Recorded DVD-RW in FR Mode not Recognized on PC

[Offroad]

I have a DVD-RW that was recorded on my JVC DR-M10S stand alone recorder and I can't get it to be recognized at all in my PC.

The recorder will play it every time, and a standalone DVD player will play it after a few load attempts but my PC DVD burner and DVD Rom drives don't find any files on the disc. The disc is finalized and I have tried un-finalizing it then running another finalization but nothing seems to help.

This was recorded material from the Travel Channel off of Dish Network early this year. There is a segment I want to rip from the disc as it was the inspiration for a great vacation this year. I've used this recorder many times this way and edited both my own home movies and concert segments from HDNet on the PC. The PC is WinXP Pro SP2.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[MeekloBraca]

Thats the fault of the JVC. Nothing you can will make it work. The Pioneer so far is the only recorder that recording onto a rw will work on your computer.

[samijubal]

Not true. I load RW discs from a Toshiba into my computer all the time, been doing it for 8 months.

[trhouse]

I would do the following test. Burn the same dvd-rw with your computer dvd burner and play that same dvd-rw in the M10, your standalone player, and the computer dvd burner and see what happens.

[Offroad]

Thats the fault of the JVC. Nothing you can will make it work.

I've edited many -RW discs on my PC that were made on the JVC.

I would do the following test. Burn the same dvd-rw with your computer dvd burner and play that same dvd-rw in the M10, your standalone player, and the computer dvd burner and see what happens.

My JVC will play DVD's I've authored on the PC although these are normally -R's. If I burn or erase the -RW I'm having problems with before I get it ripped to the PC I will have lost the video I want to save.


The recorder seems to be working fine, I watched a program recorded onto a RAM disc during recording and that worked fine. The -RW disc had been recorded a few months ago and not finalized until yesterday but I'm not sure how that would create any problems.

Lord Smurf, as our resident JVC expert would you have any ideas?

[DVWannaB]

Let me chime in here. I too have a JVC recorder. When I first received my recorder about 18 months ago one of the first burns was from hard drive to DVD-RW. I encountered the same problem then. Would play fine in JVC, but could not get the computer to recognize it.

I even tried to rip the contents with Smartripper, DVD Decrypter, etc and all they did was hit a sector on the disc and lock-up. I ended up doing hard reboots. Finally after long exhaustuve process and about to give up I visited this site and found a tool DVD Fab Decrypter. I to thought it was going to fail, but it hit that bad sector and worked for about 1 hour on the bad sector and FINALLY got the disc ripped.

Long story to say that sometimes burners and discs sometimes give errors in the burn process. For whatever reason and they are many factors. Dirt disc: smudge, finger print, cheap media, error during production, etc. The burner could be the culprit too. We must remember that these devices are not infallible to errors. Even in professional production houses, they do a burn confirmation on their discs before they are packaged off to the store. DVD recorders cant do this, but it may be a good idea to do so on your computer immedaitely after burn. If you have a DVD recorder without a hard drive, then if you get a bad burn the you are kinda stuck with what you have. You then have to go through some hoops to recover the contents, like I did. But in all honesty, this should be a once in a blue moon happening. My JVC has never given me a problem burn since that time.

[BobK]

Thats the fault of the JVC. Nothing you can will make it work. The Pioneer so far is the only recorder that recording onto a rw will work on your computer.

I only own a Pioneer now, but I've used LiteOns, Panasonic, JVCs, Toshibas and iLo's and never use anything but RW. They all burned RWs that worked on my computers.

Besides the tools DVWannaB suggested you might try Isobuster. If there's a bad sector(s) it will let you skip them. If Isobuster works and you're lucky, nothing you want will be in the bad sectors- even if it is, it might still rip the good data from those sectors and substitute dummy data for the parts it can't read.

[Offroad]

My problem is that the PC is recognizing the -RW disc as being empty, sorry if I didn't explain that properly.

I have two drives on my PC, one is a BenQ DW-1640 Dual Layer writer and the other is a Hitachi GD-7500 DVD Rom.
After I load the -RW disc in either drive I can't find any files on it at all.

The disc works perfectly in the JVC recorder either finalized or un-finalized. The standalone DVD player I tried it on is a very cheap model I have in an RV, it seemed to have a bit of problems recognizing the -RW disc after I finalized it on the recorder, but after 2-3 load cycles it came up and played fine. The standalone player may be weak reading it just because its an -RW however.

I never even knew the JVC had an "un-finalize" until I had this problem, not that its helped me though as I have un-finalized then finalized three times and still have the same issue.

[piano632]

Was this DVD recorded in Video Mode or VR Mode?

If it's Video Mode, I'd say it's a poor quality media issue. You can try cleaning the disc with isopropyl alcohol or distilled vinegar which tends to make the disc a bit more shiny/reflective and maybe a bit more readable.

If it's VR Mode, you probably just need UDF reading software (Nero InCD, etc.).

[trhouse]

I think you misunderstood the purpose of the test.

It was to determine if there is a problem with this specific dvd-rw. I believe you when you say that you have created dvd-rw's on the computer and that work fine in it and M10S.

The question is, is this true of this specific dvd-rw? If you burn a dvd with the computer to this specific disk, will it play on the other machines or will it behave just like the M10s produced disk.

P.S. If the disk is bad, the advice above about Isobuster is good.

[Offroad]

Was this DVD recorded in Video Mode or VR Mode?

If it's VR Mode, you probably just need UDF reading software (Nero InCD, etc.).

I'm at work now but I'm nearly positive it was recorded in VR mode.
Most of other discs I've edited on the PC would have been recorded in Video mode (VHS home movie captures).

Should a standalone DVD player be able to read a finalized VR mode (UDF) DVD?
I'll install some UDF reading software tonight and give that a try.

[Offroad]

[quote="Offroad"]

Was this DVD recorded in Video Mode or VR Mode?

If it's VR Mode, you probably just need UDF reading software (Nero InCD, etc.).

I'm at work now but I'm nearly positive it was recorded in VR mode.
Most of other discs I've edited on the PC would have been recorded in Video mode (VHS home movie captures).

The DVD Rom drive on my PC will read DVD-RAM discs, aren't those done in VR mode?
Should that drive be able to read a VR mode disc without UDF reading software?

I can install UDF software this evening and give that a try.

[trhouse]

VR mode is not very compatible with most standalone players. It was developed primarily to make it easier to edit on the recorder.

[edit]Is there some reason for choosing VR mode over video mode in your situation?[edit]

[Offroad]

Is there some reason for choosing VR mode over video mode in your situation?

Normally I only use VR mode for football games and then I use a RAM disc so if I get home after the game is started I can watch it from kickoff without waiting for the game to finish. I usually use FR200 which gives me 3hrs and 20min incase the game goes into OT. I would think this would give a bit better bitrate and picture than a straight 4hr mode, anyway. After I watch the game I just erase the recording so there's no editing.

This particular show was recorded in VR mode on a -RW by mistake.