DVD-to-PC, HDD-to-HDD, Title Recovery
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DVD-to-PC
HDD-to-HDD
Title Recovery
DVD-to-PC
Following are some posts on DVD-to-PC title copying and PC tools for handling them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kelson /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24630#post_23983032
Quote:
Originally Posted by greg28 /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24600_100#post_23982063
At the end of the day, I have to be able to convert to PC storage. I'd prefer both DVD and PC copies. I thought I could record to the HDD and then make a DVD from it as well as transfer from the HDD to the PC. But apparently that's not quite the case.
Well, DVD and PC copies are pretty much the same from a data perspective. It's more a matter of the container and the time involved to get stuff off a DVD recorder. You would make the digital transfer of the VHS tape using the DVD recorder. As noted, the only way to get the transfer out of the DVD recorder is to burn it off onto DVD-R. If you choose, you can edit it on the DVDR before burning to make a finished DVD -- or just burn the "raw" footage to a DVD-RW and edit it on the PC before authoring a compilation to a DVD-R or BD-R. The format of the burned DVD-R/RW is DVD Video. You just put that disk in your PC and there are any number of programs available that will let you extract the individual titles from the disk and save them into any of the standard video containers -- .mpg, .m2ts, MKV, etc. As long as you leave the video format as MPEG-2, there is no re-encoding which means there is no loss in video quality since all you are doing is changing container format -- it's a very fast process that could take a minute or less per SD title -- it takes me ~2 min to save a 5GB HDTV recording as an .m2ts or .mpg file. All these standard containers can be played by almost any PC program like WMP or VLC. You could make compilations of any combination and author them to DVD at any time you needed -- it's all just a matter of some simple software.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kelson /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24630#post_23984356
Quote:
Originally Posted by CitiBear /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24600_100#post_23983437
In my experience, once these are digitized to DVD, any attempt to extract them as standalone files results in a further degradation of quality- even a so called "lossless MPEG" extraction.
I'm sorry but that is simply not the case. There is no degradation. The .VOB files of a DVD Video are simply containers that hold the MPEG-2 video stream and the audio streams. When you extract a title from a multi-title .VOB you simply pull the streams out of the .VOB container and mux them into a new container format. The streams are bit-image replicas of the originals. There is no change to the actual video data -- as long as you are not recoding to either change the codec or shrink the size of the stream.
It's the same as if someone hands you a bag containing two sandwiches, closed with a twist-tie. You open the twist tie, remove one of the sandwiches and put it in a ziplock bag. You have not changed the sandwich in any way, it will still taste the same. You only put it in a new bag.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kelson /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24630#post_23984384
Quote:
Originally Posted by greg28 /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24600_100#post_23983463
I primarily want backup sources before the VHS tapes eventually deteriorate. As long as I can rip them from the DVD to a computer in any playable format, I am fine with that.
That is the case. There is no great mystery here. You can play a DVD on a PC, right. In the simplest case you use a program like ImgBurn to rip the full DVD to an .iso file (disk image). Just about every PC player will play a DVD.iso image file as if it were the disk in the DVD drive.
Everything is digitally convertible to everything -- as long as you don't recode, there is no loss and the copies are bit-image replicas of the A/V streams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kelson /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24780#post_24065142
Quote:
Originally Posted by greg28 /t/940657/magnavox-537-535-533-515-513-2160a-2160-2080-philips-3576-3575/24700_100#post_24065005
What's the recommended way to rip to a PC for archival storage? I obviously don't want any data loss but are there different options that result in different file type sizes?
The absolute simplest way to rip a home-made DVD to PC for archival storage is to use ImgBurn and rip it as a DVD.iso file. VLC and most PC media players will play a DVD.iso perfectly with full DVD menu support as if you were playing the original disk in a DVD player. On top of that, DVD.iso is an image format so you can use ImgBurn any time you want to burn that DVD.iso back to a DVD-R for whatever reason. And of course, since DVD.iso is an image format there is absolutely no loss of video quality -- it is a bit-image copy of the original disk.
I have over 600 TV show DVD's stored on my servers for whole-house streaming and every one is stored as DVD.iso.
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HDD-to-HDD
Several ways to get titles from one DVDR HDD to another.
File-to-File - Best method I've seen for possible copying of FILES directly between DVDR HDDs is
described by Pikey for his Philips 3455 as:
"The only way I had of recovering the videos was to download a "live" version of Ubuntu. I then booted up into that OS, and was able to mount the old hard disk, and copy the files from it. I had to remove the new hard disk from the recorder and mount that as well, and copy the files over but, once done, my old videos were on the new replacement hard disk."
Here's another post on cloning a HDD with a Linux Ubuntu system that might be interesting to someone, someday?
Quote:
Originally Posted by brianko /t/1303511/official-moxi-hard-drive-replacement-thread/420#post_24234506
So, the cloning process went well...got another WD Green drive, installed both drives in my Linux machine, booted with an old Ubuntu 6.06 Live CD I had lying around, and then used the following command from the terminal window to clone:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 conv=noerror,notrunc
(Note: If you use two identical hard drives you will have to figure out which is which, because you don't want to accidentally write over your good disk! Here's what I did: I copied the first 4096 bytes to temporary files, then looked at them with a binary editor. The "good" drive will have the revision embedded in the first 4K bytes. Something like this will work:
dd if=/dev/sda bs=4096 count=1 of=/tmp/sda.tmp
dd if=/dev/sdb bs=4096 count=1 of=/tmp/sdb.tmp
vim -b /tmp/sda.tmp (If you see "6.11" embedded in the output, it's the "good" drive...exit with ESC-:q)
vim -b /tmp/sdb.tmp (double check)
It took about 3 hours for the copy to finish. Something new I learned: You can send a USR1 signal to the dd process and it will return the progress of the copy.)
So the cloned drive was tested first, booted right up.
The "good" drive? Not so lucky...just the MOXI logo. Did all the normal things, couldn't get it to boot. Damn.
Another AVS search suggested pulling all the cables (except power and HDMI of course) and then rebooting. Success! Plugged the SDV USB cable, network cable, and coax back in, everything came back.
Wish I had known this before shelling out $300 to Arris for refurb units...live and learn I guess.
Single-Title Sneakernet - You can real-time copy/dub one or more titles from one DVDR HDD to DVD-RW or DVD+RW discs (however many will fit on the DVD), then copy them to a new DVDR HDD... make sure you wear sneakers while running between machines
Bulk-Title HDD-to-HDD - Two methods for real-time "bulk" copying of DVDR titles direct from the HDD of one DVDR to the HDD of another DVDR with DVDs as "dummy" targets:
1. From One PhilMag DVDR to Other DVDR or PC with Video/Audio Input Card.
Only way I've found to "batch" copy titles from one of our DVDRs to another unit's HDD
w/o teardown is to set up a dub list of 6-hours worth of titles and dub that w/internal drives to a RW disc at SLP rec mode (select SLP in dub menu), while simultaneously copying to the HDD of the other machine via the analog I/O (normal external copying). Repeat for all desired titles in 6-hour increments. No single title can be over 4:59:59 for a SLP dub. This has to be a RTD to get normal output of what's being dubbed, i.e., can't use HSD.
If totally unattended, each title will have the "Writing to disc" stuff a normal dub adds at the end, but this can be
deleted in edit on the other machine. If you babysit the copying, you could come back for the end of each title and press PAUSE on the copying machine and wait for start of the next title to continue REC.
The picture coming from the outputs of the playing machine will not be in SLP quality, it'll be in the quality of the original titles on the playing machine.
Since THIS has suddenly become a point of contention from our resident "argumentarian" (who doesn't have this DVDR), you can test this yourself as follows:
1. Record short section of live TV at 2-hr-SP with text as part of pic, like an ESPN talk show. Notice normal "2-hr-quality appearance" while it's playing... this is what your 2nd recorder/HDD will see and record.
2. Dub that to a disc in real-time at 6-hr-SLP, while noticing the SAME "2-hr-SP-quality appearance" during the RTD.
3. Play disc copy and notice the obvious quality difference, especially edges of text. Talking heads on ESPN should look GREAT but they'll look exactly like 6-hr-SLP quality, cuz it is on the disc!
This test will show that what you see, and
what gets passed thru to the other HDD, during a RTD is the original quality of the recorded title(s), even tho you may be dubbing it at a much lower quality at the time..
2. From Pioneer, Panasonic or Other DVDR with "Playlist" Feature to PhilMag DVDR.
If the titles you want to get on this DVDR's HDD are on a Panasonic, Pioneer or other recorder with auto-play, program-play, Play-Mode menu (Pioneers) or Playlist menu (Panasonic), you can set it to play titles from its HDD to the HDD of this DVDR. (Also works for DVD titles if the machine can program-play them as well.)
Set a play program in the other DVDR, up to 12-hours worth of titles in the order you want (or any order since you'll be separating the titles on the Mag HDD later). Start the titles playing, press REC on this DVDR, and this DVDR will record continuously for 12 hours (11:59:59 to be exact).
Note: Don't activate any menus on the playing machine since those will most likely get recorded as part of the video (whatever you see on screen you will record).
Before recording, you can pre-set this DVDR's Recording > Auto Chapter menu to 30- or 60-minute interval to make finding title breaks easier. Then, in the Edit menu, use the NEXT button to make big single moves that should get you close to the ends of typical titles. Use SKIP and REPLAY to make smaller single moves, then FF/REW as usual.
Once a batch of titles is on this DVDR's HDD, use the Scene Delete and Divide features
in the Edit menu to clean transitions and separate into titles on this DVDR's HDD.
(This DVDR can't auto-play titles from the HDD, only from DVDs, so you can't reverse this HDD>HDD procedure.)
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Title Recovery
When you delete a Title from the HDD, it isn't really deleted, just the Title info, which is the pointer to the actual files on the disc like the filename in our computers. As long as deleted titles aren't overwritten by future use, those titles may be recoverable.
One app
used successfuly is
Recuva . It might take a while for a HDD with many files, so you might want to start with a normal scan instead of the "Deep Scan" option available, which can be tried later if the files you want aren't captured on first try.
Here's a post on recovering files to an uncorrupted drive as a disk image that you can "attack" with Recuva or any other app without fear.
Here's a recent (Nov 2012) post by a user who recovered files from a 2005 Panasonic EH50 HDD using hex editor Winhex and mpeg reader Mpeg2Cut2. Simple process that might work for HDDs from other machines, like ours?
Ken.F found a way to recover titles deleted from a
DVD,
as described here.
A Lite-On DVDR user posted on a simple way to find and recover files on a video HDD, using a "simple file recovery app" then changing the file extensions to .mpg. He even recovered previously DELETED files!
Stapler1234 posted on
a program called Spinrite, here.
I've always wondered if an app called CDRoller might be able to read and "recover" files on our HDDs.
jam-h has used it successfully on a Mag DVD, but I hadn't heard of anyone trying to use it on a HDD. So, I emailed and got a confirmation that they had tested it on a camcorder HDD attached via USB.
Here's that confirmation with more info for anyone who wants to try it with an external HDD system:
Thanks for your attention to CDRoller. We have already assisted some users to retrieve the lost video from HDD built in camcorders. However, please keep in mind, each camcorder was connected to PCs via USB port and had a separate letter in the Windows Computer. We did not test the work with Magnavox HDD connected via Sata to PC. At first, please try the newest trial version at
http://www.cdroller.com/htm/download.html . Also, if you need a temporary license key to complete the tests, just let me know.
A couple of common words how to use CDRoller.
1. Connect you recorder to PC and make sure it has a letter in the Windows My Computer.
2. Run CDRoller. By default, the program works in CD/DVD data recovery mode. Please switch CDRoller into the Flash data recovery mode selecting the 'Flash data recovery' in the 'View'\\'Program mode'.
3. Restart CDRoller. Does the program recognize your recorder in the Flash data recovery mode? If yes, what info do you see in the File System column?
Paul Goldenberg
CDRoller Development & Support Dept
Digital Atlantic Corp.
[email protected]
http://www.cdroller.com
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