bump!

DVDs are lossy mediums. Why would you want to use a lossy medium to archive material. Wouldn't it be better to save the files as DATA files on the DVDs and then you would have no problems bringing them back to the HD?

Just wondering.

You are quite right but you are missing two vital points here.

1) The general public is under the misguided belief that DVDs are a 'better' medium to keep their precious videos on than VHS tape.

2) You need a lot more DVDs to store the same amount of video as AVIs than you do as mpeg-2

3) The most important point: I have made a DVD for a client, they bring it back to me or takes it somewhere else to get a copy made. The copy will be lossless however DVDs authored by DVDA may not be able to be copied. We have all been under the assumption that we could simply copy all the files off the DVD into a folder on a HD and then use DVDA to burn a copy from that folder.

Except due to some bug in DVDA you cannot copy the files off the DVD, Windos reports the VOB file as being corrupt. No other authoring program would seem to have this issue.

I am VERY concerned to hear of this.

I have not noticed such a problem... but then I did not know to look for it. I would be VERY unhappy if there was a bug in DVDA that would make the DVD's unuseable for further archiving or edits later on. Like you... I would not be someone who would choose to use DVD's as a formal archive (for later editing) format... but I would not want to restrict my customers from being able to do so simple because of a bug. Has this actually been confirmed by Sony as a bug?

It does seem quite amazing that a DVD would be readable/playable in a PC's DVD drive and yet it would not be possible to copy the raw files from the disc onto the hard drive.

I just gave this a try. I can open the VOB's from the disc (it just launches into my DVD player software). When I try to copy the files to my hard drive the explorer windows I am using to do the copy seems to freeze for a few minutes... it starts to do a copy... but then it just gives up... without an error message or anything.

This is BAD.

I'm amazed that this hasn't been picked up before. The VOB files when they are created by DVDA are fine, I can copy them from one folder to another on my system.
Having burnt the DVD with DVDA I cannot then copy the VOB files back to the HD unless they are ones smaller than 1GB. This is not good, having authored over 100 DVDs for clients and more in the pipeline and some of them scheduled to go out for replication and others to go out for duplication I'm now in quite a quandary.

What <was> the response from Sony about this? Have they at least acknowledged the problem?

Do you see any?

I was just hoping to get a bit more feedback from others to confirm that it's not something stupid like a burner problem (which now looks very unlikely) and then send them an office tech support request.

1) We never claimed in print or on the web or in person that you could or should rip the vobs we generate for repurposing. Additionally, trying to load existing vobs of any type into any of our tools is not supported and may not work no matter what tools you use.

2) There are a TON of hackware/freeware/etc tools out there that can be used, with varying levels of success, to extract vobs for repurposing. Some of these tools in certain scenarios can work (and some only work part way, or can trash your system, or are illegal, watch out)

3) We have repeatedly said on these forums that you should not archive onto DVD video discs for re-use later. I know some of you want to do this for various reasons.

4) Most of the "other" tools talked about in this and the referenced thread had/have bugs of their own which may or may not be part of your problem.

Just one example we've seen MANY times: Install DVDA. You can burn. Install xyz 3rd party app, DVDA can no longer burn. Uninstall same xyz 3rd party app, still cannot burn in DVDA. Reformat, reinstall DVDA, you can burn. Who's bug is that?

SonyEPM,
this is not about "ripping" DVDs. DVDs created with DVDA cannot be duplicated by DVDA. What do you suggest I tell a client who comes back with a DVD I've authored who wants a copy?

What do you suggest I tell a duplicating facility?

I can concur in a couple of areas. I'm not able to copy a DVD-A created VOB file from the disc back to hard drive; explorer reports a disc read error. Also, Nero 6 claims that the VOB files produced by DVD-A *may* be invalid for a video DVD, but successfully burns the disc anyway. On the other hand, i may have a problem with my DVD-A installation because it won't complete a burn on my HP dvd300i, which is why i've been using Nero to burn.

What's really odd about this is that it was Nero that burned my VOB files to the disc, not DVD-A, and even still they can't be copied back to hard drive.

> Who's bug is that?

I author all my DVD’s with DVD Architect but I burn them with Prassi PrimoDVD 2.0 because DVDA won’t burn more than 1x on my Pioneer A03 2x DVD-RW drive. (i.e., I prepare the DVD to my hard drive with DVDA and burn the directories to DVD at 2x with PrimoDVD) I just took a DVD I made and copied it to my hard drive and played all 6 VOB files without a problem. I have also made copies of previous DVD’s made this way to give to family members.

So I would say this bug is yours Sony!

~jr

What really worries me is I'm about to invest $5,000 on a DVD duplicator. It burns from a HD master from what I can tell. Now it seems I cannot load the DVDs I've previously created back onto a HD for duplication.

If I'd know of this problem then I'd burn a copy of the files that DVDA mastered onto a DVD using some 3rd party app so I could reload them back in case I needed to make more copies. But it's a bit late in the day to be finding this out, it increases my costs both in time and needing to use two DVDs just to make one and it shifts the storage problem back to me not the client.

As for Sonys suggestion that they never claimed you could do this, I'm sorry that's pretty lame. I didn't see any disclaimer that DVDs authored and burned in DVDA were unsuitable for duplication. I have seen numerous posts suggesting that exactly what we're trying to do was the way to make additional copies of our DVDs if our clients requested them.

I've been convincing people and a duplicating facility to use DVDA because it was standards compliant. I'm now feeing pretty bad about that.

Hi Bob,

I was disturbed to read your post, so I've been trying some things out here.

A recent DVD I made with DVDA has three video clips, one of which exceeds 1 Gb and is therefore split into 2 VOBs.

I was able to copy the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders from disc back to HD without problems.

I then burned the same folders to a new DVD and again no problems.

I then tried to make a direct copy from the original DVD to a new one, and this time it got halfway then aborted.

So copying via HD is definitely possible, but obviously there are factors that can make this difficult.

Incidentally, if there's any chance of a DVD needing to be re-edited in the future, I always make a data DVD containing the original MPEG2 files, plus Still Pics for Menus, background audio files and of course the DVDA project file.

Please let me know any way I can help identify what factors make HD copies possible or not ...

Peter

Peter,
that's an interesting find. The files and folders as mastered by DVDA seem fine, guess they'd have to be or Windows would have an immediate dummy spit. I didn't try copying the whole folder(s) from the DVD back in one go, just the individual VOBs. Once my Vegas machines finished its long render to NTSC I'll try that.

I can actually copy the DVDs with RecordNow DX from Veritas no problems but other people on the DVDA forum are reporting that other DVD duplication software will not copy the DVDs. It does seem that you can use DVD Shrink to pull the files back in proper NTFS format as well. None of this makes me feel very confident about sending DVDs I've mastered out for duplication much less replication overseas.

I'll have another experiment later in the day, possibly it's a burner issue. If that's the case fine, I'll just buy another burner but it'd be good to know the whole story.

PS It is a Sony burner!

If I want to have my authored DVDs reproduced in large quantity, what medium will I have to provide to the reproduction facility and are there any potential problems with reproduction?

It depends on two things:
1) For duplication onto -R media then just a DVD
2) For replication .i.e. pressed depends on the facility.
They used to insist on DLT tape or a master DVD. Either of these are very expensive. DLT drives don't come cheap, Mastering drives that burn at 630nM are cheaper but here are around $10,000.
I believe now many replication houses will accept 650nM masters from ordinary DVD burners. Cost os replication has dropped a lot, expect around $1.00 in 1,000 qty inc screen printing.

Peter,
well I tired copying the folder in it's entirety but same error message, Windows says "the file or folder is corrupted and unreadable".

If you are able to this then that leaves two possibilities.
1) I've got some subtle bug on my system.This isn't impossible, I've also installed RecordNowDX but it would seem pretty benign and it CAN copy the DVDs.
2) It's a DVD burner issue. If I knew for sure that's what's wrong I'll buy another one but I'd hate to throw money at this only to find it's not the issue.

SonyEPM

I think you must have totally missed the point here... or maybe I have.

Farss brought up an issue that seems to me at least to imply a specific issue in DVDA burned DVD's which will make it very difficult for them to be duplicated by any third party tools.

This is NOT about hacking or breaking copy protection at all... and for me this is not an issue about even being able to edit the content on the DVD's at a later time.

And... are you actually confirming this issue? Which is that the content of DVDA burned discs cannot be simply copied back onto a Hard Disk at a later time? Is that a standard "feature" in other DVD authoring packages? If so... that is definitely not something I have ever heard of.

Well something definitely needs exploring here.

I just tried with a different DVD - again there was only one VOB which was "split" into two, 1 Gb and 255Mb, but again, the two folders copied across from Disc to Hard Drive fine.

Bob, can you definitely say that it works for you with smaller VOBs but not for 1 Gb?

Peter,
yes. Absolutely no problem with the smaller VOB files. I can copy an entire DVD back to HD so long as none of the VOB files hit the 1GB limit. I can also copy back a VOB file greater tha 1GB authored and burnt in another system.

Okay, let's try and find other relevant variables:

The HD I copied to was formatted NTFS (via external USB2)

The DVD Drive I copied from was a CD R and RW burner, but play only DVD.

Can you think of any other possible factors?

I was was trying to copy to a NTFS volume as well. Doubt it has anything to do with the HD, Should even work fine if it was FAT32.

Drive I'm copying from is the same as the one that burnt them, Sony DRU 500AX. It's certainly a burn problem not a read problem. After all I can copy 1 GB VOBs burnt and authored elsewhere. However it could be a drive problem with the burn, cannot discount that.

Also it could be a .dll thats been overwritten. I'm now assuming from what Peter has found that DVDA is capable of doing the job correclty, so there's something wrong on my system and a few other peoples as well.

I started this thread off after trying to help a few people over on the DVDA forum, They were reporting this problem but found they could burn with ither apps or author in DVDA and burn with a different app and not have this problem.

What would help is knowing which .dlls DVDA uses and a few details so I could check that they haven't been overwritten. No matter what it turns out to be this is a worrying issue. If the damn thing failed to burn I wouldn't worry, the problem is immediately obvious.

When I get a bit of time tomorrow I'll do a good search here, I seem to recall some time ago SoFo mentioned which of the dlls kept getting clobbered.