weird activity with DVD-VR

[jeex]

a friend of mine has been recording a series on his pioneer dvd recorder (the 220). he gave me a disc with three 1 hour episodes. i am able to play the disc as it is with powerdvd just fine. i can watch all 3 episodes (just click next and it goes to the next episode).

windows does not recognize the disc as anything (disc structure is corrupted or unreadable).

i can extract the VRO file from the disc (which is 3.52gb), but it only shows the first episode when i play the VRO file through powerdvd, wmp, or anything else. i've tried opening it in womble mpeg2 vcr & tmpgenc, samething.

basically what i'm trying to do is get all 3 episodes off the disc & snip out the commericals, put it back together and author a disc through tmpgenc dvd recorder.

but i'm kind of stuck because i can only get to this 1 episode..

i was able to play the disc in my pioneer dv-270 (dvd player) and view all 3 episodes through the disc navigator..

all help would be mucho appreciated

[steveryan]

I know nothing about standalone dvd players but a couple of ideas for you. Can you open the disc directly with TMPGEnc DVD Author (i.e don't extract the VRO file first)? And has the disc been finalised?

[jeex]

the disc has been finalised. and TDA cant recognize the disc.

[gshelley61]

These .VRO files can be a real pain in the ass. Sometimes they extract to the HDD (takes 20-30 minutes) and work just fine, sometimes they are very buggy and unusable... all while playing perfectly with PowerDVD or some other software player. I gave up on DVD-VR some time ago because of these problems.

Anyway, you might want to try Womble MPEG Video Wizard. It has been the best for me at succesfully dealing with .VRO, although not 100%. They have an unrestricted 30 day trial, too. Great application - frame accurate editing and very fast (no re-encoding).

Another curious thing... after I downloaded a trial version of Cyberlink PowerProducer 2, nearly all of my other applications could suddenly read and extract .VRO (maybe caused by a plug-in or .dll that is in the Cyberlink program?). After that, I could transfer the .VRO's to my HDD and rename them with the .mpg extension, or even use them as they were right off the disc with TMPGEnc Author, TMPGEnc Plus MPEG Tools, VirtualDubMod, VOBEdit, etc. Still, the files sometimes would still be buggy and basically useless.

[jeex]

well i just ran the disc through ulead movie factory or something.. it said it couldnt handle the files because they had dolby digital audio, so i gave up on it.. then i noticed there was about 3 and a half gigs missing from my c: drive.. so i tracked it down, it ripped the 3 episodes to seperate mpeg files.. i was very happy.. i then took'em in to womble mpeg2 vcr and i'm able to copy out the parts that i need, sav'em, and drag'em in to TDA.. the only sucky thing is that ulead has a 15 day trial. but atleast i've found a way to work with this.

[sullen]

I have tried everything under the sun to be able to extract the .vro from my disc with no success. I have installed IsoBuster Pro which will open the disc and show me the .vro, but it won't extract the .vro. I can't explore the disc from My Computer, I get either to insert a disc or the error that the disc structure is corrupted or unreadable. I am really getting annoyed with this who DVD-VR process. I tried out an old Phillips recorder before I took it back and loved the capability of just burning to the +RW and then taking it to the computer. This -RW crap is getting old quick. I also installed PowerProducer as mentioned above with no luck. I love a lot of features on my machine, Pioneer DVR-225, but can't handle having to record in Video mode and finalize for 20 minutes or longer before I can take the disc to the PC to edit. Any help is much appreciated.

[gshelley61]

This -RW crap is getting old quick. I also installed PowerProducer as mentioned above with no luck. I love a lot of features on my machine, Pioneer DVR-225, but can't handle having to record in Video mode and finalize for 20 minutes or longer before I can take the disc to the PC to edit. Any help is much appreciated.

I've been recording on -RW's in DVD-Video mode with my new JVC DR-M10SL and finally solved all my .VRO issues for good. No more waiting 30 minutes for a .VRO file to load to my HDD.

Finalization of the -RW's has taken only 3-5 minutes for me so far. That's been with as little as 30 minutes recorded in 2 hour mode (to leave lots of space). Formatting (erasing) is even faster.

[jeex]

i actually read the manual

this dvd recorder is kinda kick ass. you arent confined to 1 hour, 2 hour, 4 hour & 6 hour mode. you can customize it within 5 or 10 minutes for MAXIMUM QUALITY. heh

once i got ulead to give me seperate mpeg files, it was a piece of cake..

i wish there was a program that would read these dvd-vr discs and just spit out mpeg files. it did take a while for ulead to read the disc though.. i think like 40 minutes.. i was able to play an entire game of mvp baseball whilst waiting for it..

y'know, this disc was finalised, but only my pioneer dvd player would read it. i thought finalizing it was supposed to make it playable in dvd players that would read dvd-rw? no dice here..

if anyone knows of a program that will read a dvd-vr(rw) faster ulead & spit out mpeg files, then let me know for gods sake. i spent 3 hours trying to find one.

i was able to get my project just spiffy after playing around for quite a few hours.. i just wish there were a way to have tmpgenc dvd author have different menu pages for different episode chapters.. ahwell.. 1 chapter per episode is cool..