Repairing VOB files

[oldkiwirocker]

First of all, I am comparatively new at this. I have burnt DVDs before but at the art (or science) of repairing corrupted files I have had little experience other than that which follows.
I have a DVD which was burnt a few years back on a Panasonic DVD recorder, as a backup from a VHS tape, which has been subsequently discarded.
This disk has developed problems with playing so I have been searching various forums including this one to see if there is a way to recover anything from it.
From research on these forums it seems that the easiest way is to demux, then remux the files using TNPGenc which I have tried after copying the VOBs to disk, and it successfully demuxes the first VOB but strikes errors on the other 3. I have also tried DVDDecryptor directly from the disk, again with no luck. I have also tried VOBEditor which did successfully demux all the VOBS. Unfortunately it produced files of such a size that when remuxed they vastly exceeded the capacity of a single DVD, I think around 15Gb.
When TMPGenc demuxed the first VOB, the total of the M2V and ac3 files were approximately 1 Gb, which is near enough the VOB size.
Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to a) Why VOBEdit produces oversize demux files, b) Is there anything else that might do the job. c) Failing all of the above is there a method of removing bad sectors, as indicated in other programs, from the VOB files, say using VOBedit or some other suitable software.

I don't really want to lose the DVD if I can help it, and I also have another couple of disks in the same condition which I should also like to salvage, so any help would be very much appreciated.
:thanks:
Norris

[2Bdecided]

It's strange if you can do a simple windows drag-and-drop file copy from the damaged DVD-R onto your HDD - any data errors usually stop this process.

Other methods read through damaged data - which are you using?

(this doesn't answer your underlying issue - what to do with broken VOBs once on your HDD).

Cheers,
David.

[oldkiwirocker]

It's strange if you can do a simple windows drag-and-drop file copy from the damaged DVD-R onto your HDD - any data errors usually stop this process.

Other methods read through damaged data - which are you using?

(this doesn't answer your underlying issue - what to do with broken VOBs once on your HDD).

Cheers,
David.

Hi David,
I suspect dragging and dropping is achieved in XP with a simple binary transfer, without inspecting the content, hence no detectable errors found i.e. not a disk error as such but a content error, whereas using 'video' software methods, I am guessing, expect to be able read the files to obtain the video picture and act upon it.

The strange thing is that I was able to play it for a while albeit with the occasional hiccup when the picture and sound would freeze momentarily, then continue, but now, when it gets to the bad point, always the same place, beyond which, it will not budge even when trying to 'fast forward' past the bad bit.

I initially just copied them and tried using VOBedit to demux, which it did, but as I said produced files much larger than I should have expected, and when using TMPGenc to remux finished up wiht a file near 15 Gb.
I then tried TMPGenc itself, and it managed to do VOB_01 but VOB_2, 3 & 4 struck errors. I tried ignoring them but got so many that I gave up on that.

I then tried DVDDecryptor demuxing straight from the disk, but again got errors.

I'm afraid that VOBedit is not particularly user friendly if one has only used it for fairly basic stuff, so I have not been able to explore the possibilities of using that to delete broken bits or otherwise.

If there are only minor bits that cannot be fixed I could probably live with the result (I'd have to view it first) as it's a fairly rare music video which was recorded from a TV broadcast.

Cheers.
Norris:confused:

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Try ISOPuzzler...

[oldkiwirocker]

A little late to reply, but a big thankyou to setarip_old.
Isopuzzler did the trick.
Thanks.
It didn't work for another file but I found a thing called JFileRecovery (http://www.jfilerecovery.com/) which did work, albeit taking a very long time to do it. It's a Java based application which attempts to recover data from corrupted files.
It appeared to strike many corrupt sections, but they are obviously all very small as when I finally re-burnt the DVD I could not detect any hiccups, falters or anything to indicate that some parts had been corrupted.

Cheers:thanks:

[iffybob]

I am confused , could you copy the damaged VOBs off the original disc to the HD, normaly damaged files will stop copy on a CRC error.

Also, for scrached discs, they now do a repair cream/polish that fills in the scratches, its not perfect, and you may need to apply 2 or more layers to "fill" some scratches, ( I dont think it will work/cope with deep scratches ), but I have used it to get data off discs with wide shallow scratches.

I dont know if you can recommend commercial products on here, but if you want to know post and I will private message you the name of the one I used. :cool:

[setarip_old]

@oldkiwirockerA little late to reply, but a big thankyou to setarip_old.
Isopuzzler did the trick. Thanks.You're quite welcome ;>}

[Ghitulescu]

From research on these forums it seems that the easiest way is to demux, then remux the files using TNPGenc which I have tried after copying the VOBs to disk, and it successfully demuxes the first VOB but strikes errors on the other 3.
What a strange advice.

If you have a good DVD reader (Toshiba, LG, LiteOn, but not NEC, Samsung etc.) or an LG DVD burner you may try them.

My NEC could salvage some 1/3 of one of my DVDRW, while the LG 5163 did it up to the 100% (many many many retries with ISO Buster, but it did it eventually).

[iffybob]

I have found that a DVD "writer" is much better at salvaging damaged discs than a DVD "reader", I suppose that the tracking mechanisms are much better on the writer ( I may be wrong ).