DVDs seem to go bad over time

[Got_the_DVD_Jones]

I have been backing up DVDs for about 18 months and things went well for awhile. Then I started getting errors on burn verifications (Nero 6 Reloaded), sometimes I would go through 2-3 blanks to get a good verify and often a disc would verify OK and actually play OK in the standalone DVD player but go bad later and become unplayable. When I reinstalled everything (including the OS) the problem seemed to go away-for awhile.

I was running:

Acer Travel Mate 2354 running XP Home OEM in FAT32
DVD Decrypter (last issue)
DVD Shrink 3.2
Nero 6 Reloaded (various upgrades and releases)
BenQ EW-162I burner on USB 2.0 for both reads and burns, on firmware 47N9
I did use the QSI SDW-082 in the Acer (on LX43 firmware) for awhile-more on that later
I ALWAYS burned at 2.4x, high compatibility, book type DVD-ROM, always brand name DVD+R media, mostly Sony and Verbatim, all 16x rated.

I'd say about 50% of my discs are now unplayable, barely playable or have skips, freezes, pixelations or other problems. Brand of the media doesn't seem to matter. Many were verified OK and played OK after burning but have gone bad over time. I am now running the BenQ on 47P9 and the latest Nero 6 release 6.6.1.4 seems to be OK, but I'll wait six months to see how these newest discs turn out.

Discs I burned with the QSI are now all unplayable and I can't even recopy them to the hard drive and get a good second burn with the BenQ. Some of the BenQ burned originals also exhibit glitches when recopied (using simply Windows Copy of the disc's VIDEO_TS directory back to the hard drive and reburn). The QSI discs seem to copy back to the hard drive OK but Nero gives errors when I go through the preburn process. The BenQ burned discs also copy back OK and seem to reburn OK and mostly play OK but I get some skips here and there on some of the reburned discs. I even tried a test with one disc I reburned which had skips on the 2nd gen, I took the 1st gen disc to a buddy of mine with a megacomputer, clocked to 4 GHz, multiple gigs of RAM, water cooling, top of the line everything and the copy we burned there also had the skips.

Here is my question: Is there any software, method or way to recopy these 1st gen DVD+R discs back to the hard drive while checking/repairing them at the same time so I can get a good second reburn to a new disc? This process would be: old 1st gen disc—analysing/checking/copying software—harddrive—reburn to new disc. I do not really want to go through the process of reripping my originals and going through the whole rip-analyse-encode-burn process again, I have over 300 movies and they take on average 1-1.5 hours per disc with my equipment.

[setarip_old]

Hi!I'd say about 50% of my discs are now unplayable, barely playable or have skips, freezes, pixelations or other problems. Brand of the media doesn't seem to matter. Many were verified OK and played OK after burning but have gone bad over time.I'd suggest to you that this is far more important than your question about how to save time re-copying and verifying.

Based on your description, it would seem that you're not storing your backups properly - in a dark, cool, dry, clean environment...

[Boulder]

always brand name DVD+R media, mostly Sony and Verbatim, all 16x rated
Brand name doesn't always (if ever) mean anything, it's the media code that matters. Can you tell us what the media codes for the bad discs are? I think ImgBurn should be able to tell you what it is even if the discs are already burnt.

[CWR03]

Some of us have noticed that adhesive paper labels will warp the disk to the point of disrupting the tolerance between lens and disk. If this is the case, you can see the effect by holding two disks with labels with the "play side" facing one another, and there will be a noticeable gap around the edge with the centers held together. A quick test would be to soak one in water for a minute, then dry it well without letting it dry completely and test the disk.

Carefully scoring the labels without cutting into the reflective surface is a more permanent cure than wetting them.

[voo_doo99]

Carefully scoring the labels without cutting into the reflective surface is a more permanent cure than wetting them.
I tried the scoring the label into 8 pies and while it helped it didnot completely cure the freezes. I had to remove the darn label once and for all.

[Byron111]

The good news is that if you can copy your DVD+Rs to HD then they are still readable with robust error correction enabled. You would not be able to copy them to HD if the discs were so damaged as to be unreadable. The reason that your re-burns also have skipping problems is due to either a problem somewhere with the burning process or, perhaps more likely, bad media. It is not because the skips are somehow being copied to HD and then back onto another DVD+R disc. The skipping glitches are due to physical features of the burnt disc, not the data that is stored on the disc. If you were to play the video from a disc image stored on HD, you would not experience any glitches.

I've had success with Taiyo Yuden DVD-Rs, and DVD+Rs manufactured by Maxell ("Made in Japan," not Taiwan). Slower isn't always better. I recorded the Maxell discs at 2.4X but found that 8X worked better for Taiyo Yuden for some reason. Even these seem to degrade slightly over time, but not as bad as low quality media.

There's no point in re-burning your discs until you figure out a media/drive/write speed combination that will produce good burns. Otherwise the new burns will go bad just as the previous ones did.

You could also try playing your old discs on a different DVD player. Some are better at playing imperfect recordable media.

[Got_the_DVD_Jones]

Many thanks for the replies so far:

1) Storage is not really a problem.
2) No adhesive labels are used.
3) I set up RipIt4Me and was able to re-rip all 1st generation bad burns back to the hard drive without error messages from Nero (so far) and tried to reburn, all on my other computer (IBM 8183-GNU Thinkcentre, 3.2 GHz P4, 400 GB SATA HD, 1.5 gig RAM, XP Pro retail on NTFS, BenQ DW-1640 on BSRB firmware) and put it this way, burning at 8X is certainly no worse (intuitively slower burn speeds should be better, especially on USB interfaces, as with the Acer) not to mention a good deal faster. At 8X I can rerip and burn/verify in less than 20 minutes. However a couple of minor skips were observed on playback of one or two of the discs I redid at the weekend.

What is it with this burning? Are these problems widespread ie it is not an exact science yet or is it just me? Is this BenQ stuff junk? I've ordered a Plextor PX760SA on SATA interface for the IBM, so at least I can finally get rid of that funky IDE ribbon cable which I'm sure is doing nothing for the airflow in the case. We'll see how it looks, it just seems to be trial and error on this, as there appear to be no "high end", middle or low price internal burners to choose from.

Now if I can just solve the aspect ratio problem on my Samsung LE27T51BX TV being fed off an LG V181 DVD combo on progressive out/component in. I played Air America at the weekend (one of the reburns) and the picture fills the screen fully left to right but is "squeezed" vertically. I monkeyed with the settings on both the player and the TV six ways to Sunday and I couldn't fix it. I know they call it Home Theatre but soon it will be Home Asylum when you try to get this stuff to work.

[feedback]

I had a similar problem with an 18 month old DVD on Ty media burned with Nero (I now use ImgBurn for burning...much better for me).
Pixelation occured randomly throughout the DVD.

The Cure, for me, was reencoding with CCE or HC with Undot (It basicly just clips each pixel value to stay within min and max of its eight surrounding neigbors) in DVD Rebuilder.

The resulting DVD was perfect after that process.

Regards,

P.S. Before using DVDRB, I first tried reburning with ImgBurn after reripping to HD. All I got was the same pixelation on a newer DVD...it did not work.

You will have to reencode!

[Boulder]

You don't need to re-encode if you have a bad disc. You happened to have a screwed-up encode. UnDot doesn't remove the blocking that appears when there's a glitch in the video stream.

[feedback]

You don't need to re-encode if you have a bad disc. You happened to have a screwed-up encode. UnDot doesn't remove the blocking that appears when there's a glitch in the video stream.
Well, I am all ears to hear what fixed it then.:D

I encoded it with QuEnc in Rebuilder free version 18 months ago and burned it with Nero...it played perfectly thereafter.:)
Fast Forwared to 18 months later and it pixelates. I make a copy of the pixelating disk and I get a bad pixelating copy in exactly the same places in the movie:(

I reencode with Rebuilder and I get a perfect backup.

Please tell me what was wrong with it initially and how does one fix it without reencoding.

Regards,

[Boulder]

It's possible that DGIndex/DGDecode was able to decode the bad stream without showing any pixelation. When you ran it through DVD-RB, you got a clean copy. UnDot had nothing to do with it - it simply is not powerful enough to deblock anything, believe me.

[feedback]

I understand. Yes, I never even tried RB without undot on that bad disk as I wanted to try everything possible at one time as I didn't want to have to wait several hours to find out it still had the problem.

So, undot, as you indicated, probably had nothing to do with the good copy.
O.K. so running it through DGDecode in RB is what fixed it then.:D

Thanks for the clarification.:)

P.S. just remembered I now have NaNs version of DGDecode. I don't know if that had something to do with it making a clean copy?

[Boulder]

I'd assume that the DGDecode version supplied with DVD-RB would be actually better because Don has added quite a bit of video error-related stuff since v1.10.

Chances are that your copy would even have been salvaged by reauthoring the disc (or demuxing and running the m2v file through ReStream, then reauthoring), who knows.

[jshumate]

I'm not saying that this is your problem, but please do yourself a favor and look at:
http://www.digital-digest.com/~blutach/pgcedit_guide/burning_with_pgcedit/burning_with_pgcedit_v2.htm
The section at the bottom explains why DVD Shrink creates DVD files that might have problems in the future. It also explains why it's a really bad idea to burn DVDs with Nero.

Saying "Storage isn't really a problem" and that you think your media is good doesn't give me a lot of confidence that you are necessarily correct. Your media, especially the Sony discs, might not be very good. You may THINK that how you are storing your DVDs is OK, but without further info on what exactly you are doing, who knows? You sure don't seem real interested in the help you are getting. Why bother asking if you are just going to reject everything people are telling you?

[setarip_old]

I set up RipIt4Me and was able to re-rip all 1st generation bad burns back to the hard drive without error messages from NeroDid you PLAY the harddrive versions on your PC, to see if they wereunplayable, barely playable or have skips, freezes, pixelations or other problems.. If they play without incident on your PC, then you know that the problem is either a physical one with the player(s) you're using for playback of the burned media or incompatibility of the burned media with the player(s)...

[Got_the_DVD_Jones]

Here is the lowdown on storage:

The discs are stored on 25 count spindles in alphabetical order. This is the easiest way for me because I travel frequently to overseas construction jobs. To my knowledge the discs were once exposed briefly to about 30 C ambient when the air conditioning crapped out in Australia. Titles are written on the back of the discs with a "for DVD" pen manufactured by Verbatim. Discs are only placed on the spindle once the writing is completely dry. I am using no stick-on labels.

In my area (and in most places I have been) the only brands of DVD+R media readily available are Verbatim 16x, TDK 16x, Sony 16x, Imation 16x, Samsung Pleo 16x and a number of brand X brands. I have had burn problems with all. I am trying to find a good on-line "warehouse" supplier of multiple brands of media in Switzerland so I may try others.

I am not rejecting anyone's advice. I welcome any and all advice I can get. I am preparing to set up the DVD Rebuilder and PGC Edit/Imgburn suggestions above. I have now tried to play the 1st generation burns recopied to the hard drive on Power DVD (OEM bundled with the Acer) and on the three that I tried, they played OK.

I have set up the Plextor PX-760SA burner in my IBM now (on 1.03 firmware). I burned two movies using the original method (rip with DVD Fab Decrypter, encode with DVDShrink, burn with Nero at 8X) at got some slight pixelation at one point in each of the two movies. I will upgrade the firmware to 1.04. I will set up and try other methods as above. At the moment I am battling a CPU overheat problem in the IBM so I can only rip and burn with it. Anything using 100% CPU power for an extended period of time such as encoding overheats it unless I frequently pause. I will hopefully get this fixed soon by IBM under warranty.

I thank everyone for their contributions so far and welcome much more.

[Boulder]

I am trying to find a good on-line "warehouse" supplier of multiple brands of media in Switzerland so I may try others.If you want to get some genuine TY DVD+R discs, www.os-mediatrade.de is one place where you can buy them.

I burned two movies using the original method (rip with DVD Fab Decrypter, encode with DVDShrink, burn with Nero at 8X) at got some slight pixelation at one point in each of the two movies.
I would ditch DVDFab Decrypter and Nero and replace them with RipIt4Me (see the thread in the Decrypting forum) and ImgBurn. Nero is great for CD burning but it often has had problems with DVDs. ImgBurn is very reliable.

[CWR03]

You should definitely reduce the burn speed if possible - I've physically examined disks burned at various speeds, and the ones burned at lower speeds have much better defined burn areas. Since the dye bleeds over time, if it's sharper to begin with it will hold its shape longer.

[Boulder]

Slowing down the burning speed doesn't always produce better results, it depends a lot on the media and the drive. Some dyes are not meant for burning at 1x or 2x, when you scan such disks with KProbe, you see a huge amount of errors compared to discs that have been burnt at 8x for example.

[CWR03]

Slowing down the burning speed doesn't always produce better results
...which is why I said "if possible." My current 16X media won't even burn below 4X, and some media I've tried definitely burned better at 4X than 2.4X.

[theReal]

Maybe try another burner? I know it seems ridiculous because the PX-760SA is pretty new, but I know from a friend who burns a lot of DVDs and owns a few different burners that he had to return newly bought burners more than once because they weren't doing well (not what you'd expect from a new brand-name burner, but it seems to happen...)