Unplayable home-recorded DVD

[Drahken]

The DVD recorder that I recently took back and told the store to shove someplace painful fowled up a DVD in some strange way. After it was done recording, something happened so that the disc won't go past the menu during playback in any DVD player, nor can I get it to playback on a computer, nor will it allow me to record anything else on it even though there's still space and it should not have been finalized. The closest I can get to being able to play the disc is with Gspot analyzer, and it will only play the audio, and plays it in the wrong order (titles which should be near the end of the vob file are somehow played at the beginning instead). If anyone could help me play this thing at least once (I never got to watch any of the things I recorded on it), I'd be very grateful. It's a +R disc, and as far as I can tell, the video is in mpeg1 format withing an mpeg-ps stream.

[SingSing]

Open the DVD, and what folders and files can you see ?

[Drahken]

The standard DVD stuff:
VIDEO_RM:
VIDEO_RM.BUP
VIDEO_RM.IFO
VIDEO_RM.USR
VIDEO_TS:
VIDEO_TS.BUP
VIDEO_TS.IFO
VIDEO_TS.VOB
VTS_01_0.BUP
VTS_01_0.IFO
VTS_01_1.VOB
VTS_01_2.VOB
VTS_01_3.VOB

The only real difference is that there is usually 3 copies of each VTS file file, one set named "VTS_01", one named "VTS_02", and one named "VTS_03", but in this case there's just the "VTS_01" set.

[guns1inger]

VTS is Video Title Set. I suspect you get a new titleset for each recording session, however if you expected more and didn't finalise the disc, they may be inaccessable.

Can you just copy the VTS_01_*.VOB files to your HDD ?

From there you should be able to view them to see what's in them, and manipulate them as needed.

[SingSing]

Your video are in :
VTS_01_1.VOB
VTS_01_2.VOB
VTS_01_3.VOB
Copy them to a folder, and then use PC applications like PowerDVD to view them.

With PowerDVD, use view video file of harddisk, and select the files in 1,2,and 3. PowerDVD will play the entire video.

[Drahken]

I tried opening the VOB files directly from the disc, but they didn't work. Would copying them to my harddrive really make any difference?

[SingSing]

Yes.

[Drahken]

So far, so good. I don't see what difference copying the files to the harddrive makes, but clearly it does make some difference. Thanks.

[SingSing]

The DVD playing applications when presented with VOB files, often look for the IFO files, and get stuck. Putting only the needed VOB files in a folder, stop that.