Do Bad Scratches mean I am SOL for backing up my DVD ?

[weasyl]

I bought a copy of "The Mummy Returns" used, and it plays
fine in my DVD player, but when I try and rip it using
Smartripper to make a backup, it stalls, saying there are
unreadable blocks. It does have alot of scratches. Is there
any way I can relax the ripping constraints so that it doesn't
hang or does this mean I am hosed ? I don't mind a few lost frames.

Thanks for any help !

[SLK001]

It depends on how deep the scratches are. The top plastic is, for all practical purposes, transparent to the laser. I've rented DVDs that I've been amazed that they have even played at all. That your home DVD player will run the disk with no problems indicates that the underlying data is intact. You can try paste wax to shine up the surface to see if this helps (I have used Johnston's paste wax - the kind for wood furniture). You can also use automotive polishing compound to try to polish out the scratches, but this is a tedious process. I have successfully resurrected CDs with this process, but I haven't had to do this with DVDs yet.

[weasyl]

Ok. I'll give it another shot or two with no wax, just to see if
smartripper is being finicky. If the underlying data is fine, perhaps
it just needs another shot. If it hangs in the same spot, we'll polish
that baby till it shines.

Thanks Baldrick.

[poopyhead]

SLK001, it could be that the standalone dvd plyaer has better lasers...

i.e. my pioneer dv333 has dual wave lasers...which is certainly much better than wut my compaq dvd-rom has, so it can read scratchy dvds much better than my dvd-rom

[SLK001]

SLK001, it could be that the standalone dvd plyaer has better lasers...

...or a better detector. Very true. However, we need to see if we can get the disk to be read in the computer. Sometimes, making the surface "less dispersive" can help.

[weasyl]

It hung again, but not in the same spot. I took it out and cleaned it with some windex and a soft lint free towel (seemed easiser than wax at the beginning) and it seemed to do the trick.

I have no idea if smartripper was just being wussy, but I now have my
vob files. I have a Toshiba SD-M1212 DVD ROM and a Pioneer DV440
stand-alone player. Any comments on whether either of these are
creeeaaap ?

Thanks for the advice. I have my movie, or at least the first part of
encoding ready.

[poopyhead]

toshiba dvd-roms=suck

[weasyl]

If Toshiba DVD-ROMS suck. What would you reccomend if I were
to replace it ? I need to be able to make back-ups of both my
DVD's and my games as I have kids who are not as careful as I am
with my discs.

[impmon2]

Anything but a Toshiba drive will work. AFAIK Toshiba drives are usually fixed at 2x max so just about any other brand would seems a lot faster too.

I currently have a Compaq 16x drive (came free so I'm not complaining) So far I had no problem with playbacks and ripping speed is often as high as 10x average.