How can I extract my home made movies from a damaged DVD?

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Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
For the past 10 years I made around 20 dvd from vacations, wedding and others events. Recently I decided to put them on my computer in quicktime format using handbrake. Unfortunately half of them will not work. Looks like the DVD is damaged, but I don't see any scratches.

So I tried with different softwares like mac the ripper, dvdxdvpro. But no luck, I can't extract the movie from a bad dvd.

When I put my dvd in a dvd player, some part of my movie will skip or freeze and some will play just fine

Just wonder if anybody knows a way to retrieve movie from a damaged dvd or maybe a part of the movie



I spent a huge amount of time to make those dvd and even if I have the original cassette, I wish I could have them back.

Thanks for your help



sev

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    The bad news is: they are unrecoverable, severine...



    This is a(n unfortunate) demonstration of the temporality of BURNT DVDs (and CDs). They start degrading by osmosis on day 1 after burning, and generally become unreadable after 5 to 10 years. As you found out.



    I.o.w.: BURNT DVDs are useful (read: reliable) for medium term storage only (= 5 years max)!



    So write the date of burning on them so that you can burn new copies before they become unreadable!



    BTW: pressed DVDs – the ones you buy – probably last for decades.
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  • Reply 2 of 2
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    You can capture the movie to your computer from a DVD player using a USB input recorder like this:



    http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mai...oduct1.en.html



    Not the cheapest thing to do for a few movies but it's an option and you can resell it on eBay.



    Trying to capture and stream to disk from software will be more troublesome as most software will just hang up or stop recording on IO errors. When you separate the playback and recording, even if the playback stutters, it will record it all and you just edit out the worst bits.



    Different players can give different results too. Some DVDs I've had that were unreadable in one DVD drive could be read just fine in another. If you have access to another computer - a friend's or family member's computer - you can try ripping the disc on that.
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