Copy non-finalized DVD from standalone?

[theReal]

My uncle sent me a program he recorded from tv (this is legal in Germany - I'm not violating rules). My DVD player can't read the disc probably because it's not finalized.
Now I tried to copy the program to a normal DVD, but windows explorer shows an empty disc, DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0 doesn't find any files in file mode (and using .iso mode would be dumb, I guess :D ).
DVDInfo Pro also says the disc is empty...

But I can view the disc with PowerDVD 5. No problems at all, the video plays fine, I can even select "VR Menu" which then displays a menu with one thumbnail labelled "Cell 1"

Is there a way to copy the disc or read it in Explorer? I mean WinXP SP1 is able to read UDF data DVDs - why doesn't it show any files, and why can PowerDVD read the files? :confused: :confused:

DVDDecrypter displays this info on the disc:

Label: LG Vdr
Region: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8 - RCE Protection: No
Copyright Protection System Type: CPRM

###

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4163B A105 (ATA)
Current Profile: DVD-RW

Disc Information:
Status: Complete
Erasable: Yes
Sessions: 1
Sectors: 443.248
Size: 907.771.904 bytes
Time: 98:31:73 (MM:SS:FF)

Pre-recorded Information:
Manufacturer ID: OPTODISCW002

Recording Management Area Information:
LGE Inc w LGRL-01A

Physical Format Information (Last Recorded):
Book Type: DVD-RW
Part Version: 2
Disc Size: 120mm
Maximum Read Rate: Not Specified
Number of Layers: 1
Track Path: Parallel Track Path (PTP)
Linear Density: 0.267 um/bit
Track Density: 0.74 um/track
First Physical Sector of Data Area: 196.608
Last Physical Sector of Data Area: 639.855
Last Physical Sector in Layer 0: 0

[Nic]

That's plain weird.... ;)

You could try ISO mode of DVD Decrypter/Nero/etc and then try and open the ISO with something like ISOBuster. But it's a long shot. If you figure it out, post back, i'd be interested in the answer.

-Nic

[setarip_old]

1) It's a rewriteable disc - and perhaps it's not been finalized. Try using DVD Decrypter v.3.54 to "Finalize disc"

Tools>>Drive>>Close>>Disc


2) Curiously, the disc appears to have some copy protection on it ("Copyright Protection System Type: CPRM")

[theReal]

It's a rewriteable disc - and perhaps it's not been finalized.I think that's the main problem and the cause why it doesn't play in standalone players.
I tried closing in DVDDecrypter as you suggested, but "close disc" only returned some I/O error message. I also tried "close session" - it seemed to do something (the drive light was blinking) but it didn't help at all :(

Curiously, the disc appears to have some copy protection on it ("Copyright Protection System Type: CPRM") I was also wondering about that. Do some standalone DVD recorders apply copy protection to recorded material? CPRM obviously is the infamous "Content Protection for Removable Media" - that would mean only the one drive that originally recorded the DVD can extract data from it. It seems to work pretty well...

You could try ISO mode of DVD Decrypter/Nero/etc and then try and open the ISO with something like ISOBuster. I'll give it a try. I already tried ISO mode of DVDDecrypter and mounted the image with Daemon Tools (v. 3.47). Almost same as the original disc: Explorer says "can't open, bad disc" no program recognizes anything except PowerDVD which still plays the content without any problems...
I'll try ISOBuster and report back.

Thanks so far!

[CWR03]

I seem to recall reading about a program that can capture your desktop or video - I've used FRAPS to make gameplay movies, and the results are stunning. If you do the same while playing the video with PowerDVD, you should end up with a nice .avi file ready for edit or burn.

EDIT: Decided to test FRAPS with PowerDVD, and it actually works. I even re-captured the capture, then re-captured the captured capture, etc. 'til I was in sixth generation and there was no discernible quality loss, though framerate suffered a bit by that point (guess it's time to upgrade the PC again). FRAPS takes a heavy toll on the system as it writes an uncompressed .avi in realtime.

[hammer]

I have a panasonic recorder and if you copy from hard drive to disc you must finalize the disc.to become a read only dvd otherwise you encounter these problems.I have tried to finalize a disc that was not done on mine but thet did not work.I discovered this after forgetting to finalize and wondering what was wrong when the disc showed blank on my pc.finalized it and all was fine.

[CWR03]

hammer, that part has been established - have you come across a solution other than theReal sending the disk back to his uncle to finalize it?

[movax]

It seems your solution CWR03 could work for him (I'll keep it in mind for my future troubles too, thanks :) ), but maybe booting from a Linux live cd like Knoppix could allow him to unleash Linux tools of leetness to obtain the DVD data.

[hammer]

cwro3 sorry for only establishing whats already knnown.I couldnt find an answer.

[theReal]

I solved the problem, but I'm not exactly sure how I did it ...

I tried copying the disc with DVDFABDecrypter, which didn't work (it said the disc wasn't a DVD video disc) but then I could suddenly see the disc contents in Explorer. I'm not sure if FABDecrypter did some magic or if it was just the fact that I was on another computer, but now I could copy the files to HDD (the files were called "VR_MANGR.IFO" and "VR_MOVIE.VRO" by the way).
I was able to import the .VRO file to TMPEGEnc DVD Author and author a new DVD which I burnt with Nero.

Computers are weird sometimes, are they??? :rolleyes:

[volvoguy]

Amazing this post was so near the top. I finally decided to start the ritual of pulling my hair out over this exact situation myself. In my case I recorded the VHS to DVD-RAM (on a Panasonic something-or-other) and don't remember seeing anything about finalizing the discs - perhaps because they're rerecordable?

Anyway, I may need to start a new thread to get people's thoughts on this issue, but since it's similar I thought I'd try here first. I have to admit that I'm usually a single-button DVDDecrypter or (on my iBook) Mactheknife kinda person when it comes to ripping DVD's. In this case I didn't think either would be necessary since I was ripping a VHS transfer of my own home movie. None of the Nero tools would touch it because of the file extensions (.VRO in particular) and the previously mentioned CPRM copy protection (!?) and the other rippers wouldn't because the data isn't in a VIDEO_TS folder.

Of course Panasonic said my computer was probably at fault and to contact the manufacturer (myself). My DVD burner obviously reads DVD-RAM discs just fine. They sent my issue up through two levels of tech support regarding the copy protection issue and has so far not responded. I'm not sure how they could advertise the ability to transfer VHS home movies to DVD and not assume people would want to edit them (which should be a piece of cake in something like Nero Vision even for average Joe User).

If anyone can share links, info, experiences - I'd be mighty grateful. Thanks!

Aaron

[Inheritthewind]

Damn. Just realised I have the same problem. I tried to rip some videos I recorded on my new Ellion Standalone, only to find that all the DVD-RWs are empty in DVDdecrypter/FAB decryptor/SmartRipper and DVD43.

Now I could finalize all the discs, but that would mean buying a lot of replacment media. Is this the only solution?

I've done a bit of searching on CPRM, and found a lot of descriptions about the technology, but not how to get around it.

When I made the recordings I didn't count on not being able to rip my own recorded media! :eek:

This copy protection thing really is going too far.

Any helpful suggestions? By the way is it true this only applies to - and RAM, not + media? Haven't got any to test ...

[Inheritthewind]

OK, I've done a bit more searching and it seems that its plain old multisession thats the problem rather than the CPRM (sorry, still a standalone noob, new recorder, like I mentioned).

Is there any software that can rip 'open' discs? I can't believe having bought this thing that every recording on a media has to be 'kept'. It seems a cruel irony that ripping copy protected commercial films is as easy as abc, and yet your own legal recordings and analogue backups are this difficult/inefficient.

If I'd known this I probably would have ditched the standalone idea and gone for a DVB/analogue capture card to record straight to the HDD.

By the way, I made my first post in another forum here http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=104187 and even though it sank in minutes, and I'm mainly an MPEG4 forum dweller, the sentiments in the first paragraph go out to all of you.

Thanks again.

[volvoguy]

If I'd known this I probably would have ditched the standalone idea and gone for a DVB/analogue capture card to record straight to the HDD.

Granted, I have what I consider a crappy analog capture card (ATI TV Wonder Pro), but if I (we) can figure out a good way to get our dang media off the discs without it costing a fortune, the quality of the standalone method (at least in the case of the Panasonic I got) is WAY better than the capture card. I figure it's two reasons - lots of electronic noise inside a computer where the card lives, and way better signal path and converters/encoders in the standalone.

I had a little luck tonight with the previously mentioned "TMPEGEnc DVD Author" (not free), but the app wouldn't let me copy the data to the HDD (stream error?), and I had several discs worth of video that I wanted to edit and compile into one final DVD - obviously wouldn't work if I had to have the source DVDs in all at the same time. :mad: For the heck of it I tried just "compiling" my edits from the one source disc and have the app write my "VIDEO_TS" folder and associated files, but once again I got the dreaded "stream error" about halfway through.

Since I DO have a few DVD+R discs around, I'm going to give one a try tomorrow and see if it behaves any better. I can really get all my VHS home video editing done with a 50 pack of discs if they'll work, and then put the machine to use as a "digital VCR" - which is mostly what I bought it for. (although the occasional transfer to PC there would be nice too). :)

Keep up the research and I'll do the same!

Aaron

[Inheritthewind]

@ Nic & Volvoguy

Nice one Nic, ISObuster works a treat. I can't give you a complete sucess report yet as it it extracted 93% in a few minutes, and has been wading through corruptions for a couple of hours since then. I only use Verbatim Taiyo-yudens for my PC burns, but decided to use Tuffdisc RWs for the day to day standalone discs, maybe that was a bad choice.

The free product lets you extract ISO, the full product, about $25, lets you extract UDF and IFO. But from the free product you can see that the DVDs are readable in all modes.

My plan is to extract as an ISO, then mount the folder with MagicDisc (from magicISO website), then rip as usual. From all the searching I've done this seems to be the only method. The ones attempted above (installing DVDFab, using TMPEGEnc), didn't make a difference on my PC.

Fantastic piece of software.

Volvoguy, want to give it a try before making another +R coaster?

Thanks everyone, I'll report back in about another 6 months when this extraction finally finishes.
Damn those 'unscratchable' media sales pitches ...

[Inheritthewind]

Worked even better than expected.

One program, ISObuster (free version), extract in ISO mode from the open DVD, all the files found and extracted successfully to the HDD. No need to mount a virtual dirve or rip again, ready for encoding. Bish bash bosh, jobs a good 'un.

The website has details of all the formats it can handle, and it is pretty much ALL the formats. Multisession, broken session, DVD-VR - everything.

Thanks again for the suggestion Nic :), no need to finalize a huge library of media now.

Almost too easy.

[theReal]

I still don't really get it - I was able to rip the VR-mode disc with DVDDecrypter in ISO mode but that didn't lead anywhere as the ISO rip behaved exactly like the original disc.
Now on the other computer with the Pioneer A06 burner (instead of my LG) I was able to read the files from the disc in Windows Explorer... but why? Is the Pioneer A06 able to read open multisession VR discs, but my LG is not? The LG burner is newer and it even reads and writes DVD-RAM, why not open multisession?

[setarip_old]

@theReal

Since these are .VRO files, you should be able to use "TMPGEnc DVD Author" to read the DVD and convert it to a "normal" DVD. You can obtain a FULLY functional free 30 day trial version of this commercial program at:

www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html

[theReal]

setarip - read 8 posts above of yours... :sly: ;)

What I'm still wondering about is why I was able to read the files from the DVD on one computer, while on my own computer the DVD showed empty in Explorer (and therefore TMPEG was of no use because there were no files to convert)

[setarip_old]

I was able to import the .VRO file to TMPEGEnc DVD Author and author a new DVD which I burnt with Nero.
I guess I missed this...

[volvoguy]

Volvoguy, want to give it a try before making another +R coaster?

I've actually had some great success the past few days, and have a bit more of a grasp on what our situation is.

DVD-RAM discs, which are preferred for everyday use because (at least with my machine) you can do things like power on and start recording in about a second, start watching a recording from the beginning (or anyplace between the beginning and "realtime") while it continues to record, and can be rewritten 100,000 times compared to DVD-RW's 1000 times. That said, we know the files are in .VRO format, which only a few editors support right now (I assume more, and some free tools will come in time). I did a test with "TMPGEnc DVD Author" on my laptop, but it has about half the horsepower the app says it requires and DVD-RAM support is apparently sketchy, so while I was able to "extract" the video, I couldn't save it to the hard drive in a more convenient format. I kept getting I/O errors. I haven't done any other playing with DVD-RAM discs except for things I'm going to watch and erase right away, but I'm sure I'll explore more in the future. A few other apps I found that claim to be able to edit these discs/files are:

CyberLink PowerProducer
Ulead DVD Movie Factory
DVDShrink (I think... Perhaps mentioned elsewhere on the forums here)

Now for the good news. If I stick a DVD-RW in the thing and format it as a DVD-Video disc, record some stuff and then finalize it, the file structure and files are just like a regular DVD. I pulled the data off with DVDDecrypter (unneccessary in retrospect) and Nero Vision. No problems with the "CPRM" copy protection or anything. I edited and Nero Vision resaved it (without reencoding - yay) and it works great. Of course now I'm edit-happy and it'll take weeks to capture enough video to edit and fill up a DVD. :o) DVD-R and DVD+R will also work, but are obviously a one time deal. Oh, and the scary warning that the Panasonic gives when finalizing a DVD-RW that you'll NEVER be able to use it again are obviously false. A reformat on the device makes it just like new.

Hopefully that fills a few gaps in the information. I'll keep making notes here as long as I find new things and everyone is interested.

Aaron

[volvoguy]

One more quick tidbit. I just got an email back from Nero and it seems they don't support or plan to support VRO files in any of their products in the near future. Bummer. With the potential for lots of people to replace their VCR with a DVD recorder you'd think every company with DVD editing software would want to support the format. I guess the only problem would be if there are licensing issues with the file format (doubtful), or the TV/Cable companies are pressuring software companies NOT to support this format - so you have to spend $2 to get the latest episode of Lost on your iPod even when it's sitting on a disc in your recorder (more likely).

It almost feels like someone(?) is trying to sidestep the law (in the US) that allows you to record something on TV for your own use. This funky ".VRO: DVD Video Recording Format" makes it difficult to move video to your computer/iPod to watch. Even more disappointing is the fact that in a lot of cases you can't take your recording and watch it on a different player in another room. They're either trying to keep you from easily sharing TV shows, or trying to sell more of their own hardware - either way it doesn't seem very convenient to the end user (unless of course you only want to record/play on the machine and have one tv).

(end rant)

(end paranoid mode)

Aaron :o)

[setarip_old]

@volvoguy

Hi!If I stick a DVD-RW in the thing and format it as a DVD-Video disc, record some stuff and then finalize it, the file structure and files are just like a regular DVD.Unless I've misunderstood your most recent post in this thread, by the manufacturers of tabletop recorders making this option available to the user, it seems to negate your complaint about .VRO format and editing...

[volvoguy]

@volvoguy

Hi!Unless I've misunderstood your most recent post in this thread, by the manufacturers of tabletop recorders making this option available to the user, it seems to negate your complaint about .VRO format and editing...

Well, kind of. DVD-RAM and it's .VRO file format allow all of the cool "instant gratification" features of the recorder - fast start recording, 8-hour recording mode, playback while recording. It would still be nice to pull out a DVD-RAM disc and save something that I caught in the middle of the night and didn't have time to switch discs, or some show that I had scheduled to record every episode of for the next few months. I've pretty much concluded though that there are options for getting the data off these discs, but they're all another $70-$150-ish, which is still a complaint I guess - just to transfer data from the disc to my hard drive.

You're right about the DVD-RW discs though. If you're doing a VHS transfer or know there's something on TV that you want to record and save, it's dead simple with this kind of disc (even though I argued with local friends that "a disc is a disc! it's going to write the same data to it no matter what type disc you use.). I was wrong. :)

Since I didn't open this thread, I won't declare it closed, but I think I've pretty much found my answer for now. Hopefully in the future we'll see more (free, open-source!) tools to make the DVD-RAM discs more useful in a computer. Make sense?

Aaron

[setarip_old]

Make sense?Certainly ;>}

[Mug Funky]

i was ripping my hair out with a similar problem the other day... solved it with nothing more than ISO mode and DGIndex.

i had a disc recorded in "VR mode" on a pioneer DVR-330s (as i recall).

pioneer 108 on my dad's computer wouldn't read it. i of course assumed a non-compliant file system. turns out it was the drive crapping itself, as i could read it fine on the 109 at my place. i recommend updating firmwares if there's reading troubles...

after not being able to read the filesystem, i used DVDdecrypter (and several drive tray cycles to be safe) and ripped a big fat ISO, in the hope that i oculd demux straight out of that with ffmpeg or mplayer. i found that i didn't have ffmpeg on that machine, but there was mplayer, which was able to get the audio out but not the video.

i gave up on mplayer, and simply dragged the iso into DGindex. then i hit "save project and demux video" while "demux audio" was enabled. et viola, i had a usable m2v and ac3.

however, you need a tolerant authoring app to do this - there may well be read errors that the DVD drive simply didn't notice (as was in my case, right at the start). DVDmaestro simply spat an error at me - temporal refs out of order or some crap... but i was able to transcode with avisynth, which was my goal in the beginning.

[volvoguy]

Another quick update regarding editing software, although not the answer I'd hoped. As a long time owner of (now Sony's) DVD Architect software, I fired off an email to them to see if they had plans to support reading/editing DVD-RAM and .VRO files with their software. They don't. Doh! For now it seems we're limited to the 4-5 apps mentioned previously in this thread.

I've been having lots of fun with this standalone recorder though since I discovered that DVD-RW discs make the process "just work". I still haven't been out to buy more discs, so I'm keeping this ONE that I have really busy. :-) DVD-RAM has been great for those "I'm falling asleep but I don't want to miss this show" moments, so I keep one in there at all times - record, watch, erase - all actions just taking a few seconds (well, except the watching part).

One last note about quality. In general, I haven't been too concerned about it yet. I just use the shortest recording time possible when I know the duration of the material. For the day to day stuff though, if you have some random portion of the disc full and want to schedule something - not knowing how much time you have left - there's a flexible recording mode. As long as you're within the physical limits of the media, the recorder will automatically calculate the quality it needs to record at to fit it in the remaining disc space. Pretty cool.

[theReal]

pioneer 108 on my dad's computer wouldn't read it. i of course assumed a non-compliant file system. turns out it was the drive crapping itself, as i could read it fine on the 109 at my place.
In my case it was the other way round: My dad's Pioneer A06 was able to read the VR disc, my LG GSA-4163B wasn't... (maybe some newer DRM crap implemented in the LG?)

One last note about quality. In general, I haven't been too concerned about it yet. I just use the shortest recording time possible when I know the duration of the material. I just got a Pioneer DVR 433H (my first DVD recorder) and I am amazed with the quality it delivers at ~5Mbit (2 hours per DVD). I have seen much worse results from software encoders, it's really great even when you record difficult material like old VHS tapes.

[Photoguy]

Just for your information, a .vro file on a DVD-RAM disc is an mpeg2 file. I copy the .vro file from a DVD-RAM disk to a folder on my hard drive, rename the file extension from .vro to .mpg and have an .mpg file I can import in to my DVD authoring program to edit. If I have recorded a TV show, I can edit out the commercials, trim the beginning and end, create menus and chapters etc..

Of course, you must have a DVD drive that is capable of reading DVD-RAM disks to do this.

[theReal]

I copy the .vro file from a DVD-RAM disk to a folder on my hard drive, rename the file extension from .vro to .mpg and have an .mpg file I can import in to my DVD authoring program to edit.

That's basically what I did - I only ran into two problems: My drive didn't show any files on the disc (an -RW disc, which my LG burner is definitely able to read). Probably some DRM protection scheme came into play here...
Another (older) drive could read it.

The second problem was with Adobe Encore DVD. It first seemed to work, but then it wanted to encode the MPEG again. I used TMPEGEnc DVD Author then which worked fine with the re-named .vro file.

[emazur]

So I see some people have had some success with ripping cprm -rw's. That's encouraging but no luck here yet. My comp won't read these, but as mentioned earlier in the thread isobuster reveals all. But to extract those files you need to purchase the full version. Well I'm not gonna do that unless I know it'll work. I tried other methods such as dvd decryptor and alchohol 120% but no luck. Today i thought of blindwrite (which I own), and successfully copied to a dvd+rw, which shows all the files in windows. Tried sticking that vro in TDA, put the video shows up as green garbage. So I see Meg Funky tried DGIndex to make compliant streams. When you play it in DGIndex does it preview correctly? Cuz again I get green garbage, and when trying to extract it it gives an error message (too many pictures per gop >500) and terminates. I tried to play what it could extract before stopping (about 500 meg worth) but video was blank and audio was garbage.