Can I recover scratch DVD ?

[SingSing]

There are quite a few of my kid's DVDs have scartches. They play fine on DVD player, but DVDFab, and other rippers could not rip them for me to make a backup copy.

I think I can play these DVDs, pass thru a macrovision remover, and record at least a stereo version of them with my DVD recorder. Will that work ? Any other suggestions ?

[rkr1958]

You could DVDDecrypter and set it to ignore read errors and see what happens.

I had a disc that was so badly scratched that it frozen in both by my Humax TIVO unit (which can play most anything) and my Toshiba SD-2800.

I used DVD Decryptor and it took a long time (an hour-plus) to rip, with ripping speeds dropping down to <= 0.1x at the damaged areas. But it ripped with NO read errors.

If you do try DVD Decryptor and do get a rip with read errors, you could try a different optical drive if you have one and see which rip gives you the fewest (or no) read errors.

If you try this, just be patient though.

[Noahtuck]

IsoBuster has done wonders for me on damaged and otherwise unrippable disc's by conventional means.

[RoopeT]

If you can play the discs on a DVD player you should be able to copy them too. I personally have 4 computers with 4 DVD writers and a few DVD readers, and in many cases it DOES make a difference trying a few different brands of DVD readers.

Computer DVD writers are so cheap today ... it might be worth the effort to buy a second DVD writer.

[canadateck]

IsoBuster wont rip it because of MV if it has it.

[akrako1]

first of all, make sure you're attempting to read the disc on your DVD burner, not your DVD-Rom (in case you have both). I've had much more success with the laser on my burner reading scratched discs.

Also, I've heard that DVD-Ghost uses a different type of bit-scanning method (don't know if that's true), that works real well on damaged discs. At least you can try out a trial... Funny, I can't find any links to this tool here... check this out:
http://www.region-free-dvd.com/dvdghost.html

[piano632]

Buy Fellowes CD/DVD Scratch Repair Kit at OfficeMax and rub out the scratches. Good stuff.