Check DVDs health

[Aimé]

Hello everyone, recently the idea to rip my DVDs as ISOs came to my brain. Having an optical lector, I downloaded ImgBurn then ripped my DVDs.

But another thing came into my brain. Is it possible to check the DVD's health with ImgBurn? I mean by "check the DVD health" to know if some sectors are illegible or broken because of scratches or others physical problems.

Thank you and have a great day.

[dbminter]

There are a few ways.  Since you're already wanting to read these DVD's to ISO's, just try reading to ISO's.  If there's a bad sector, the read will fail.  You could always try copying the contents with File Explorer.  While the VIDEO_TS, if encrypted, won't be readable, it will determine if your disc can still be read.  Now, with advanced copy protection discs, this probably wouldn't work.  Another thingyou can do is play your DVD in a player but Scan the contents fast forward through them at a relatively slower rate, like 10x on the PS3, which is what I do.  Then, just test scan all the contents on the disc.  If you get pauses in the scan, you've probably got bad sectors.

 

Another thing that might work is a manually executed Verify on the discs without the verify against file option check.  This basically performs a read test similar to creating an ISO from a disc without actually writing the ISO.

 

Now, of course, with CSS and sector protected DVD's, you'll need a translating layer like AnyDVD active when performing the ISO creation tests with ImgBurn.  DVDShrink, which is free, will work for CSS discs but not sector protected discs.

[Aimé]

Hi dbminter, thank you for your answer.

Actually I don't think that my DVDs are scratched up to be unable to be read, just parts where the sound or image is a bit buggy like when you're watching the TV with a bad connection or while a storm.

" You could always try copying the contents with File Explorer" You mean that if a sector is broken, the entire file won't appear or just some bytes in illesibles?

" While the VIDEO_TS, if encrypted, won't be readable" if it's encrypted how would you read the disc even being not broken? To my side, I made ISOs that I open in WMPlayer without converting them to anything so in this case I don't really know how the copyright thing stops you reading them.

"Another thingyou can do is play your DVD in a player but Scan the contents fast forward through them at a relatively slower rate, like 10x on the PS3, which is what I do." uh you lost me. Play the disc at a x10 slower speed then what? Also I don't own a PS3, just a PC with an optical lector.

"Then, just test scan all the contents on the disc.  If you get pauses in the scan, you've probably got bad sectors." Is that just playing the disc in a media player or using a specific software to scan all disc sectors and see if some are broken?

" Another thing that might work is a manually executed Verify on the discs without the verify against file option check.  This basically performs a read test similar to creating an ISO from a disc without actually writing the ISO" ah I did that on my disc. I ripped it, checked it both with the iso and without. The first time there were an "unknow error" when it finished, saying I may upgrade but I have the latest version. I did it another time then worked fine, ended with something like "finished".

The ISO got created without AnyDVD or like, it seems that the disc isn't protected.

Sorry for all those quotes and questions, I am new to DVDs ripping and there's a lot of things I don't correctly understand about. Thank you for your patience.

[dbminter]

Oh, I see what you meant.  You mean like little skips and hops and pauses in playback or pops in audio.  Well, those wouldn't really be bad sectors, but scratches on the disc.  And those are a little harder to find.  Most of the methods I mentioned wouldn't find those.  My methods were for unreadable parts of a DVD.  Not just things like little scratches that might cause momentary "bumps" in playback.  As I said, there's very little you can do to test for those except actually play the entire contents on a DVD.

 

As for the encrypted parts, even if a VIDEO_TS is encrypted, as long as it isn't encrypted with sector encryption, you can still use File Explorer to copy the VIDEO_TS contents to a hard disk.  You can't play the VIDEO_TS contents this way if they're protected with CSS, though,  This just performs a basic read test, looking for bad sectors.  As I said, all of my methods mentioned were looking for problems that would prevent part of a DVD from being readable.  Not for playback hiccups caused by small scratches.  While my methods would work for larger scratches, though.

 

10x is a fast forward/reverse scanning speed available on the PS3.  Some players don't have numbered speeds like that, but have graduated, usually in 5 units, bars to indicate how fast you're scanning.  The PS3 has 1.5x normal playback speed, 10x, 30x, and 120x.

 

What software returned the unknown error and said you needed to upgrade?

 

Depending on what you use to create the ISO, it may or may not work.  For instance, anything protected by CSS or any other protection won't read into an ISO by ImgBurn.  Well, it WILL but ImgBurn will warn you the results won't work.  So, maybe you had DVD's that weren't protected.  For discs that are protected by CSS, as I said, DVDShrink will read to ISO.  AnyDVD will also work on CSS and sector protected DVD's but, unlike DVDShrink, AnyDVD isn't free, although there is a limited time, full featured trial.

 

You ask too many questions!  Go away!  Just kidding.    We're all newbies at one time.  I've been doing this for 18 years, so I've learned by mostly trial and error, what I've read, asking, and reading what others tells me.  Forums like here are a good place to learn things like these.

[Aimé]

ImgBurn did return an error at my first check. It worked fine at my second.

Yeah I meant little scratches, not illegibles sectors. I have like 2 very litte scratches on a disc that you can see if you take it on a special angle.

[dbminter]

The best thing to do for little scratches is to see if those scratches prevent reading a disc into an image file.  If they don't, then, burn a new disc with that image file.  With little scratches that might hiccup playback but not reading a disc, you can fix those by just burning a disc with no scratches.  Plus, better to get that backup before those scratches get worse.

 

[Aimé]

Reading a disc into an image file? Do you mean like burning something into that disc and see if all is correct?

There are things I don't really understand. Now since I rip my DVDs I don't use them anymore, I watch my films by running the ISO into WMPlayer only. But I made this ISO when the DVD had those very little scratches. Did it keep the issues of the disc due to the scratches or not? Knowing that the scratches are nonexistent when you're looking at the disc normally but only if you look at it by tilting it.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Aimé

[dbminter]

Reading a disc into an image file just means making an ISO from a disc.

 

If a disc can be read into an image file, then those little scratches shouldn't be a problem.  However, with CD's, it can be.  For instance, I've had audio CD's that read perfectly to image files, but when those image files were played back, there were skips in the audio.  Precisely where there were skips in the audio on the physical CD's from damage.  DVD, however, should be a different beast.  But, I can't guarantee it won't affect the ISO being made.

 

As I said, your only sure fire, 100% guarantee is to play the contents of the ISO in its entirety before getting rid of the physical disc.

[Aimé]

Ah you mean ripping the disc?

ImgBurn has correctly ripped my DVD and it seems to run well until where I stopped it.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Aimé

[dbminter]

Just remember the ISO's won't work properly if ImgBurn rips a copy protected DVD.  It will still probably make the ISO, but they won't play properly.  ImgBurn will warn you if a disc is protected first before attempting to make the ISO, though.