Anybody Having Problems with Hitachi miniDVDs???

[bigk4]

I bought one a year ago and just started playing trying to rip the DVDs and am picking up errors all over the place. This is happening on multiple brands of disks so its not that. The disks all view fine, but when it comes time to rip all major programs are picking up errors. Anyone else have this problem or is it just my camera?

[hech54]

It is most likely the file structure that the camera places on the DVD...not the camera or the media's fault. I need several "work-arounds" to get DVD's from my Philips DVD Recorder to react the same on a computer as a "store bought" DVD's.

[Norbury]

When you say Hitachi miniDVDs are you talking about the disks themselves (i.e. the Maxell brand ones which are made for Hitachi) or do you mean you're having trouble ripping the miniDVDs which you recorded on your Hitachi DVD camcorder?

If you mean the latter, then yes, I am having problems with the same thing. From extensive trawling of this site almost all of the discussion of DVD-RAM .VRO files seems to relate to ripping a movie recorded off the TV on to a DVD-RAM TV recorder. Some of the problems that people had relate to the inability of the software used to distinguish that more than one program has been recorded on the disk. With the DVD camcorder it seems to me that this problem is made far worse as instead of having say two movies on the RAM disk you might have effectively dozens of individual shots with different time and date tags.

I tried the trial versions of both Pegasys TMPGEnc and Ulead Video Studio 7 and both were unable to deal with more than the first 12 seconds of the VRO file (which is about 25 minutes long) whether renamed as .MPG or not.

I am now going to try outputting it to the PC's TV card via SVideo cable and capture it that way, as it seems that nothing will effectively deal with a .VRO file. I will let you know if I have any success.

Unless anyone else knows otherwise...

[Norbury]

Apologies - found Specialist's post on this, tried it and it worked fine, even managing to detect the breaks disk navigation software in the camera uses. Could pull out individual shots, even stills, and add sound etc.

This is what Specialist said (and thanks to him for his clarity...) :

Ulead VideoStudio offers DVD-VR support required to read the .VRO files.

The free trial download is here:

http://www.ulead.com/vs/trial.htm

For Ulead VIDEOSTUDIO 7:

1. Open Ulead VIDEOSTUDIO 7.0 and click FILE > CHANGE CAPTURE
PLUG-IN > ULEAD DVD-VR PLUG-IN.

2. Click the CAPTURE button step.

3. Click OPTIONS > VIDEO PROPERTIES.

4. Observe the dialogue box that allows you to browse to the location
of your DVD-RAM drive.

5. Click OK.

6. Click the CAPTURE VIDEO icon.

7. SELECT PLAYLIST dialogue appears.

8. Highlight the playlist you wish to edit and click NEXT.

9. Highlight the scene you wish to edit and click FINISH.

Now the .VRO file loads as an MPEG into your Ulead VIDEOSTUDIO 7.0
timeline for editing.

After you edit and then CREATE the final MPEG file, go to the EDIT
step and import the finished file and then click the EXPORT button and
then click ULEAD DVD-VR WIZARD.

[bigk4]

To elaborate on my problem, its is ripping and I have used both the Maxell and Sony disks. I talked to the guys at Hitachi and they recommended using Ulead DVD Moviemaker to convert the files. I haven't "acquired" that program yet, but I am told that TMPGE works pretty much the same and I was able to sucssessfully convert and rip one DVD. The rest failed midstream, after finding some sort of read error on the disks. It happens at different points of the convert/rip, so I am convinced there is more than a VRO to VTB issue here.

I am going to try the suggestion above, but doubt it will work ( thanks though ). I am also going to give DVD X Rescue a shot to see what happens. I am hoping it can read over the errors and at least create a clean base copy on my HD for TMPGE to then convert it. I am pretty much clueless here, so who the hell knows if that is even possible.

Any advice on the above that will help keep at least some of my hair will be appreciated.

[Norbury]

TMPGE didn't work for me - it failed to make it all the way through the file and just gave me the opening shot, the final shot and a lot of kind of empty shot dividers in between. I actually made a 4 minute .WMV last night with added soundtrack, edits etc. from shots taken from the VRO file using Ulead Video Studio 7.

As you say your disks play back fine in the camera I can't see any reason to suspect it is the disks or your recorded VROs at fault. It seems to me it is the software. I'd definitely try this route. By the way I was able to use the method outlined previously using the camera mounted as an external drive (using the Hitachi XP driver from their own DVD camcorder support site) and it also worked if you dump the whole file structure from the camera's disk on to your hard drive - but then still using the same method... it seems to want the file / directory structure as it comes.

I would forget TMPGE - it didn't seem to me to offer such good editing potential either, as well as just not working with VROs from the camera!