Ripping unfinalized home DVD

[hkcj]

I have a home DVD from a Phillips DVD recorder from the mid 2000s that was unfinalized. (I know because it has a note stuck to it saying so.) I accidentally closed it thinking that that was the same thing (oops). Considering that it isn’t (shouldn’t be?) encrypted, do I have any options for getting the video off? I have access to MacOS and Windows.

[hech54]

If you search here for "finalize" or "finalized" you'll probably find an answer or two before us old farts remember.

[davexnet]

The usual recommendation is isobuster, may have to purchase it before it will do anything useful,
but you can install it for free and see what it finds.

https://www.isobuster.com/

[orsetto]

If isobuster doesn't fully recover the videos, try playing the disc in Cyberlink PowerDVD. This was bundled with a great many new PCs, so you might already have it on yours. If not, ask around to friends family. PowerDVD has its issues (price being one of them if you didn't get it bundled with your PC), but it redeems itself by ability to play unfinalized discs from many brands of dvd recorder. Worst comes to worst, you could do a screen cap or HDMI cap to a standard video file format. The full payware version might also allow direct ripping within the app, but its been ages since I've used the pay version so I don't remember.

[hech54]

I think I remember DVDShrink adding that ability to it's arsenal at one time. It's free but only get it from here.

[TimA-C]

I originally used TMPGenc's Mpeg editor and then (I think) VideoRedo to access unfinalised DVD-RWs from my Liteon DVD recorders. I haven't been in that situation for years, so no idea if the current versions still work like that? Might be worth downloading & installing the trial versions . . . ?

Let us know how you get on. Good Luck!

[steptoe]

Also, try VOBBlanker. Its ancient but still has its uses in repairing or correcting poor DVDs. I've had commercial DVD that were absolute pants DVD structure all over the place and VOBBlanker corrected it. Good for ripping unprotected DVDs as well and also for basic editing of ripped DVDs to remove FBI warnings, forced menus, forced previews, etc, etc

https://www.videohelp.com/download/VobBlanker_2130_exe.zip


DVDDecrypter is still available, but no longer supported

https://www.videohelp.com/download/SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.exe


or his other not so updated (no longer updated ??) IMGBurn

https://codecpack.co/download/ImgBurn.html

Be aware that the last installer of IMGBurn installed malware, you can stop all malware being installed this by being careful and watching the installer or simply download the portable adfree release on the same page