Damaged DVDs not ripping

[hollowman]

I purchased a Dr Who box set a few years ago and finally got around to unwrapping and watching, and then ATTEMPTED ripping. Three of the six discs have a small "kink" in the aluminum layer at exactly the same point (under Tom Baker's scarf, seen from the label side). You can BARELY see it, even when holding it up at multiple angles. Prob. something got caught in the dupe machine at the BBC/WB pressing plant. Anyway, using DVDFab, these three discs stop ripping at about 25-30%. DVDFab does not fault out, but it slows WAY, WAY down. Me thinks the rip time will exceed the life of the universe at this rate!
I tried Total Copy and plain ol' Windows copy/paste ... and I can grab a few more VOB files more this way (total size is about 5.5GB for each of the three, single-layer/single-sided, affected discs)


I can't understand why DVDFab notes 100% during it's initial "Quality" scan, for all three discs, but then craps out 1/4 - 1/3 the way in?
And I don't really understand why most players (PC, laptop, or home units) play the discs, ALL THE WAY THRU, just fine.


If there was some way to rip the affected section, and just have the ripper software deliberately glitch or blank, the bad section, I could live with that. But the ripping software (or simple Explorer copy/pasting) want perfection and exactness ... not "close enough for government work".


What can I do/try?


THX!!

[hollowman]

The burner/drive or OS or machine makes no difference. E.g., PC with Win XP Pro SP2, using:
Lite-On 24 X iHAS424-98 DVD
I also have Benq 1655 and 1640 but haven't tried those (might they work??)


Laptop is a Win 7 Dell 1764. That's a 2010 model.


Is there another file copy software that will specifically extract from a damaged disc?

[Baldrick]

Try first on another dvd drive/computer.

Then try other rippers like anydvd or the old dvddecrypter might even work.

[hollowman]

Try first on another dvd drive/computer.

Then try other rippers like anydvd or the old dvddecrypter might even work.

DVDFab has DVDDecrypter v5 built in. I've heard of AnyDVD, but never tired it. On YouTube, someone has a tutorial about various purpose-built software (freeware) options:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IYoVZRPawE
I'm trying recoverytoolbox right now and it is going VERY slow. Dunno if it'll work or the universe will run outta time

Not sure about using older drives/burners ... I have some from 2000, 2003 and the Benq's from 2005/2006. The Benq's were legendary in their day, but they are IDE and switched to all SATA years ago. I suppose if enough of you swear by the old drives, I'll plug 'em in and see what happens.

[hech54]

DVDFab has DVDDecrypter v5 built in.

No.

[mike20021969]

And I don't really understand why most players (PC, laptop, or home units) play the discs, ALL THE WAY THRU, just fine.

Just because a DVD plays, does not necessarily mean it will rip.
Playing a DVD and ripping a DVD are different processes.

[hollowman]

DVDFab has DVDDecrypter v5 built in.

No.

Mine DVDFab says: HD DVD Decrypter 5.1.0.0. Also...http://www.dvdfab.com/dvd-decrypter.htm

[hollowman]

And I don't really understand why most players (PC, laptop, or home units) play the discs, ALL THE WAY THRU, just fine.

Just because a DVD plays, does not necessarily mean it will rip.
Playing a DVD and ripping a DVD are different processes.

I never said they were. Merely implied that the player uses buffering or caching or other interpolating software that gets the job done. Why can't a ripper do the same thing? If you think about it, the ripper's sensitivity seems even more absurd: it can re(scan) the data stream ad infinitum to make a decent copy while a decent player only has finite memory/time ...

[hollowman]

Okay ... trying DVD Decrypter 3.5 ... seems to work the fastest, but runs into Sector errors in areas where the aluminum is damaged (like other rippers). After 20 Retries, it gives and I/O Error message and three options: Abort | Retry | Ignore. If I click Ignore, it immediately moves onto the next sequential error (in the damage area), Retires another 20 times and gives me Error 2. I assume there are a LOT of Errors for the damaged area... so ... Why can't one "Ignore All" -- there seems to be no way to do this ... or is there?

[hech54]

DVDFab has DVDDecrypter v5 built in.

No.

Mine DVDFab says: HD DVD Decrypter 5.1.0.0. Also...http://www.dvdfab.com/dvd-decrypter.htm

No.
What you are linking to is known as DVDFabDecrypter.

The program called DVDDecrypter was one of the first, best and most useful decrypting softwares made.
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-Decrypter
It has not been developed since 2005....aka.....it's dead (though still very useful in certain circumstances).

[mike20021969]

Why can't a ripper do the same thing?

It doesn't work like that though.

[hello_hello]

There's no way to know where the problem area is on the disc (in respect to which section of video is effected) so it's not something you might have actually played as yet. DVD players are (the way I understand it) designed to "keep playing" so they may simply skip an unreadable section of the disc. I have a couple of discs I can't rip entirely but they seem to play fine (also BBC discs). Fortunately I ripped them years ago and backed up the ripped files, but when I tried to rip them again with a different drive recently, I still had no luck.

A ripping program will sometimes fail because it's designed to give you an exact copy of the original, not to just skip over bits that can't be read. Much like simply copying a file from disc with Windows will fail if the disc can't be read properly, yet the file itself might seem to play okay.

In the case of DVD Decrypter (I've not used it much myself so I can't give exact instructions), it has options for how may times it'll try to keep reading bad sectors of a disc before it gives up, and an option to keep going while replacing the unreadable parts with dummy data. That may or may not give satisfactory results, depending on which section of video has unreadable bits. I'm pretty sure it also has some sort of "automatically ignore errors" option so it doesn't keep asking each time.

If you're not necessarily wanting to rip the entire disc (just the individual episodes) you might get lucky and find that solves the problem as the faulty area of the disc won't need to be read at all, or at worst you might get all of the episodes off intact except for one.
I don't use DVDFab due to it being horribly bloated crap, but I assume (at least the paid version) has an option to rip in "movie only" mode or to rip individual episodes. Failing that DVD Decrypter can do it, as can DVD Shrink. Neither program can handle discs with newer copy protections (they're both no longer updated) but they should be fine with BBC discs. You can rip individual episodes with DVD Shrink by opening the disc and using it's re-author mode. Drag a title from the right pane to the left, then use the backup function. It pays to set the target output size in DVD Shrink's preferences to something large (DVD9 or greater) so DVD Shrink will just copy the video and not try to "shrink" it. I think it's set to DVD5 by default. You won't be able to backup the DVD menu that way as you can when backing up the entire disc, but if you're wanting to rip the disc in order to re-encode it or repack the episodes into MKV files etc, then that won't matter. Someone else may be able to give instructions for ripping individual episodes with DVD Decrypter. I can't remember off the top of my head and I don't have it installed.

PS. There's also MakeMKV which will rip and remux individual episodes as MKV files (no re-encoding).

PPS. If you can try with a second or third drive, it can't hurt. On quite a few occasions I've managed to rip all episodes from a disc by using multiple drives. While no single drive could read the whole disc, between them they managed to, although admittedly in your case it sounds like the discs might be unreadable in places, regardless of the drive.

[hollowman]

In the case of DVD Decrypter (I've not used it much myself so I can't give exact instructions), it has options for how may times it'll try to keep reading bad sectors of a disc before it gives up, and an option to keep going while replacing the unreadable parts with dummy data. That may or may not give satisfactory results, depending on which section of video has unreadable bits. I'm pretty sure it also has some sort of "automatically ignore errors" option so it doesn't keep asking each time.

DVD Decrypter is faster, but it runs into the same snags at pretty much the same damaged spot as other rippers I use. It does give a "comprehensive" I/O Error message with three options: Ignore, Retry, Cancel. But no Ignore All. I can't find ANY options like the ones you note (dummy data, etc.) That's what I want and so far, no ripper I've tried offers this.

EDIT: I had an older version installed. I installed the "latest" version and it seems to offer more. Stay tuned ...

[redwudz]

I use the freeware ISOPuzzle on badly scratched DVDs and it seems to work well. You will end up with a 'glitch' in the video where the data is missing, but it usually picks up all the rest of the data. Rippers like DVD Decrypter are designed for 100% perfect discs and aren't much good for data recovery.

[TimA-C]

If you can, try setting the ripping speed as low as possible.

[lordsmurf]

Try another DVD drive.
Sometimes that's all it is.

[nic2k4]

DVDFab HD Decrypter and DVDdecrypter have settings for the number of retries on read error. You can set it to 0 if the discs are brand new and not full of scratches. You can also set it to ignore all errors, if you don't see the setting just select ignore everytime (DVDdecrypter will eventually offer to ignore all errors). Depending on your drive, there may also be a setting for hardware read error retries; in DVDdecrypter it's under the drive settings (not sure about the other one).

You will be able to rip the discs faster, the video will glitch but it will play through. If you're lucky you won't lose too much.

[hello_hello]

EDIT: I had an older version installed. I installed the "latest" version and it seems to offer more. Stay tuned ...

Hopefully I'm remembering correctly. It's been a while since I've used it myself.

[hollowman]

Okay .. tried pretty much every suggestion above -- including other drives (I have several, old and new) -- and I'm back to DVDFab. Reason: it does not GRIND my drive and it reads the "bad areas" about the same speed as DVD Decrypter, ISOPuzzle, etc.ISOPuzzle was better than DVD Decrypter in that it is less noisy and shows real progress. But after 13 hrs and only 25% (ISO Puzzle), I gave up.
DVDFab has a very good built-in "recoverer" ... it handles scratches and such as good as any dedicated recovery software (many noted in this thread). I'm pretty sure I had a similar issue years ago, tried 'em all, and settled with 'Fab. If it can't do it ... buy another DVD. Or, search for a downloadable copy ... or live w/o it. (I'm not a big Dr. Who fan anymore!)

EDITORIAL: Because of troublesome issues like this, general-use ergonomics/convenience, storage and change in tastes, I gave up on optical discs almost completely a few yrs ago. I had pretty much everything I wanted ripped then. Downloads (from various sites, iTunes, even the occasional t0rrent or file-share) or even YouTube (Netflix, hulu, etc) are 99% of my A/V consumption these days. The Cloud is good enough

[Krispy Kritter]

All drives are not equal for RIPing. Here is an older review for reference which still applies to new drives: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/dvd_rip_challenge_12_popular_drives_put_test

And software wise (most of which were already listed) http://lifehacker.com/380702/five-best-dvd-ripping-tools

[theewizard]

because playing takes its cues from 'cell' links in the IFO files and is a realtime process AKA slow 2hrs etc..
and copying takes its cue from the file structure of the disc and is attempting to copy the disc file structure
since they play you could do a screen recording of the videos

And I don't really understand why most players (PC, laptop, or home units) play the discs, ALL THE WAY THRU, just fine.

Just because a DVD plays, does not necessarily mean it will rip.
Playing a DVD and ripping a DVD are different processes.

I never said they were. Merely implied that the player uses buffering or caching or other interpolating software that gets the job done. Why can't a ripper do the same thing? If you think about it, the ripper's sensitivity seems even more absurd: it can re(scan) the data stream ad infinitum to make a decent copy while a decent player only has finite memory/time ...