Non-finalized sony cam dvd

goodtimej wrote on 10/7/2009, 12:28 AM
All, I have a sticky situation I was hoping you could help me with. Recently I was given some footage on discs that I would really like to have. It was given to me by a group of people who need the footage for a competition. For whatever reason, they had a fella record this footage for them, he gave it to them and skipped. At least hasn't been able to be found for days.

Here's where I need help. I got 2 discs from them. The one that I was able to capture through File ->Import->DVD Camcorder Disc is a smaller in physical size disc, at least half the size of a regular DVD. It is a 4x speed 30 minute recordable DVD -R. The footage imported fine. Once it is imported, Gspot says it is DVD "VOB" format, MPEG-2 Program Stream Sys Bitrate 10080 kb/s VBR. Vegas says MainConcept MPEG-2. They don't know what camera recorded it, but they know it was a Sony and that this disc was recorded on the camera to my hands. It was a DVD camcorder.

The other disc is a regular DVD+R and when I look on the back, I can tell that about 3/4 of the disc has had some sort of writing done to it. There is definitely info there. When I put it in any of my DVD drives, it says it is an empty disc and my computer prompts me to burn a disc. It just says empty disc. I right click, go to properties on the drive and it says 0 free, 0 used. They say the cameraman said he had trouble "finalizing" the footage but said I shouldn't have a problem. Obviously, he was wrong and I'm just hoping you would all have some mercy for my soul.

Any help on how to finalize this disc?

Comments

AlanC wrote on 10/7/2009, 1:13 AM
You could try http://www.cdroller.com/CD Roller[/link]

I've had some success with reading un-readable CD's.

Some of it's key features:
# Reads unfinalized ("open", "left as-is") CDs and DVDs, including the discs with Microsoft's Live File system.
# Recovers DVD movies and photos, created by a wide set of standalone devices that record directly onto disks: Hitachi, Canon, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony DVD camcorders as well as standalone video recorders.


Good luck.
PeterWright wrote on 10/7/2009, 1:49 AM
I've no idea whether it's the same sort of "finalizing", but I have a HDD/DVD recorder which I occasionally use to record off air or from other sources onto DVD. Each disc has to be finalized before it will play, so if you have such a machine, and it is the same kind of finalizing, this may do it.
Chienworks wrote on 10/7/2009, 3:38 AM
Another vote for CDRoller. Some of the best $30 i ever spent. It paid for itself 8 times over the first day i bought it.

http://www.cdroller.com/
Laurence wrote on 10/7/2009, 8:08 AM
That CD Roller program looks great. I will have to try it. I have the same problem every so often (with DVDs burned in a stand alone video DVD burner) and what usually works for me is just running the disks through a duplicator and reading the copies.
goodtimej wrote on 10/7/2009, 10:52 PM
CDRoller = all aces.

awesome, thanks so much