Philips DVD Recorder ripping problems...

[easy2Bcheesy]

Hello there,

I've just bought a Philips DVR890 recorder - I just got sick and tired of having to cart my PC to my Sky+ PVR all the time to archive off programmes I like that I've recorded on the hard disk. It's a good piece of kit - having a RGB SCART link makes for pretty much no loss of quality.

But the discs that the Philips 'authors' are an absolute nightmare to demux - I want the raw MPEG2 and AC3 files so I can build my own menu systems around the files the recorder makes.

Essentially I take the disc out of the recorder, bung it into my Pioneer A03, read off the disc, then use IFOedit to turn all its irritating little VOBs into one big one, then use VOBrator to demux the audio and video so I can run these files into Maestro and create my own discs.

And then there appears to be corrupted audio and video at some points, missing frames of audio etc etc

I'm a bit cheesed off with the machine to be honest, particularly as I have a DVD made in a Panasonic DVD recorder that is a doddle to demux (each recording having its own VTS for starters).

Any one out there have any experience with this machine?

[auenf]

rather than joining the VOB's together, wouldnt it be better to stream extract the m2v and ac3 using DVDDecrypter?

i wonder if those 'missing' bits of audio and video are dropped frames or not?

Enf...

[easy2Bcheesy]

Decrypter doesn't seem to like Philips discs... I've used VOBedit to extract streams without having to splice them together, but get exactly the same results.

Apparently corrupts frames of AC3 are a normal on the Philips, but I might have a dodgy DVD+RW causing the video errors.

[HomerJ]

easy2Bcheesy,

Pleased to read about about a DVDR890 problem (well, not really) as I've been thinking about buying one myself, but, wanted to know about compatability issues.

What you have described is what I have been "wondering".

Well, seems like there are a few compatability issues to be resolved.

One small point, what media have you used ?

Have you tried DVD2AVI to de mux the video / audio ?


Come on, give us more details !!!! You know the rules :sly:


HomerJ :)

[easy2Bcheesy]

OK, I solved my video problems on the Philips by changing the disc I was using. Now I demux video with no problem at all. There are still AC3 problems. I use AC3fix to correct these and it all works fine when running the base streams into Maestro.

Overall, the machine is a pretty good realtime MPEG2 encoder and having RGB SCART input (or analogue component in the USA) makes for superb quality copies. If you want to "backup" DVDs though, you'll need to buy a filtering box, because it has some pretty mean copy protection. Hasn't been a problem for me since I am backing up TV programmes recorded on my PVR.

This forum has lots and lots of information about Philips DVD Recorders:

http://www.dvdplusrw.org/cgi/forum/ikonboard.cgi

The only problem with the machine seems to be the amount of things that go wrong with it! In a poll on the site, 40% of users had reliability problems, so I'm a bit worried about it now.

In actual fact, because of the reliability concerns, I'd recommend you take a look at a cheap Panasonic DMR-E30. It doesn't have firewire (one of the reasons I wanted the Philips) but it is much more reliable and seems to have a superior VBR realtime capture. However, it can only capture RGB/Analogue Component in PAL, not NTSC - a problem the Philips recorders do not have.