DVD Playing more video that what is in the VOBs?

[crbd98]

Hello All,

Although I have been using the content in this forum for a while, this is my first post to this group. Thank you to all in this group. You're great!

I found a situation I cannot explain: I have a DVD that I created 15 years ago by copying the contents of a VHS tape using a VHS-DVD Combo. The DVD contains all the 2 hours of video in the VHS tape and I can play it well in a DVD player or in a computer. However, the VIDEO_TS folder in the DVD has only one VOB file which accounts for only 6 minutes of the 2-hour content.

Where is the rest?

One clue: When I open the DVD in the VLC Player, I notice it has 1 "Title" and 24 "Chapters.". The VOB in in the DVD's VIDEO_TS folder corresponds to the video in the first chapter only.

Is it possible that an error occurred when I was copying the VHS to DVD?

This is important to me because now the quality of the video on the original VHS (which is almost 30 years old now!) has deteriorated a lot, while the video in the DVD is good. I am in the process of creating MP4s from all my home videos and the content on that tape is one of the most important: my older daughter's first days.

I have some alternatives, such as capturing the DVD output with a capture card but that will not be as good as capturing directly from the DVD.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you
crbd98

[Cornucopia]

A dvd such as that should NEVER have just 1 VOB file. It should have 1 for the 1st play/main menu, it should have 1 or more for submenus, and it should have 1 VOB or more for every title created. If you paused when transferring, for example 3 vhs tapes, it should have AT LEAST 3 VOBs. Actually probably more, as a VOB is only allowed to have up to 1GB, so if there is overflow, it carries into subsequent VOBs.

However, it could be that your dvd recorder recorded the transfers originally using a different dvd format (e.g. -VR, -RAM, etc) and then finalized the disc, at which point the recorder might have modified the disc such that its original assets (in RTOS, or similar folders) are just pointed to using dummy VOBs/IFOs (rather than have the whole disc be re-written).

Or, you have some HIDDEN files?

I suggest you take a look at the structure of the disc with ISOBuster. It will tell you in detail if anything is there, and where.


Scott

[crbd98]

Hello Scott,

Thank you for your reply.

You are correct. In fact I have two VOBs under the VIDEO_TS folder (I tend to ignore the VIDEO_TS.VOB). The full directory structure is shown below:


[Attachment 57398 - Click to enlarge]

The DVD was created from just one VHS and I don't remember having any issues at the time (ok, it was a long time ago).

I followed your advice and downloaded/ran ISOBuster. Very interesting tool. This is the information it provided me from the get go:

When selecting ISO DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER > VIDEO_TS I get the following information


[Attachment 57399 - Click to enlarge]

When selecting UDF DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER >VIDEO_TS, I get the following information


[Attachment 57400 - Click to enlarge]

When selecting IFO VIDEO > VIDEO_TS, I get the following


[Attachment 57401 - Click to enlarge]

The size of the file VTS_01_1.VOB in the two first pictures is 117MB, while it is 4.11GB in the third picture. Possibly a clue!

Afterwards, I used the tool to find missing files and folders, and it found some discrepancies and maybe was able to recover some files.

Under UDF Lost and Found I see the following


[Attachment 57402 - Click to enlarge]

Under SIG Files found via their signature, I see the following


[Attachment 57403 - Click to enlarge]

The picture of the files under SIG shows a recovered VOB file of size 4.11GB, which is the same size of the file found under IFO VIDEO > VIDEO_TS above. Maybe the missing video? Right clicking on the file gives me the option to extract it but the option only works for a licensed software.

I am more than glad to pay for software license but would appreciate if you could confirm that I followed the correct process and that extracting the file would likely give me the full video. Once I have the VOB, I can easily convert it to MP4 using Handbrake.

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you
crbd

[ProWo]

VTS_01_01.VOB in the VIDEO_TS folder is your video.

[crbd98]

ProWo, I understand. The problem as I described below is that the size of VTS_O1_1.VOB is not correct in the file system and it appears that I have missing or hidden video. @Cornucopia (Scott) gave me a great suggestion to use ISOBlaster to find the missing files, which seems to have validated that hypothesis. I just wanted to make sure that I followed the proper recovery steps using the tool before I purchase a license so I could recover the 4.11GB that are lost.

[Cornucopia]

Hold on! You have a "Track 2" listed. Makes me think that the recorder may have been set to record a 2nd title (whether it did or not), and that could have affected the the file system listings (ISO, UDF) differently than it affected the IFO's internal asset table listings.
Dvd's normally are not multisession or multitrack, and an open session or track might be confusing the OS filesystem drivers.

This is one area where ISOBuster shines above the other apps, and where it is worth paying the license fee.
I would extract that big track to hdd, then use VOB2MPEG to get a plain mpg file. And either just use the mpeg natively, or use it as an asset to generate a new, standard dvd, depending on your intentions.


Scott

[crbd98]

Hello Scott,

Thank you. In fact, there are 6 tracks listed. See picture below:

[Attachment 57407 - Click to enlarge]
When I selected "try a search for missing files and folders", it creates two files with extensions .ibp and .ibq as shown in the picture below.

[Attachment 57408 - Click to enlarge]

I am not sure what they mean: Are they "Titles" or "Chapters"? I can play the full 2 hours in VLC and I can see in VLC 1 Title with 24 Chapters. It *looks like* there was a problem when the DVD was written/closed/finalized and the VOB metadata was not updated, even though the media had already been written (?).

I will purchase ISOBuster and try to extract the 4.11GB VOB file that it recovered. I will let you know how it goes.

Thank you
crbd98

[Cornucopia]

The Ibq & Ibp files are generated - on the hdd - by ISOBuster, as generic recovery files. Don't know if those listed are just placeholders, as the app certainly isn't designed to write to discs (not counting hdds, etc).
The app, when licensed, can extract the "missing data" into these recovery files. They operate similar to ISO or Bin & Cue discimage files, except there is info as to original sector etc, which allows the possibility for multiple drives to try their own methods to rip sections of the data. This helps particularly on scratched discs. One can even rip from different copies of the same disc (if that is applicable - probably not in this case).

Yes, the presence of 6 track segments certainly would confound the OS's understanding.


Scott

[crbd98]

Hello Scott,

SUCCESS!! Thank you for your help!

Just a quick update on this thread for everyone's benefit. As you advised, I used ISOBuster (a licensed copy, well worth the $39.99) to find and extract the damaged/incomplete VOB in my DVD. Then, I used Handbreak to convert the extracted VOB to MP4 with reasonable quality.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to make VOB2MPG work, as you suggested. It was very difficult to install it on Windows 10 but finally managed to install it by following some advice I found in this forum. However, the conversion process would not start. So, I resorted to Handbreak and it worked.

Again, thank you for your help.

-cdbd98

[orsetto]

Glad the excellent ISObuster solved your problem!

Re VOB2MPG, its a great little utility under Win7 but a mess under Win10. While not without its own problems, the similar DVDVob2Mpg utility seems to be the default alternative for Win10 compatibility. In this specific case where the original VOB seems to have gotten rather mangled during disc authoring, neither simple VOB utility might have worked anyway: ISObuster has much more advanced damage recovery capabilities.

Handbrake conversion of VOB to MP4 will incur some quality loss, as you've noticed. This is where having multiple DVD utilities can help. I'd recommend running the ISObuster-recovered VOB thru the DVDVob2Mpg utility to create a lossless MPG file: this will be better quality than the MP4 Handbrake conversion. VOB is just a special container required by the DVD Video standard: inside the VOB, video is ordinary MPG format. DVDVob2Mpg simply extracts the original MPG video from that VOB container and creates a standard MPG file playable by almost any software or hardware. The actual video is not converted or compressed in any way, so the MPG file can be as large as the DVD (4.3GB), but it can be kept as your master copy as backup for smaller, lesser-quality MP4 conversions. The MPG can also be easily re-authored back into a standard dvd-player format DVD, again with no loss in quality.