Possibly corrupted video

[-Habanero-]

I burned a bunch of episodes to several DVDs in 2008 and moved them to a USB stick in 2014 for archival purposes. But it wasn't until now that I noticed playback issues on some of them and I suspect corruption of the DVDs but it could also be the flash drive for all I know.

My question is, is there a way to know which episodes are corrupted and which aren't? I'm not gonna rewatch 84 hours or even skim thru them.

I don't mind posting the full episode either if the mods allow it. At this point, I'm not even sure if it's corruption or a playback issue because they've been encoded so long ago back when I sucked at this.

[redwudz]

For a flash drive, I would immediately stop accessing the FD and use a recovery program to save what you have. That's assuming it is a FD failure problem.
And they do fail.

If you still have the original DVDs that the FD was cloned from, check them. Some lower quality brands have problems after a few years storage Some don't.
You may see discoloration/scratches on the discs. If you no longer have them. OK.
But I would recommend good quality media. I use Verbatim most times.

Your question:

'Is there a way to know which episodes are corrupted and which aren't? I'm not gonna rewatch 84 hours or even skim thru them.

The answer is usually. 'No.' You can scan through the file and most times corruption is obvious. I would also check the runtime/size against the similar files.

But if they now only exist on the FD, then I would try to recover the data. If a random sample shows corruption, it's likely the rest of the files may also.

[-Habanero-]

Holy shit... I just skimmed random episodes hoping to find a pattern of corruption since earlier ones were burned earlier. Never ran into playback issues so I went back to that season 4 episode that was giving me hell last night and... it was perfectly fine.
No playback problems. This is weird. Was the flash drive overheating or something? I have it plugged in 24/7 after all.
Last night it corrupted on the exact same spots and now everything is perfectly fine.

[JVRaines]

Check for video file errors with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -v error -i input file -f null - >errors.txt 2>&1

If errors.txt is empty, then file is okay.

[lingyi]

Holy shit... I just skimmed random episodes hoping to find a pattern of corruption since earlier ones were burned earlier. Never ran into playback issues so I went back to that season 4 episode that was giving me hell last night and... it was perfectly fine.
No playback problems. This is weird. Was the flash drive overheating or something? I have it plugged in 24/7 after all.
Last night it corrupted on the exact same spots and now everything is perfectly fine.

Flash drives can fail due to overheating, low quality (cheap) or overuse. They aren't meant for heavy 24/7 use.

Best advice, copy the DVDs immediately to other DVDs (Verbatim DataLife as stated above or Taiyo Yuden) and other media (HDD, SSD, flash drive). It seems you've managed to dodge a bullet this time, make at least two additional backups so you don't (hopefully) have to dodge another one.

I use ViceVersa (free) when backing up my videos to another drive. In standard mode it will compare file name and size. It can also do a file CRC check in through mode.

[-Habanero-]

Thanks JVRaines, this I'll keep in mind in the future.

lingyi, I don't heavily use it 24/7 and the drive is set to read-only. I just keep it plugged in 24/7 so I don't have to keep plugging it in and out every time I need something for a few seconds. From what I understand, this damages the stick, they can be plugged in only about 1500 times before failing.

I'll make a backup. I've trashed the DVDs so this USB stick is the only one left but the data is intact so everything's cool.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Joseph Ray]

You can just watch them over on a flashdrive to check if they are corrupted. You can always find some extra help for things like this at places like Best Buy so you don't have to worry about it. Good luck.