Extracting recordings from Pioneer DVRs to PC now working

[jwillis84]

fyi.. IB 4.3.3 alpha now supports all of the Pioneer DVRs (510, 520, 530, 533, 540, 550, 560 et.al.) for copying recordings from the HDD to a PC as complete recordings. The recording is not removed or deleted from the DVR recorder hard drive.The recordings are in the same MPEG2 format as recorded and no DVD media is required to broker the trip. Recordings from recorders that no longer work can be recovered as long as the hard drive is still readable.

Panasonic DVRs eh55, eh75, eh59, eh69 are now working, but are not included in the current alpha.. projected for the 4.3.4 alpha.. soon.

[hech54]

Nice

[Gil T Remnant]

Sorry if this is a stupid query, but are you removing the HDD from the recorder in order to rip the recordings from it?

[jwillis84]

Gosh that seems like 'ages' ago now.

Yes the last of the Pioneers and SONYs were tested by removing the hard drive from the recorder and attaching it to an IDE to USB bridge and connecting that to a laptop or desktop running IsoBuster to read and copy the recordings off.. (In the beginning I did use a PC with an IDE hard drive connector, but managing the recorder hard drive jumpers proved too annoying.. using an IDE to USB bridge I didn't have to do any of that.)

Youtube videos of the process, Pioneers

The most important thing to remember is to not allow Windows to (initialize) the recorder hard drive if it asks permission, and not try to mount or access the hard drive outside of IsoBuster while it is connected to the PC.

IsoBuster lets you view or verify it can see recordings on a hard drive in demo mode for free, but requires a license in order to enable the copy feature. Its not an expensive program and once its licensed it enables all features. It can be used against a hard drive, a raw disk image of a hard drive, or it can make raw disk images of hard drives. Its basically a data recovery tool that this year (2019) had DVD recorder specific intelligence added to support recovering recordings from those images or hard drives.

Its probably worth stressing that "rip" is not actually what it does.. since that suggests defeating encryption or some other drm feature. IsoBuster does not do that, the recorders it supports do not encrypt the recordings. IsoBuster also does not effect Macrovision or any other copy protection mechanism.. if the recorders captured that.. that remains intact.. so it doesn't "rip".

Each recorder brand and model "stored" its recordings in a different manner, and in most cases did not use a known file system. IsoBuster is a data recovery tool, so it seeks out patterns and reconciles disjointed fragmentation to turn recording streams into 'files'. Its also been taught how to find recording titles and associates those with the recordings it finds.. so navigating to find the recording your interested in is vastly simplified. If the user did not assign a title to a recording they can usually use the recording time and date to infer the recording they seek.

It is very easy to use.

There is a lot of data recovery information, but in general if you head straight for the "recordings" folder, you'll find them all there.

The recorders supported in 4.4 now include most if not all Panasonics, Pioneers, Toshibas, some Philips and Magnavox, LiteOn, Medion, RCA/Thomson and a few others.. it was over 52+ tested and the later generation of SONY were reportedly using the same storage formats as the later Pioneers.

None of the JVC DVD recorders are supported at this time.

[Gil T Remnant]

That is absolutely fascinating. Thank you. I actually have 4 DVD recorders with misc recordings on that it'd be cool to copy from the HDD without the reencoding to DVD. I shall certainly investigate ISOBuster as you suggest!

[polkwan]

Hi guys,

I was reading this topic hoping it could help me.
Unfortunately I remain stucked at the stage of connecting the HDD to the computer.
Win10 sees my HDD but does not allocate it any letter. Even manually I can't assign one... (see screenshot below).
If I place the HDD back in the Pioneer, it's recognized and I see all my recordings. So it lets me think there's no damage on it...
Could you maybe help me ? It would be great...


[Attachment 56331 - Click to enlarge]

[jwillis84]

I think you misunderstand. NO Windows Operating system will assign it a drive letter, ever.. cannot because the drive has no file system or partition.

IsoBuster is a program that runs on Windows that can detect the hardware attached to the PC and understands the format and presents the contents inside IsoBuster as if it were a windows folder, and lets you copy recordings from the drive to the PC hard drive for playback long after the Pioneer Hard drive is returned to the recorder.

[polkwan]

Thank you jwillis84

But then how do you explain the fact that IsoBuster can not even detect my HDD attached ? (See new screenshot below)


[Attachment 56332 - Click to enlarge]

[jwillis84]

Personally I always use XP Vista or Win7

Win10 has severe USB hardware blocking to prevent infection by malware.

I am not an expert at the 20 different versions of Win10 at this point but I know they have been staking out a position that any mass storage on USB should be blocked by default and only allowed access when granted by the Local Administrator Account.

Its the opposite of "easy use".. the justification has been that security above all else.

To begin diagnosing the problem I would start with the Device Manager and first make sure Win10 is allowing a device driver to load for your USB attachment hardware, any unsigned or older hardware will be blocked by default.

Then there should be a notification when it detected the HDD is attached to the USB attachment hardware, it will be subtle and quickly disappear.. but for Win10 I think it shows up over in the Right hand slide window. Until its acknowledged and granted access.. it will be blocked and not enumerate in the volume manager.

Using Win10 requires a high degree of knowledge about how it blocks and tries not to work with any hardware.. its becoming a very hard to use operating system.

ps. Also since Microsoft has "disowned" Win10 32 bit and said they don't care what customers do with the 32 bit version its actually easier to use. The blocking can be turned off.

pps. I am in that group that don't regularly use Win10 and don't like it. I will be grudgingly upgrading to Windows 8.1 on January 5 at least it is no longer regularly feature upgraded and broken by updates all the time. It still gets security updates for four more years. Its simply not meddled with as much as Win10 and still completely usable.

[polkwan]

I'm not sure Windows is in cause here.
I tried on Ubuntu but there again, the HDD is not even "seen".
Unfortunately I don't have the possibility to try on an older version of Windows...

[jwillis84]

I wonder if the hard drive is spinning up.

Its definitely not impossible on Win10.. its just very very hard as of version Windows 10 2009 edition.

I've used Isobuster on VirtualBox on both Centos Linux and Mac OSX.

Inside the VirtualBox configuration I allow USB2.0 pass-thru and run XP or Windows 7 in the virtualbox.

That's a lot more complicated.. but its not that hard.. Windows 10 is really really hard these days.. people today who have never experienced how easy Windows XP or Windows 7 were to use compared to Windows 10 are shocked.

Its been about ten years and people just expect things to not work these days.. its really sad we've been taught to give up and be victims.