Luckily it is a fairly recent one and the PRE source is on a backup hard drive - I just have to pull it off, recompile it and rewrite the DVD.

Thanks all for your help...

[Bill Hunt]

"It has a printed label, but I forgot to write the data."

Bobby, I HATE when that happens! I've pulled out backup DVD's, only to find the same thing.

Glad that you got it sorted out, and the project completed,

Hunt