Copying Homemade Discs?

[dstuck]

Hi Folks --

Sorry if I missed it in the forum, but how is it that I can't get Mac the Ripper (or Fairmount, for that matter) to extract content from discs I've burned at home on a DVD Recorder?

It usually reads the disc as "Logical Volume Identifier" but can go no further. Fairmount doesn't even acknowledge there's a disc in the drive.

This happens with all 'homemade' discs, not just a couple...

I'm on a G5 running 10.4.11

any ideas?

Thanks,
Dave

[terryj]

Discs aren't finalized in the recorder?
Finalize a disc in the recorder, and then
insert it into your mac. Should be recognized
then by MTR, Fairmount, the Finder, etc.

[dstuck]

That's the weird thing. They are finalized... and play fine in DVD player or on Mac!

[tomlee59]

Try copying the disc to your hard drive. There may be something funny with the way your disc was authored, so making an editable copy is a good first step. And if you encounter errors during the copy to your HD, that will be informative as well.

[dstuck]

Good idea -- I've always felt that it's the default menu system that DVD Recorders put on the discs are what bogs it down. At least that's my experience with homemade discs from other folks that I've tried to copy.

thanks again!

[tomlee59]

If you're lucky, and it just turns out to be a minor authoring quirk, you can probably fix things up pretty easily by just generating a new ifo file. There are several tools for doing this on the Mac. You might want to take a look at something like tocgen, for example.

[Frobozz]

You don't need MacTheRipper or Fairmount to extract video from DVDs created on a standalone recorder. These aren't copy protected. You can access those videos directly from disc with MPEG Streamclip and other MPEG-friendly applications. You can even copy the VIDEO_TS folder straight to the hard drive if it is recorded in video mode and finalized.

DVD recorders also record in VR mode. If that is how your DVD was recorded then you need to use Toast's Media Browser to extract the MPEG video from the DVD. Choose DVD with the top button of the media browser and drag what appears to the Toast Video window with DVD video selected as the format.

Note that when recording in video mode on a standalone recorder it is possible there will be lots of timecode breaks. MPEG Streamclip has an option in its Edit window to quickly fix those breaks, following which you save the file using "Convert to MPEG" from the File menu.

[tomlee59]

MPEGstreamclip is a wonderful app. To use it with MPEG2, however, you will need Apple's MPEG2 component. If you don't have it already, you'll need to buy it (it's not expensive).

[dstuck]

Frobozz and tomlee59 --

Thanks for the great advice. Will give MPEG Streamclip a try.

I think what was misleading me was that the one particular disc I was trying the 'drag to HD' method must've been corrupted in some way (though it plays fine) -- because it wouldn't copy/rip/extract no matter what I did. I attributed this failure to the other discs that couldn't be ripped with MTR/Fairmount.

Thanks again,
dave

I've never figured out the whole 'make a new IFO', etc thing... don't know anything beyond the VIDEO TS stuff...guess I should read up on the basics of how DVD's are structured.

[danielmak]

As someone who deals a lot with DVDs recorded on set-top recorders, I can say that a corrupt IFO tends to be the problem when the VIDEO_TS can't be dragged. I just drag the VOB files on their own and those can be burned under Toast's Video setting.

[dstuck]

danielmak --

Thank you. I think this particular disc is just plain bad (tho it plays). When copying a couple of the VOB files, I get the ol' "data error - cyclic redundancy check" error. Can't even load it into TMPEGEnc XP to pull off one piece of the show (which is what I wanted to do all along - that's how the whole thing started).

but this is all good to know.

Dave