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Suggestions wanted to dealing with an UnFinalized disc..

19K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  spiderman2k1 
#1 ·
I had someone in the UK record me several program to send over.. things that will NOT be airing in this country for a long time, if ever.


All went fine (I can handle PAL discs) on the discs he recorded on his E100 except for one thing.. he forgot to FINALIZE on of the discs.


I can put it in the E80 and it will SEE the TOC (showing each recording as 'protected') but obviously won't play them (PAL) but shows the disc as 'Finalized NO'.


1) I don't think I want to try to finalize it on the E80.. no telling what confusion it would cause


2) if I could clone the disc, I might try to finalize a copy.. anyone have any thoughs on how to clone an unfinalized disc


3) if all else fails, I'll mail it back to be finalized.. but oy.. frustration..


any suggestions people??
 
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#3 ·
You probably need to feed the disc from one RAM recorder to another. If the disc is not finalized it will not play in most players, if any. Non-finalized DVD-R's will play in DVD-R/RAM recorders. In theory you can stop and start recording on a DVD-R until you finalize. And you can switch machines as long as you continue recording on a DVD-R/RAM recorder.


I don't think there is any harm in finalizing the disc with a Panasonic recorder. I own two E80's and an E30 and have recorded on one and finalized on another without any problems. At one time I owned a Samsung DVD-R/RAM recorder and finalized discs that included video recorded on both the E30 and Samsung without problems. I think most, if not all, of the DVD-R/RAM recorders are interchangeable.
 
#4 ·
Quote:
You probably need to feed the disc from one RAM recorder to another.
Perhaps you missed the fact that it is a PAL disc and won't play back in Londo's recorder. Otherwise, it would indeed be a trivial matter of just finalizing the disc on his recorder, as Londo is well aware.


Londo,


Unfinalized discs must be dealt with sternly. The best way to deal with it is to whack it on the nose with a newspaper and make it stand in the corner.


Seriously, it's hard to believe that a program does not exist that would allow you to clone an unfinalized disc, but i know they (unfinalized discs) don't show up correctly in basic disc burning programs. Agree that finalizing might be risky (NTSC machine finalizing a PAL disc), but I would think it would work. The safest bet is to send it back and have your friend finalize it but also have him send an expendable unfinalized PAL disc to see if it can be finalized in your recorder.
 
#5 ·
Well, I DID find out a way to solve the problem (and it was a rolled up magazine... sterner stuff).


actually, I HAVE FOUND A WAY TO EXTRACT THE PROGRAM DATA FROM AN UNFINALIZED DISC!!!! And I have discovered the 'format' of a disc that isn't finalized!


OK, here the thing.. this disc had on it 2 of the UNAIRED (in this country) episodes of the late, lamented UPN series "Jake 2.0" that HAD aired in the UK (in 16:9 widescreen no less). The rest of the series that he had recorded for me were fine. I have been using DVD Dectypter to pull the MPEG2 streams so that I could edit them down (broadcast on SkyOne, so they have commercials).. and when I hit this one .. ugghh...


I had tried CLONEDVD, BlindRead, etc... all of them showed the same thing, 'blank disc'..


then I found a little program called ISOBUSTER ( http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/ ) that claimed it could do DVD recovery... ok, let's see what happens...


load it up, fed it the disc....


LO AND BEHOLD! It shows a 'open session' on the disc and multiple TRACKS? Two tracks of 64k, two tracks of 480k, a 96k track, a 5meg track and TWO TRACKS OF 1.8GB EACH!!!!


Hmmmmmmmmmmm....


I tell ISOBUSTER to extract the two 1.8gb tracks as TAO (track at once) files, drag the 1st one into Womble Video Wizard....


JAKE!! I go thru and edit it like any other MPEG2 stream I could pull with DVDDecrypter quickly burn it to a disc (TMPGenc DVD Author) and throw it in the multistandard player...


IT WORKS!! IT WORKS!! Perfect picture, no skips!


so it APPEARS that when recording to a DVD-R, it makes a new 'track' on every recording along with other tracks that will be turned into the VOB/IFO files after finalizing, as well as splitting the recorded program track into 1gb VOB's per dvd standard (I fed finalized disc into ISOBUSTER and it showed multiple 'sessions', one was a UDF session that looked like a DVD (VIDEO_TS, VOB's etc..) and the other had multiple 'tracks' that looked like the unfinalized one....


SO.. It can be done! You can recover the program from an unfinalized disc, you just have to re-author it yourself!
 
#6 ·
WOW!!! Finally after so long you found the answer I've been looking for!

GREAT WORK LONDO! This would be welcome news to all those out there with failed unfinalized DVDs...

Now about those unaired episodes of Jake 2.0... :D
 
#7 ·
cypm
 
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