Redo DVD master just from IMAGE.DAT

[casejustin80]

Hi!
One customer sent us a master in CMF 1.00 and our mastering people say the Eclipse ImageCopy can't read the CONTROL.DAT.
There is no backup copy and it will be troublesome to redo the authoring.
I don't think it is possible to re-create missing DDP/CMF files just from an image, without special tools.
Is it possible to determine the location of the individual .IFOs and .VOBs within this file, manually extract them, and have Nero burn a playable DVD?
Thank you!

[Emulgator]

As long as the IMAGE.DAT is readable and valid you may burn that file to disk using ImgBurn in Write Mode.
As long as there is no CSS involved, it should work

[casejustin80]

Emulgator, thank you for your reply! With an hex viewer I found the IMAGE.DAT structure is very similar to a .ISO: there is the traditional "CD001", the names of the files repeated for every filesystem, the strings "DVDVIDEO-VMG" and "DVDVIDEO-VTS" typical of .IFO/.BUP headers.
But IsoBuster could not find a filesystem there, not even from files fingerprints.
Now thanks to your hint, I gave ImgBurn a try. Surprisingly it discovered the image's files. But alas, it told me the files may have CSS because sector size is 2054 instead of 2048. So I guess this is the end of the road, the customer shall have to get a working master somehow. We've done all we could to help him, and authoring is not our business.
Thank you again!

[Emulgator]

I wondered myself what would happen with a (prepared by me) CSS master.
No problem here !
I just tried ImgBurn with one of my CSS Images (DDP2.10). ImgBurn is a genius !
ImgBurn warned about 2054 blocksize, I let it convert from 2054 to 2048 blocksize while writing to DVD+RW.
The result was playable and navigable in MPC-HC !
(My IsoBuster 3.9 was blind about that image also, BTW)

[kolak]

Yes, imgburn does conversion on the fly which is great. You can use final images marked for encryption for burning preview copies. This is very important as your preview comes from the same image as final mastered disc (not another mux etc).